There's no doubt that NBC's new hit
The Voice has set a gold standard for how to create a live broadcast in the age of the social web. Coverage on the show's ratings and social media success continues to pour in since the first season's finale last week.
The genius behind the digital success (and the fact that The Voice has been one the most aggressive shows to
integrate Twitter on the air) is that social media isn't seen as a marketing vehicle but as core to the entire production. Here's an in-depth interview with
Andrew Adashek, the Digital Producer for Mark Burnett (and startup guy) who shared how his team of social broadcasters are creating new roles within the Hollywood production chain.
What were some of the biggest successes?
For sure, the Twitter engagement and to connect with the audience in real-time and making it accessible to the coaches and artists. Giving the artists access right away. A lot of shows would sequester, whereas we were actively encouraging it. One of the bigger successes, we were able to pull back the chains. To grow organically.
What were some of the guidelines you gave to the coaches?
We didn't want people to give spoilers really far in advance, don't tell anybody, don't spoil things that would ruin it for everyone, may not ruin the competition but there's a certain element of surprise that would be fun. Also, profanity. Artists could use their own twitter accounts. We couldn't show favoritism towards any one artists. We had to remain neutral, we had to give a fair amount of coverage and just play neutral. We wanted everything to be open and personally.
What was the relationship like with Twitter?
Twitter was super helpful in sharing what was working with us and showing us, and pulling back the vail and saying what was helpful. They gave us the tools we needed to fine tune #thevoice (when to put it on-air) and putting it up at key moments in the show so people were in control. Also to make that single hashtag let peopel connect universally on twitter around the show. They helped us see when we would see spikes in activity, when activity would slow down. When we hit the Social Media Room, we'd see great deal of buzz. We were pulling in interesting commentary from the viewers at home, who had awesome opinions.
How do you get a tweet onto live broadcast?
On our side, we'd pull in filter for the tweets we were looking for. We had a rundown of what we thought would happen next, what performances, I'd think about that experience and customize everything about the show. Real-time watching the show and watching the television. Things change very quickly without us knowing, so we'd need to update the filters.
If there's an episode where two artists kissed, we'd look to see what people are saying. You have to be real-time. Then we would take all the information go through standards and legal. We built all the pieces so it would connect from that system to the expression which would actually show it on air. We would have it down to 15seconds from real-time to get it through everyone on the air. That's probably what took by far the most energy and development to get it real-time through all of those pieces....
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After taking an inside look at social TV in Brazil and Portugal, it’s time to turn our attention to France. Orange is one of France’s biggest cable providers, serving five million subscribers through its IPTV and satellite TV network – a 15.8% increase over last year. Leading this charge is Nicolas Bry, a Senior VP at Orange responsible for the company’s Blended TV product. According to Bry, Blended TV is “designed as a platform accessible to others trough its API,” and is “embedded in a dozen of Orange services after only one year. Orange apps welcome and display social buzz in an environment familiar to the end-user, without the need to install a new app, and over multiple screens: mobile, TV, tablet, PC.” Read more
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