A British company has developed a telephone-based panel system that can provide real-time viewer feedback for television programmes. Its developers liken it to the original live audience clapometer, allowing viewers to express their views straight to screen. Cleverly, it also uses standard market research weighting to make random voter samples representative of the general population.

Adam Livingstone, the chief executive of Clickvision, told informitv that his company originally approached the BBC back in 2005 with idea of allowing viewers to register their approval or disapproval of political speeches by phoning in and using their telephone keypads.

Adam is a former producer of Newsnight at the BBC. Richard Livingstone, who serves as chief technical officer, previously designed high-volume financial trading systems and is an enthusiast for free open source software platforms to keep down costs.

Initially data was collated and analysed after the event, but more recently the company has been able to display the results directly on screen within two seconds of buttons being pressed. “That’s obviously a lot faster than a red button could do it,” explained Adam, “but it also allows anyone with a phone to take part, not just digital viewers. So it’s perfect for network television.”

Viewers begin by using an interactive menu system to register information such as age and gender, so that votes can be weighted to reflect the composition of the general public.

Here the link to the company offering this service.

Posted on September 17th, 2007 by lbraum
Filed under: Call-In TV, all