Bill O’Reilly Beats ‘Dancing With the Stars,’ ‘The Voice’ Social Ratings

Bill O’Reilly isn’t often a big buzz generator on social media. But he was last week.

According to social content ratings released on Monday by Nielsen, two episodes of “The O’Reilly Factor” were among the most discussed on Twitter and Facebook last week — the first time the Fox News show has cracked Nielsen’s social-media top 10 this year. Nielsen’s social ratings measure Twitter and Facebook interactions for television shows. The Tuesday, April 4 episode of “O’Reilly Factor” was the seventh-most-social television ep of the week with 249,000 interactions. The Wednesday, April 5 episode was eighth with 236,000 interactions.

That put “O’Reilly Factor” ahead of such highly social programs as ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars” (232,000 interactions) and NBC’s “The Voice” (178,000 on Monday night).

USA’s “WWE Monday Night Raw” was the most social non-sports program of the week with 858,000 interactions.

The big boost in social-media mentions for “O’Reilly Factor” followed a New York Times report the weekend prior stating that O’Reilly and Fox News had together paid more than $13 million to settle allegations of sexual harassment against the host. O’Reilly has claimed that his celebrity status makes him a “target” for such accusations.

Last week saw dozens of advertisers move their commercials from “O’Reilly Factor” in response to the report, most of them to other Fox News programming. On Sunday, the lawyer for one of O’Reilly’s accusers told CNN’s “Reliable Sources” that Fox News had launched an internal investigation into allegations against O’Reilly.

“O’Reilly Factor” is the most watched program in cable news.

Get more from Variety and Variety411: Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Newsletter