Producers:
Touchdown TV
Major Sponsor:
Vodafone
TV Network:
TV2
Spot:
7:30 to 7:30 Tuesday

This is a brief summary of two recent productions we have done, an ongoing weekly music productio, plus a summary of the new promotion, which will roll out next month.

Finding JSmith is a reality show with a real time live component. Similar to The Great Race contestants have to travel from place to place, the goal is to locate specific people called J. smith. The proof of reaching a J Smith by taking a snapshot using a phone camera and e-mailing back to the studio and/or a voice recording from the J Smith made on the phone and e-mailed back.

Each team has a team leader “controller” in the studio. The team have Vodafone Live! Mobile phones (hence the sponsorship), the controller has access to the internet, so can guide over the phone. There are various way the teams earn prize money during the week, by completing tasks.

Viewer Interaction happens in five ways:

1. Mystery PXT. A photograph is taken is a mystery location with a mystery person (semi –obscured in the photo). The teams have access to the photo, which is also shown in ad spots during the week. The viewers engage by sending an SMS with their answer (what is the location). The teams have to find the location and then find the J Smith at this place at the time the programme starts. If they miss the rendezvous they lose their prize money. This goes into a bonus pool for a lucky viewer who got the location correct. The winner is chosen and contacted at the start of the programme introducing a live draw component.
   
   
2. Beat the controller: 30 minutes before the show the viewers are invited to enter a competition, by sending a KeyWord. The lucky winner is drawn and called ‘live’ to play against one of the team’s Controllers. It’s a trivia question format, with some questions about the locations and some about the show itself. If the viewer beats the controller they win. The prize pool is distributed from the teams to the viewer.
   
   
3. Trivia questions: This also requires playing a controller, but the entire audience can enter. There are a series of questions. The viewers have to wait till the end of the questions and send a string of answers e.g. DCAAD. All correct entries are collected (i.e the whole string is as good as or better than the controller), winners drawn and then announced just after the end of the programme.
   
   
4. Vote on players: As part of the format players could be replaced by the teams. Viewers could enter to become a replacement player. This was done through the www.nzooom.co.nz web-site. Then a vote was done during the live show to vote-on the new player.
   
   
5. Watch and Win: Towards the end of the series, watch and win was introduced to distribute the remaining prize money. Viewers simply sent an answer A B C . Three winners were drawn and they picked up the remaining prize money live – about $30,000

Summary:

Finding Jsmith was notable for several reasons:

1. The use of multiple overlapping interactive mechanisms
   
2. The requirements to draw winner and get them or their names to air in real-time
   
3. High burst volumes - The final Watch and Win produced quite high volumes (e.g. 100,000 messages received processed and responded to in 10 minutes). This meant planning with the mobile operators to avoid clashing with other events.

The use of multiple overlapping interactive mechanisms & requirements to draw winner and get them or their names to air in real-time.