The New Ratings: Sheen Roast Wins Twitter, Two and a Half Men Takes TV

And the ratings are in... More people watched the premiere of Two and a Half Men with Ashton Kutcher than Comedy Central's roast of the star he replaced, Charlie Sheen. 

Now that doesn't mean much considering it broke a record for a roast on Comedy Central, attracting 6.4 million viewers to beat Jeff Foxworthy's record at 6.2 million views in 2005. The tally for Two and a Half Men? A whopping 28 million views, the show's highest ratings EVER. That proves that even Charlie Sheen's absence can have the same viewer drawing power as his presence.

What's interesting about the ratings is when compared to the amount of tweets per show, the roast fared better. A lot more.

As in more than double the amount of the premiere. The tally? The roast had around 400,000 tweets, with 79% neutral, 13.4% negative, and 7.6% positive. The premier had around 150,000 tweets, with 80.6 percent nuetral, 6.9 percent negative, and 12.5% positive. So the roast actually had more negative tweets and less positive tweets than the premier did.

This speaks worlds around how important tweets are becoming in the entertainment industry. Charlie Sheen himself set the record for most twitter followers in 24 hours followed by twitter-ized brand endorsements.

Unruly Media tracks their YouTube videos and other sites' videos by social sharing, including Facebook shares, blog shares, and Twitter shares. The importance of social media tracking, including tweets and shares, seems almost as important, if not becoming more important, than television viewer ratings. The roast also had more viewers than anything viewing on NBC or FOX at the time.

It looks like Charlie Sheen really is "winning" television... in Canada.