“Football on the radio can be so incredibly exciting,” can be read in the Google-translated blog post of Jan Eggers, digital journalist, blogger and social media manager at Hessischen Rundfunk, but engaging listeners in what he calls the “Social Radio project” takes thing to another level.
In the aftermath of last week’s Champions League matches, Borussia Dortmund-Ajax and Olympiakos-Schalke 04, ARD – the second largest broadcasting conglomerate in the world after the BBC – announced the success of its social radio experiment, described as a “radio reports and online services” combination that let users enjoy a new interactive, football experience.
The liveblog portion was powered by ScribbleLive.
“Football fans can cheer not only during the live broadcast of the games, but at the same time also share [their joy] with the network of other fans and experts of sportschau.de,” says the press release picked up by Jan Eggers in his blog.
“The premiere was a success. On Tuesday evening [Sept. 18], between 8:30 p.m. and 11 p.m. the page had been viewed so many times [it became] the most successful event for a radio live stream on ARD. In the almost 4,000 comments received during the games, our users exchanged thoughts about the games, feared and hoped together for a victory of their team. Here, the communication was not all straight one way: during the matches, the radio commentators from WDR 2 picked up opinions and comments from online users and responded to them.”
ARD isn’t the only radio or broadcast station working with ScribbleLive. Stephanie Miller hosts Current TV’s Talking Liberally show on weekdays, and each morning a live chat accompanies the show. It’s one of the most interactive chats we’ve seen, with new posts streaming in every few seconds throughout the 3-hour show. Bill Press is similarly taking advantage of the live chat tool for his early-morning Full Court Press show. CBC’s Radio Canada has also used a Recent Posts Widget to keep their audience tuned to up-to-the-second news.
In Greece, Radiobubble is using ScribbleLive as a cool, bilingual community reporting tool (the fact that it is all in Creative Common adds even more value to it!): everyday, they receive live updates from the hot streets of Athens in both Greek and English. The narrative of troublesome days (but also of ordinary days without protests, clashes or general strikes) gets therefore shaped by the smartphones of their radio listeners, who can then gather on the website to make sense of what is going on around them.
Integrating this with our new mapping feature enhances the whole concept of crowd-sourced reporting.
So, to sum up: liveblogging could give a real boost to your radio live shows. Here, in a nutshell, the opinion of Jan Eggers:
- Community: Viewers interact with other viewers during the show – the Twitter Scandal informants during the Euro Vision Song Contest is one example.
- Side channels: A [unique] stream of content with additional information, such as a ticker, often on Twitter, can be used simultaneously as a return channel, which is a social media audience editors – current example is the Twitter channel @sportschau_em12.
- Feedback: Viewers interact with the television producers and influence on the program – live and interactive, or even about reviews. How far can [that can go is] demonstrated by the “Round Show”.
- Social EPG: The viewer gets program recommendations from the interests of the community, distilling a personalized program guide.
