Big Brother, the Best Hope For Confidence in Premium SMS Voting?
by Ewan Spence
Russell seems to be picking up on every interesting story just as I get an idea, and he’s done the same with his post on SMS voting in the media. He’s right to point out that the guidelines are coming out of the UK market, but what’s interesting to me is the effect this is already having on program makers in the UK.
It’s no secret that SMS and Premium Phone Lines are a large part of the profit of these shows. The biggest of these in the UK is the Endemol produced reality tv show Big Brother. But this year things aren’t so clear cut in terms of profits. First of all, Channel 4 (the broadcaster) placed its own regulations on verifying the number of votes cast by SMS. The companies could not reach that standard.
As a result, there is to be no premium SMS voting for the show this year. That’s a huge loss of income, given that as recently as 2004, the UK record for SMS voting was broken by the Big Brother Show (471 votes per second). Even at 20% profit from a 50p SMS, multiplied over the course of ten weeks, that’s a large financial slice to give up.
The phone voting is under similar constraints, dropped from 45p a call to 25p a call, and a lot of publicity shouting out that its 15p admin costs and 10p to charity per call and we won’t make a profit (I wonder if it’ll still count in their turnover though…).
What’s interesting to me is the sheer amount of effort being put in place to reassure the UK public that the voting is safe, their thoughts will be counted, and that they really should keep on doing it. It might not be a financial success, but this years Big Brother UK could be the make or break the premium voting system so desperately needs.
