--ITV Exec Says Broadcaster Close to Deal with Hulu to Offer Programming to US Viewers
UK commercial broadcaster, ITV, yesterday unveiled its plans for social TV-enabled broadband video coverage of the first general election debate between Labour Party prime minister, Gordon Brown, Conservative Party leader, David Cameron, and Liberal Democrat Party leader, Nick Clegg, which takes place tonight (Thursday, April 15th). The debate will also be carried live on ITV's terrestrial channel, ITV1.
According to the broadcaster, a dedicated page on its Web site (http://www.itv.com/electiondebate) will host an exclusive live stream of ITV1's debate and post-debate programming. ITV says that ITV.com will provide multiple opportunities for visitors to the page to "fully engage with the debate on the night through commenting and interacting with political experts and ITV News correspondents." Among other things, the site will offer:
- An audience reaction tool, called "The Worm," that will be displayed on the live video stream of the debate and that will monitor the reactions of a focus group that has been assembled by ITV News. According to the broadcaster, the tool registers approval, disapproval or neutral feelings from the panel and translates them into a live, constantly updated, on-screen "worm graph."
- A live online chat based on technology from live-blogging specialist, Cover It Live, and taking place throughout the debate. According to ITV, the chat will be fueled by commentary and by key quotes from the debating party leaders, and users will be able to share their feedback in a moderated environment. The chat will also include instant reaction from commentators, Bill Neely, Lucy Manning and Angus Walker. Following the debate and throughout the evening, users will be able to continue to interact with ITV News correspondents and pundits, and also take part in online polls, ITV says.
- A Facebook Live tool that will allow users to log into their Facebook account and share their reactions both on ITV.com and on their Facebook friends' news feeds.
- Twitter tools that have been built by Tweetminster and that will track reaction to the party leaders' performances. According to ITV, a sentiment tool tracking 5,000 "key" Twitter users will provide a visual representation of what people are tweeting about each leader throughout the debate in real time. In addition, an election debate "word cloud" will highlight the frequency with which the leaders use a selection of key election-related words.
Following the conclusion of the live stream, coverage of the debate will be made available domestically and internationally on the ITV Player catch-up TV service and on the ITV1 YouTube channel. "This is a truly historic occasion and we're really excited to be the only site able to offer, not only a live stream of the debate, but the opportunity for our users to share their views and opinions both on ITV.com and across social networks such as Twitter and Facebook," Ben McOwen Wilson, ITV's director of online and interactive, said in a prepared statement. "This is a great example of ITV feeding the increasing appetite of our users to engage with big events on the television and online simultaneously."
In other ITV news: The broadcaster's ITV Studios Home Entertainment division is close to reaching a deal to offer some of its most high-profile shows to viewers in the US via Hulu, even though it has yet to conclude a deal to offer its programs on a planned UK version of Hulu, the division's VP of digital and new media, Jason Binks, told formats trade publication, C21 Media, in Cannes. Binks stated that the deal will see around 125 ITV titles available on Hulu, including "Prime Suspect," "Cracker" and "Thunderbirds," and that, if the deal is signed, the programming will be phased in on the platform over six months.
Binks also told C21 Media that his division was in talks with Samsung about offering its programming on the latter's connected TV's, and stated that the broadcaster is "doing something at a much higher level with Sony. They've obviously launched with iPlayer, so there's a number of conversations with Sony both on Internet TV's and on the PlayStation side," he added.
