May 2012 Archives

I’ve been away from the world of TV news, by which I mean news about TV, for the best part of two weeks. Part of my job at The Stage, apart from burbling about the world of telly and editing the rest of our paper’s online content, is overseeing our web development strategy. That’s taken up a huge amount of my time recently — and will continue to do so, as we’re looking at rewriting every single line of code that drives the various sections of our website throughout 2012.

Last week, for example, I was out of the office every day, working with a company that is developing a new website for The Stage that will launch later in 2012, or possibly early 2013. This has little to no relevance to the TV Today blog, other than to explain why last week’s news that CBBC and CBeebies shows are to be phased out from transmission on BBC1 and BBC2 went uncommented upon.

In hindsight, maybe that’s a good thing. Because if I’d been commenting at the same time as the overpaid, overindulgent, underinformed commentators in the mainstream press were divulging their opinions about the “demise of Blue Peter on BBC1”, my main response would have been “what kept you so long from noticing a trend that’s been building for years?”

This evening sees the start of Britain’s Got Talent’s live semifinals, after a series of prerecorded auditions which, the addition of new judges Alesha Dixon and David Walliams aside, have been punctuated by several social media and second screen campaigns. The most visible characteristic element of these has been the use of on-air hashtags, encouraging Twitter users to use specific terms in their tweets.

At the tail end of this week, Peter Cassidy, Head of FremantleMedia UK Interactive kindly took time out from preparing for this weekend’s live shows to talk to The Stage about the series’ social media strategy.

TV Today: In terms of the lead-up to a show like Britain’s Got Talent, how early does the social media team get involved?

Peter Cassidy: It’s pretty much a continual process, to be honest with you. Social media on our big shows is pretty much a year-round activity. It really ramps up when the auditions are taking place and being recorded, which was way back in January, February time, and we work pretty much hand in hand with the production team.

While every show seems that it must have Twitter, Facebook and even app development these days, what piqued my interest was the use of on-screen hashtags, highlighting not only the acts involved but, say, a joke David Walliams has made. Who made the decision to take the approach that you did?

It was a joint decision between the interactive team and the executive producers of the show. People tend to use the act names anyway, so you don’t need to cite that. And we don’t want to be littering the show with hashtags, we try to keep the number down for people who are not on Twitter or don’t care. We don’t want it to be in their faces the whole time.

Two contrasting articles from different television magazines have caught my eye today. In today’s Radio Times, the TV listings magazine lists its top 20 closing moments, while SFX has picked their ten favourite pilot episodes.