[CMA] Community Channel Rolls Out Interactive TV Volunteering Application

[Chris Hewson]

ITVT Issue 6.04 | May 26, 2005

Community Channel Rolls Out Interactive TV Volunteering Application

Community Channel, a UK digital television channel which features 
programming that showcases charities, volunteerism, and community 
activities, and which last fall launched a red-button TV donation service on 
the UK's Sky platform (note: in the wake of the Asian Tsunami, the channel 
teamed with a number of the UK's leading broadcasters to raise over £1 
million for victims of the disaster through the donation app--see [itvt] 
Issue 5.84), has launched a service that allows Sky viewers to find 
opportunities to volunteer for good causes. The service--whose formal launch 
took place Tuesday evening at a ceremony at BAFTA headlined by BSkyB CEO, 
James Murdoch, and the UK's minister of communities and local government, 
David Miliband, and attended by [itvt]--allows viewers who press the red 
button to search for volunteering opportunities in their area by entering 
their postcode: they also have the option of specifying the category of 
volunteering opportunity they are interested in from a drop-down menu. The 
service then provides them with a list of opportunities, drawing on an 
existing database that has been assembled by the Web site, do-it.org.uk, a 
service managed by the charity, YouthNet. Finally, it allows them to enter 
their personal info via the remote (using SMS keypad protocol), so that they 
can be contacted by the charities and other organizations whose volunteering 
opportunities interest them.

The service was developed by interactive TV services company, Press Red, 
using its BlackBox Designer tool (which has been used to create numerous 
i-ads on the Sky platform): "They were great to work with," Community 
Channel's head of interactive TV, Sinéad Hughes, told [itvt]. "They fully 
grasped what it was I wanted from both the backend functionality and the 
user interface. Their dedication to the project extended into 'volunteering' 
quite a few late nights and weekends to work on it." The service builds on 
Community Channel's original ITV application, which was created by Sky 
Interactive (note: Sky also donates the bandwidth to the channel that 
enables its ITV services), and which launched last September (see [itvt] 
Issue 5.65 Part 3). It is funded by a grant from the UK Home Office's Active 
Communities Directorate. In addition to allowing Sky subscribers to donate 
to or volunteer for good causes, Community Channel's ITV application allows 
them to view a daily selection of stories from the Media Trust/PA Community 
Newswire (note: the Media Trust is a registered charity, backed by a variety 
of European media companies, that provides media and communications services 
to charities and non-profits), to submit questions, feedback, votes and 
requests for information, and to enter competitions.

[itvt] asked Hughes how Community Channel's ITV donation and volunteering 
services are coordinated with its programming: "The two key organizations 
there are Phoenix7, who provide us with their Zeus scheduling software, and 
BBC Broadcast, who do our linear and multi-trigger playout," she explained. 
"The Zeus software is the most exciting piece of integrated kit I've come 
across in years. It means anyone, not just the scheduler, can go into this 
easy application and check the schedule, make amendments, and set the 
triggers. It makes scheduling and trigger playout a piece of cake. If some 
of the UK's bigger broadcasters could just come in and see this at work, 
they'd switch over to it immediately, it's that good! Zeus," she continued, 
"outputs an xml file to BBC Broadcast that contains all the EPG info and 
associated interactive triggers, and BBC Broadcast manages the playout from 
their new, state-of-the-art Media Centre premises. We were their first 
non-BBC client channel to broadcast scheduled interactive triggers, and 
their 24-hour support is invaluable for a small operation like ours."

