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Live TV embraces live chat with dramatic results

Posted on 05 November 2008 by David Brewer

At one point there must have been 100 people in the Livestation global chat room attached to the live stream of the Al Jazeera English 12-hour election special; numbers boosted every time the channel gave a live on-air promotion.

They were engaged in instant, live chat, with their comments being picked up in the studio and fed through to the live TV output at Al Jazeera studios in Washington and Doha.

The vast majority seemed to be from America. Viewers who’d chosen, for whatever reason, to watch the drama unfold via their desktop in the Livestation player. So there was no lack of opinions when the room was discussing US domestic issues.

However it was an eye-opener when the discussion touched on foreign policy. Whenever a country was mentioned, and without fail during the ten hours I was monitoring the debate, someone from the country mentioned popped up and pitched in.

I took a straw poll (a difficult and non-scientific experiment to undertake in a crowded chat room) by asking people where they were located.

Morocco, Indonesia, China, Singapore, Kenya, Russia, Eire, UK, Germany, Australia, the UK, Norway … the list went on and on. Live, instant, chat on a global scale, impacting live TV output.

Al Jazeera English is leading the way using this free tool, hopefully, Livestation’s partner broadcasters will follow their lead. What seems clear from last night’s experience is that the Al Jazeera English audience that goes online in order to watch live TV now has an expectation.

And it’s important that expectation is met by the broadcasters. I am certain it will be with Al Jazeera; Riz Khan uses it for his show every Monday to Thursday at 20:30 GMT; but the other broadcasters should take note. They may be missing a trick.

2 comments

Over 100 people in the Livestation global chat room is indeed an impressive number. Congratulations! I don't know about any other chat (anywhere) that has ever hit such a high number of concurrent participants. If there were 100 people in the chat room, I just wonder how many people actually watched the channel itself. It must have been an impressive number as well. I'm definitely impressed with Livestation, so I'd be curious to know a little bit more , e.g., (1) How many people were actually watching Al Jazeera English yesterday during the election, concurrently and in total? (2) How does Al Jazeera English compare to some of the other channels available on Livestation? I suppose Al Jazeera English is actually one of the more popular ones. (3) Given the numbers you quoted for yesterday's election night, how many registered users does Livestaton have, and how many can be considered active (watching at least once a month)? What is their average time spent on Livestation per month? Just curious...

Posted by Anonymous at 13:50 05 November 2008

Dear Anonymous, here's some answers to your questions. 1. We run stats on the channels once a week on Monday so we'll have to wait till then. Early indications are that we had over 10,000 viewers with concurrency reaching 3,000. 2. Al Jazeera is indeed one of the most popular ones as it is available globally but it's up there with the other leading brands. 3. We don't disclose totals on our user base. I can tell you though that the average time spent per month on Livestation is well over 200 minutes. And if you changed your status from Anonymous to your real name, we could carry on the chat over email ;-) Thanks for using Livestation

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Live TV embraces live chat with dramatic results

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