Matt James, the first black bachelor in the franchise.
Photo: Craig Sjodin / ABC
Bachelor fans received an alert this season. If it wasn’t clear from the racism scandal that put presenter Chris Harrison on a hiatus, ABC’s reality show has a small diversity problem in its most diverse season. The Instagram account @bachelordata has monitored statistics such as the competitor’s screen time and the growth of IG followers, putting numbers on issues such as representation and platform that Bachelor fans have been talking for years. The account founder, who serves for Suzana in the interest of privacy, started posting her findings on the subreddit Bachelor, then switched to Instagram in February 2020, just before the pandemic ended the series and fans let the producers know.
Amid last summer’s racial justice protests, Bachelor Nation – fans and former contestants – asked the show to tell its overwhelmingly white story, and the producers responded with Matt James, the first black bachelor. The program brought together a record of 25 black women to compete for their hearts, along with the mandatory 12 white contestants, promising to do them all justice. “We are taking positive steps to expand diversity in our cast, in our team and, most importantly, in the relationships that we show on television,” said the producers in a statement last summer. “We can and will do better to reflect the world around us and show all of its beautiful love stories.” But that is not what the numbers say.
Now with more than 50,000 followers on Instagram, supported by a small team to help enter data and supported by fans on Patreon, @bachelordata has become a necessary resource for viewers who want the full picture. Vulture spoke to Suzana about how she gathers the statistics each week and what they mean for the last reckoning of the program.
When will your Bachelor journey started, and how did this transition to track it?
I started watching the show in college. I was bored in my dorm, looking for TV shows, and I immediately got hooked. But mine Bachelor The data journey began in December 2018, just before the start of the Colton Underwood season. At the time, I had just become a chief technology officer [for a school district]; I was trying to learn how to use spreadsheets better and nothing seemed worse than an Excel class. So, I decided to start tracking Instagram followers manually every day while the show aired to see what happened on the show that led to Instagram’s biggest growth. So it kind of grew from there.
What inspired you to look at Instagram followers in particular?
It was discussed often, how many Instagram followers different people had, and I think most people who watch the program know that these people go to the program now and become these great Instagram influencers. I’ve always been curious, Why do some people become greater influencers than others? At the time, I really didn’t have a way to see the time on the screen. So I thought, if I can see dates one by one, what does that mean in terms of followers? Group dates? Rose against the group? And different things like that. I just started collecting this data every day after the episode each week.
What does it take to monitor all this screen time?
Much. [Laughs] Now, I have someone on board who is helping me every week, because when I started doing this, I would wake up at four, 4:30 in the morning before work after an episode that was airing so I could start collecting the Dice. I just opened Amazon Video, where I buy the season, and it is a literal start and stop and an assessment based on the criteria of who is presented on the screen and then is manually written in a spreadsheet.
How did analyzing the numbers affect your experience in the program?
I definitely see it with a more critical eye now. I think the term that a lot of people use is franken-jaw – I can tell when different segments are being pulled and the audio changes in terms of when it was recorded. Watching back, I find so much more when I watch it again that I missed it the first time.
How many hours a week would you say you spend working on The bachelor?
Much. [Laughs] I learned how to become much more efficient with spreadsheets, and that was the goal of this project, to learn how to use spreadsheets to help me in my daily work. But for the sustainability of this project, it’s kind of like sinking or swimming. I had to learn to be efficient with my time and to do things weekly. If I had to guess, I would probably say more than eight to ten hours a week.
How has it been getting involved with the Bachelor Nation community on Reddit and Instagram?
I definitely attribute a lot of my learning to the community side of it. I think one of the best things I hear from him is that the work I’m doing is what people are discussing in their group chats about the show or, you know, on their Slack channels at work. This is very special to me in terms of how I feel about the show and my involvement in the Bachelor community. I also get a lot of messages that are not so kind, which can be difficult to process. It was revealing to see a little of what some competitors from the Single Nation achieve, especially when you talk about controversial topics, right?
Yes, I think Bachelor Nation fans take it very seriously when it comes to controversies. In your opinion, how does the data change the way we look at fans after the scandals?
I think the numbers are hard to ignore when you have concrete numbers in front of you, like Instagram followers and discrepancies between white people and people of color on the show and how they are being followed on Instagram, but really being able to look back for that with a screen time lens and lack of screen time. This is really the first season that we have numbers to point out whenever we talk about these most difficult conversations. I am very happy to be able to provide these numbers and provide some context for people to leave when discussing things like on-screen time, the lack of opportunity for people who go to this program and how it is edited.
How did you see these conversations bubble up in the wake of this season?
People were really excited about how historic this season was in terms of the cast, especially after executive producers made their statement last summer pledging to show more diverse love stories. This season’s data is especially relevant because people feel that we haven’t seen what the producers have promised us. I expected drama like every season, but I think this season was more focused on drama. We finally got data on that this year in terms of what the weather was like on screen and who we were watching.
Okay, the women of color who are at the top have some of the lowest screen times in the series.
Instead, we knew the stories and experiences of people who came out in the third episode more than in the last four. The data does not lie. When you publish featured screen time data and people ask, “Who is the person who has the most screen time?” and people literally can’t remember it, I think it goes to the story lines and how they’re being edited.
It’s hard to say, but how do you think the spoilers and ongoing controversies affect things like the follower growth data?
Since I started following you, you can see a considerable influence on Instagram’s growth in terms of the first few episodes. So, you would see who was rumored to be growing much faster. But we still need to go back to be able to collect this screen time to see the influence there. Fortunately, we have everything well documented, about when spoilers fell and their growth on Instagram on what dates, we will be able to take a look at that.
At the start of the season, it was rumored that Rachael Kirkconnell would go a long way. And right at the beginning, people thought, “Why is this person gaining so many followers on Instagram when we barely saw him on our TVs?” I don’t love that spoilers are out there because then it is difficult to pinpoint exactly what is going on in the series that is leading to that growth, but it is inevitable.
With the season ending, there is something in the data that we can look at to guess the new maiden?
In fact, one of the biggest indicators is the first meeting. So, if you look at who gets the first individual encounter each season, we have Hannah Brown, Becca Kufrin, Clare Crawley; we had Ashley Hebert, we had Ali Fedotowsky, we had Jillian Harris. Especially as you step back, you can see that you have the highest chances. This season, I believe it was – I should know that right away – Bri! What happens on “Women Tell-All”, I think, is a great indicator. We definitely see who is put on the spot, how the edition is going and how the fans respond.
Bachelor Nation’s official Instagram follows you. Do you wonder if producers are tracking data through your account?
Hope so. I hope they’re looking at the data because I’m sure it’s useful for them to look at their screen time and see what impacted the series and what made people talk.