Alex Calic (@alexcalic) is currently working on an undisclosed start-up having spent the past 10 years at several tech companies. After starting at Assal and Coremetrics, Alex was most recently VP of [insert title of whatever needed to get done that quarter] at Clearspring Technologies. Prior to that he was VP of Corp. Dev. at InPhonic where he helped take the company public, launch Wirefly and acquire a dozen mobile and e-commerce companies.

We see from studies and personal experiences that recommendations from social networks do influence our television viewing habits. Combined with the abundant, on-demand nature of information available on the Internet, it's easy to understand how the changing content consumption habits - from the day after to the day of - have affected the media industry.

While much of the demise of print news media can be attributed to these changing habits (and explained nowhere better than on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart), it has actually had the opposite effect on live television event broadcasts. Here is audience data from some of the most widely-known live-broadcast sports and entertainment events from this year.

• Golden Globes (January): This year's television audience was 17 million, 14% higher than in 2009.
• Grammy Awards (January): Almost 27 million viewers tuned in, a 35% increase over last year's broadcast and the highest TV ratings for the event since 2004.
• Super Bowl XLIV (February): This became the most-watched television program in U.S. history, beating the finale of the TV show "M*A*S*H" with a total audience of over 150 million and an average of over 106 million viewers.
• Academy Awards (March): The Awards had over 41 million viewers, up 14% over the 2009 Oscars.
• NBA Finals Game 7 (June): The deciding game between the Los Angeles Lakers and Boston Celtics pulled in a viewership of over 28 million, the largest basketball audience since 12 years ago, when Michael Jordan won his last of six NBA championships
• World Cup Final (July): The finals between Spain and Netherlands became the most-watched soccer game in U.S. history with over 24 million viewers, topping the previous record of 19 million viewers during the United States' match against Ghana in the elimination round only weeks earlier.

Some might argue that there are better explanations for this renewed interest in live television programming. The economy, for instance, means people stay home more often for entertainment purposes. Or it's due to a wide range of content quality: the offensive-minded Super Bowl match-up; the popularity of Lady Gaga for the Grammys and Avatar for the Golden Globes and Oscars; the deciding game of a classic NBA finals match-up; the final of the World Cup, the most-followed sporting event in the world. But the fact is most of these events are leveraging social media hubs like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube more and more as part of their tune-in marketing campaigns to engage with fans and would-be viewers.

And it's working. The network effect caused by the interest of the most engaged fans is bringing indifferent audiences that are connected to these fans off of the sidelines and into the viewing experience. The real-time nature of information flow on the Web, along with the ability to extend social connections through Facebook and Twitter, has made it increasingly difficult for people to avoid watching or hearing about live television event broadcasts - or even attempt to try to watch them in a non-linear, time-shifted manner without having the outcome spoiled by social media channels. Combined with the social pressures around participation, additional audiences are being influenced to engage in these events via social networks.

Some recent engagement figures from Facebook and Twitter seem to confirm this. Facebook has shared that about 30% of all status updates on the site during the U.S. versus England match included a World Cup-related term. More impressively, Twitter saw the number of Tweets per second (TPS) it handles top 3,000 as a result of the Lakers beating the Celtics in the NBA Finals. This record was broken a week later on the heels of two World Cup matches that generated almost 3,300 TPS. To put this into context, Twitter's normal activity is 750 TPS, which is a big reason why the service has experienced over six hours of downtime since the beginning of the World Cup.

With live television event broadcasting benefiting greatly from social networking, can EBSNs become the next big opportunity in social media?