According to Hughes, Community Channel's new volunteering opportunities 
finder is a simplified version of the one offered on the do-it.org.uk Web 
site: "What we've done is we've transformed what is a very complex offering 
on their Web site into a very, very simple offering for TV," she said. The 
service, she stressed, has been designed throughout so as not to overwhelm 
non-tech-savvy viewers: "We're gearing it to the lowest common denominator 
in terms of familiarity with technology, including people who have never 
pressed red before," she explained. "You've got to guide the viewer all the 
way. There are little things like when you enter your details for one of the 
volunteering opportunities, entering your email isn't mandatory, because 
we've found that a good 20 percent of our red button users don't actually 
have Internet access. So for them, this is the first time they've ever used 
a search engine."
Community Channel soft-launched the new service two weeks ago. [itvt] asked 
Hughes how the channel plans to promote it, now that it has launched 
officially: "We're recording calls-to-action for the interactive TV service 
with any celebrities that are filming programs or promos for us," she said. 
"We'll then be using these, scattered throughout the schedule, as quick, 
interstitial celebrity endorsements. Celebrities grab people's attention and 
everyone's ITV research shows that, when a familiar face is onscreen telling 
you to press red to get something or to do something, this is the most 
effective way of driving viewers through. The most recent one we did was 
last week with Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Anthony Head--much to the delight 
of the female contingent in the Channel! I've also been working to ensure 
that all the major broadcasters promote our app from relevant programming 
and link to it from their 24/7 interactive menus," she continued. "For 
example, ITV [note: the UK's largest commercial terrestrial broadcaster, the 
Independent Television Network, is commonly referred to by this acronym] are 
going to do a series called 'With a Little Help from My Friends,' which is 
all about celebrities going back to where they came from and helping to do 
something in their local communities. So they will be linking their viewers 
to the app from that show. Community Channel is the official TV channel for 
the UK's Year Of The Volunteer, and the first week of June is Volunteer 
Week. A lot of the major broadcasters are doing programs about volunteering, 
so we want them all to be able to use the app."

Another priority for Community Channel is ensuring that the new volunteering 
app and its other ITV services are promoted by the UK's digital television 
operators: "We've got direct links to our charity donation pages from within 
Sky Active's A-Z menu, and we'll also shortly have a link listed under 'V' 
for 'Volunteering,'" Hughes said. "The next plan is to re-version the 
application for delivery on Liberate middleware so that we can offer it to 
our cable viewers on Telewest and then, hopefully, ntl." Nevertheless, 
Hughes explained, building relationships with broadcasters is what will 
ultimately be key to the success of the channel and its interactive 
services: "Being on Sky Active is absolutely fantastic, but only a certain 
number of people will ever go into Sky Active and search around the 
menu--and, for that matter, only a certain number of people will ever tune 
to our linear channel. So it's really vitally important for us to set up 
long-term relationships with the top broadcasters on the EPG: we'll never 
realize the potential of our application unless it's linked to by these 
broadcasters, whether on their programming or on their interactive services 
menus." Consequently, Community Channel maintains an interactive TV advisory 
board with the goal of building relationships with the UK's broadcasters and 
their ITV departments: "On our interactive TV advisory board, we have senior 
channel development managers from Sky, we have the executive editor from 
Channel 4 interactive, we have senior people from BBCi, and of course the 
board is chaired by Jane Marshall, who is controller of interactive TV at 
ITV," Hughes explained. "The boardmembers not only contribute suggestions, 
but they gain an understanding of what we're trying to do. Our hope is that 
they will then communicate back to their colleagues on the linear television 
side, and tell them, 'Look, here's a fantastic application that you can 
quickly and easily bolt onto your program and really make something extra 
out of it.'"

[itvt] asked Hughes to outline Community Channel's future interactive plans: 
"We're very interested in video on demand, so we're looking at companies 
like Video Networks and ntl to see how we can make ourselves available on 
VOD," she said. "However, the problem with that is that, since we don't 
fully own a lot of our content, rights issues will always be a barrier. But, 
whatever we do own, we want to exploit everywhere we can. We are also 
interested in interactive TV charity gaming, though we'll have to get 
additional funds to do that. And we're about to launch a broadband site, in 
order to deliver our content to broadband partners like AOL, BlueYonder etc. 
We want to push our content as far as we can. We're obviously not a 
profit-making venture in the normal sense of the word," she concluded, "but 
we show our profit in viewer interaction and viewer feedback, in getting 
viewers involved in making a difference--which is why for us the interactive 
aspect of our channel isn't an add-on, it's core to what we're about."

(Note: on June 13th, Community Channel and its interactive services will 
begin sporting a new look-and-feel, thanks to a rebranding project that has 
been carried out by BBC Broadcast.)
URL:http://www.communitychannel.co.uk

 


	
	
		
___________________________________________________________ 
Yahoo! Messenger - NEW crystal clear PC to PC calling worldwide with voicemail http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com