AHHHHHHH Community is number 13 on the list of most dedicated fan bases!View full list by clicking on the photo!CommunityPOPULARITY: Perhaps the tiniest audience on this list, but the disproportionately dedicated and outspoken fan base helped convince NBC to keep the struggling show on for an upcoming fourth season; creator Dan Harmon trended on Twitter when he was fired last spring.
FACEBOOK FOLLOWERS: 1.3 million
TWITTER FOLLOWERS: 139,000
FAN NICKNAME: Human beings … with the rallying cry, “#sixseasonsandamovie”
MAIN HANGOUTS: The Community Subreddit, fan site Dan Harmon Sucks, the comments section of Todd VanDerWerff’s recap of last season’s finale on AV Club (more than 100,000 comments and counting), and Harmon’s Tumblr, Dan Harmon Poops.
AVERAGE DEMOGRAPHIC: Easily broken down, thanks to Nielsen! Under 40, notably wealthier than the average prime-time viewer under 50, and college-educated (Community has the fourth-most-college-educated audience of any prime-time show). On a less statistical note, they are comedy nerds and pop-culture obsessives.
DEVOTIONAL PROFILE: Creator Dan Harmon once told Vulture that he couldn’t imagine doing a TV show where his characters didn’t frequently nod to pop culture: “If things are going in their world the way things went in a movie they saw, they’re able to do what I would do, which is go, ‘This is an awful lot like that movie, isn’t it?’” That meta-ness may best explain why Community speaks so strongly to its small army of pop-culture geeks: While they undoubtedly have genuine affection for the characters, what attracts them most — or, at least, attracted them at first — is the comedy’s unabashed love of other movies and TV shows and video games. It’s a show about obsessives for obsessives and, at least during the Dan Harmon years, by a self-admitted obsessive. It’s Comic-Con as a TV series.
This doesn’t mean the audience doesn’t care about character, such as Jeff Winger’s daddy issues or the Troy and Abed bromance. But what makes Community unique is the game it plays with the viewer, inviting him or her to dissect every frame of the carefully choreographed tributes to cultural touchstones from The Godfather to The Right Stuff; to recognize them all is to feel not just triumphant but also worthy. This densely packed savant approach is self-limiting when it comes to drawing an audience, and none of its three seasons has ever averaged more than 5 million viewers. However, the cult’s loyalty has kept the show viable with NBC, which up until this season was looking to keep anything alive with a pulse. Fans even made their loyalty a rallying cry, in an appropriately meta way goosed by Harmon. In an episode near the end of season two, Abed refused to believe NBC’s The Cape wouldn’t go on forever: “Six seasons and a movie!” he proclaimed. Loyalists knew Abed was really standing up for Community’s honor and adopted the phrase as a call to arms. Earlier in the same episode, Winger demanded Abed “stop taking everything we do and shoving it up its own ass.” Community’s ardent admirers (who nervously await the indefinitely delayed fourth season) remain very happy exploring said posterior regions.
(Source: shhhhhspoilers)
