MTV Media Finland launches social TV

The concept

In the autumn of 2012, egta’s Finnish member MTV Media launched a new channel, called AVA, designed to be a genuinely “Social TV Channel”.

To integrate social media networks into this channel, MTV Media partnered up with Orad, a provider of broadcast graphics solutions, and Astucemedia, a service data platform, to create a viewer-driven channel branding as promised in the tagline of the AVA channel: Let’s Create Together (Luodaan yhdessä).

Thanks to this new platform, MTV Media can now moderate and manage data for channel logos, headlines, uploaded pictures, tag lines, tweets, and likes with data from Twitter, Facebook, and other social media outlets.

AVA viewers participate in the channel’s Social TV broadcast experience and in creating the channel's visual image by submitting personal photos (which are featured in the channel's commercial break images and on the avatv.fi website), Twitter Tweets, Facebook Likes and posts in response to weekly themes. Viewers can, for example, deliver their own messages on-screen through the #avatv hashtag on Twitter.

Content is fully driven by viewers: Photographs are submitted in connection with weekly AVA themes, which have so far included 'My most wonderful shoes', 'My most impressive decoration element' or 'A moment in a dog's life'. Similarly, the channel's presenter was also chosen by the viewers.

In addition to other “created together” contributions that enrich AVA’s live broadcasts and website, viewers can design and submit original logos, comment on TV shows, share recipes and stories. Viewers also have the chance to create the weekly changing logos of the channel. Thousands of logo creations have been submitted to date.

Why does this matter for egta members?

One of the aims of these egtabites is to share ideas coming from successful broadcasters who are fully embracing the digital age. In these times of experimentation and of trials and errors, this project struck the team as particularly innovative. Indeed, it seems that this channel is one of a kind to allow viewers to really engage and decide what is going to be aired. It represents a strong opportunity for TV broadcasters to truly engage with their audience and learn what their desires are. In an area where the industry talks a lot about targeting, personalisation and engagement, AVA seems to be an ideal tool!