Live Events

Social telly.  With more and more of us watching TV with our laptop open, the connection between live TV and the free exchange of opinion via the internet is becoming increasing important to broadcasters.  Viewers want to ask questions of experts, express their views in real time, and to see what their fellow viewers are saying.

Live chat, perhaps linked to social network accounts such as Facebook or Twitter, enables viewers to comment as the action appears on their screens. It makes 'event TV' such as popular interactive shows, or sports events, come to life. Live events can be promoted through Twitter, drawing an audience into the event, and then live chat, allied with Twitter and Facebook feeds can provide real-time feedback to the organisers while simultaneously broadcasting key happenings and audience responses, reaching even those who are unable to attend or view the event.

Questions can be posed to be answered either on the programme itself or by live bloggers during the event.
eModeration's specialised live chat moderation team is able to cover streamed events using tools such as Cover It Live (text to screen), Tweetriver, Twitterfall, Paratweet (aggregated twitter streams) and Audioboo (aggregated audio). 

Our experience

	In celebration of the UK release of the Doctor Who Complete Series 6 box set, BBC Worldwide live-streamed a Q&A session with the Dr Who cast on the BBCWorldwideTV  YouTube channel. Fans were able to chat to each other about what they were watching on the page with YouTube Live, and soon the conversation was flying along, with thousands of comments.  Our moderators were kept very busy making sure the talk stayed family-friendly.  The YouTube Live system puts comments straight up on the page, so it was a pretty frantic couple of hours - but enormous fun. The BBC got a lot of thanks and some great feedback from fans, who were watching it at work; on the bus; with their mobiles hidden under desks at school; on the bus; in Japan; Singapore; Russia - all over the world.
	Live chat moderation involves (as you would expect) faultless judgement and speed under pressure, and we're happy that our ITV client chose to partner with us on their new social television venture.  Our specialist teams work with ITV on the live UGC of flagship programmes including This Morning, X Factor and Dancing on Ice, as well as sports programming (the 2010 World Cup for example), and other special events such as the UK Royal Wedding and the 2010 UK elections. This work involves careful screening of comments and also balanced selection of questions (especially important during the UK's first ever Election debates)
	In a historic one hour live internet event on October 14 2010, MTV, BET and CMT presented  "A Conversation with President Obama".  The President sat down with a group of young people and the entire internet community for a conversation about whatever was on their minds; a town hall discussion that allowed the leader to answer questions about the issues that mattered most to his young audience. eModeration (along with staff at MTV) moderated live questions and comments coming into Cover It Live tool, ranging from health care, unemployment rates, and immigration.  The moderators worked fast to select and feed through appropriate material, working at approximately 30 comments per minute.
	Hosting   We provide multilingual 24/7 event hosting of Twitter feeds and Facebook Pages as well: especially useful when  events may be during unsocial hours for the regular brand team.  As an example, at the 2010 MTV VMA Awards we hosted their Twitter stream, pulling together relevant content from sister MTV accounts, passing on gossip from the red carpet, retweeting and responding to followers.

eModeration Live Events Packages

eModeration now offers live chat packages to clients, who can choose from all or any of the following elements:

• Hosting:  Live tweeting on the brand's voice: includes retweeting hashtagged content, responding to followers, tweeting out commentary supplied by the brand.  We have found this works best in combination with Community Moderation (as with the MTV example above).
  
• Selective moderation: During the event content is cherry-picked for onscreen display or to be responded to by the presenters/bloggers.  Our team works closely with your editorial staff to understand your requirements, and we are in constant contact during the event in order to change our direction as needed.
• Live moderation: Live moderation involves screening the stream of UGC for an inappropriate content and then deleting it and blocking the user from the aggregate tool.  As above, our team works closely with your editorial staff to understand your requirements, and we are in constant contact during the event in order to change our direction as needed.

 To understand more of our thinking, please download our free white papers.  Feel free to contact us for a quotation  and advice on which elements of our  Live Events Packages you may need.