ABC’s new 1960s inspired TV show Pan Am launched the first “Twitter-powered flight,” encouraging users to tweet using the hashtag #panam to win prizes. The new series is a drama about stewardesses back when jet travel was glamorous. The show, along with The Playboy Club, is drawing obvious comparisons to Emmy-winning AMC series Mad Men.

Did Pan Am’s twitter promotion successfully generate buzz? We used Social Radar to analyze conversations online.

#panam buzz

The #panam hashtag conversation spiked dramatically during the show but subsided almost immediately.

#panam sentiment

Conversations around #panam were an average of 84% positive this week. Mad Men appeared in nearly 10% of all Pan Am conversations.

Mad Men vs. Pan Am vs. The Playboy Club

While Pan Am did generate more buzz overall than The Playboy Club, the new show has a long way to go to catch Mad Men buzz online. Mad Men is currently generating more buzz than Pan Am even though Mad Men is not during season currently.

Fans of the Battlestar Galactica series have to deal with the reality that the show has aired its final episode. Even though it had great ratings for SciFi, it still claims less viewers than many Friday night major network Primetime TV episodes. However, just take a look at how much buzz it created over the web. Shouldn’t buzz be a factor in the measurement of the success of a TV show? Why aren’t networks focusing more on measurement of DVR/TiVo recordings or views from online episodes? This contributes to the question that needs much attention: Why is Nielsen still the TV ratings standard?