Are people chatting along with TV shows?

At yesterday's Corante SSA conference there was an IRC backchannel where attendees where chatting about what the speaker was talking about, how the room was arranged and sharing links to topics that were mentioned.

There was also some random and not so random witty comments thrown in. Those commenters, we found out, we the stars of chat rooms.

Are people chatting along with TV shows?

I don't usually watch anything live, so I hadn't thught about this.

Do people go into chat rooms and talk about TV shows as they are aired?

Might be fun to do with a nightly news program.