Winner special contest

The lucky winner of last month's special contest has been determined. Congratulations Jeske Bleeker! You win a film voucher of 10 Euros, redeemable at every movie theater in The Netherlands. Congratulations!

#Winning

The interaction with viewers and fans via Social Media is booming buisiness in TV-land. Especially talent shows like The Winner Is make use of Facebook, Hyves and Twitter to enable viewers to feel connected to the show and the contestants.

The nation's ice skating pride Sven Kramer must have liked this concept. He held a contest via his Facebook and Twitter accounts. His fans were asked to predict Kramers 5km time at the World Distance Championships in Thialf, Heerenveen. An awesome reward was reserved for the winners, something worth winning for any single one of Sven Kramers fans: A real Sven Kramer skating suit! The winner on Facebook wins a TVM suit, while the Twitter winner receives a KPN suit.

Special contest: Win a film voucher

To celebrate our two month anniversary, Social Media TV is organizing a special competition. The price? A film voucher of 10 Euros, redeemable at every movie theater in The Netherlands! You can enter the competition by answering the following 9 questions. The answers can be found in the blogs we have posted up until now.

1. What was the title of the first blogpost on this site?
2. Name 2 programs that participated in the RTL-Tweetweek.
3. What was the name of the girl that Noel Deelen was looking for in the Valentine’s Day episode of RamBam?
4. When will Tenacious D’s new album be released?
5. Which local TV-Station was responsible for Fijnfisjenie during Carnaval?
6. What type of sandwich did Chuck fans buy at Subway during the show’s second season finale?
7. What was the name of the film that Woody Harrelson tried to plug on Reddit?
8. Which television channel created the official Tumblr-pages for Doctor Who and Top Gear?
9. Name 1 hashtag that fans on Twitter used in order to save Community. 

Send your answers to uvtbit@gmail.com, along with your name, address and postal code. The contest ends at April 12, so make sure you've submitted your answers by then. The winner will be announced in the following week. Good luck!

Tenacious D (aka The Greatest Rock Band in the World) returns with a new mini-movie

No, this is not just a Tribute. The D is back. Six years after the cult rock comedy The Pick of Destiny hit the theaters, Jack Black and Kyle Gass are releasing a new album, called Rize of the Fenix, in May. And to promote it, they released a six-minute-long mini-movie on Youtube, obviously hoping that the powers of social media make it a viral success.

Subway: Savior of tv-shows?

In recent years it has become difficult to watch television without seeing a certain brand pop up somewhere. Product placement is a much used marketing technique since the ‘90s, and television functions as a perfect medium for it. Not only because every new episode provides new possibilities for product placement, but also because television shows are practically always looking for ways to expand their limited production budgets. But some companies go further than a mere casual shot of their product. They get incorporated into the show itself.

The brand that is most notable for this kind of advertising is Subway. The restaurant franchise was a pretty big sponsor of the beloved but criminally low-rated series Chuck, so their sandwiches appeared frequently, as you might expect. What’s more unusual is that the Subway slogan was actually mentioned by the characters. This is a pretty big commitment on the part of the Chuck production team, since too obvious product placement might alienate viewers. In this case however, it proved to be hugely successful, for Subway as well as Chuck.

Community returns: A social media success

The wait is almost over. March 15 marks the return of the beloved sitcom Community, aka the show with that extremely passionate fanbase. It had been put on indefinite hiatus back in November, so the last few months have been excrutiatingly painful for the loyal fans. But there worries have turned into joy, as NBC will start airing episodes come tomorrow. We like to think the various social media campaigns to save Community from cancellation played at least a small part in that.

Tumblr: Passionate about television

When you’re a big fan of a tv-show, it is very easy to become obsessed with it. When combined with designing skills this can lead to all kinds of awesome fan art. Take this incredible Game of Thrones fan poster for example. Tumblr is a site that largely thrives on these graphics made by passionate fandoms.

Tumblr is a microblogging platform where people can post (self-generated) content, or reblog things they see on other blogs. Usually these things are graphics of some kind, animated gif’s mostly. Users can follow blogs, which causes its content to appear directly on their dashboard. When following enough blogs, this makes for a fast, continuous stream of new images.

RTL4 launches the social media experiment Tweetweek

Ever wanted to take a sneak peek behind the curtains of your favorite show? Well, this week might be your chance. Today Dutch television station RTL4 is starting a big social media campaign called RTL Tweetweek.

 

From the 25^th of February to the the 2^nd of March, numerous RTL-celebs will be posting exclusive behind the scenes info on Twitter during their shows. Notable shows include: 'Ik Hou van Holland', 'GTST', 'Life4You', 'RTL Boulevard', 'RTL Nieuws' and many more. Every day you can see which programs are participating on the special website www.rtltweetweek.nl. But the content doesn’t stop there, RTL Tweetweek gives you more.

A great party, no?

Today is the first day after five days of festivities in Noord-Brabant. Most of the youngsters and adults alike will have great memories of these days, and the ones who really got the party going might have no memories of what they did at all.

No matter if you do or don't remember what you did during Carnival, luckily there is Fijnfisjenie. Fijnfisjenie is dialect which means as much as "It's a good party". Fijnfisjenie is broadcasted by the regional tv station OmroepBrabant, and features the most beautiful processions, the best comedy and of course carnival music, all mixed into one show. The show can be seen online here. That's all very nice of course, but what does it have to do with your own experiences during Carnival?

RamBam uses social media in a quest for love

Today is Valentine’s Day, the international day of love. Cynics may call it a carnival of commerce, but the fact remains that it can be a great theme for television (or blogs for that matter). The Dutch investigative journalism program RamBam thankfully exploited this fact during last night’s episode.

Every week VARA's RamBam investigates topics that seem fishy and tackles them in a ‘creative and humorous way’. Yesterday’s installment showed their search for Nanda, a girl that their reporter Noel Deelen had met via the dating website www.frunniken.nl. After days of sms-contact they arranged a meeting, for which Nanda failed to show up. This led Noel to jump to the most logical conclusion available: something terrible had happened to the love of his life, which prevented her from meeting him. He started searching for her in her (so-called) hometown, and even contacted the owner of the website, but all to no avail. And that’s when social media came into play.

Woody Harrelson’s reddit fail: Marketing gone wrong

One of most important things about marketing things on social media, is trying to make it as natural as possible. When it feels too forced, it might have the opposite effect of what you’re trying to achieve. Case in point: Woody Harrelson’s AMA (an abbreviation of Ask Me Anything) on the social news website Reddit.


Doing an AMA isn’t necessarily a bad move. Giving people the opportunity to ask a celebrity anything can be a great way to spark excitement for a future project. If it goes well, that is. Apparently, Harrelson’s PR department forgot the definition of “anything”, which is why Harrelson ended up frustrated when his attempts to plug his next movie Rampart fell on deaf ears. Because, can you imagine that people want to talk about other things besides Rampart? Geez!

The virtual water cooler

Television programming is big business. Every year, networks around the globe spend millions of dollars on the production of tv-shows. For example, the pilot of Pan Am cost ABC an estimated 10 million dollars, and that is just for the first episode. They don’t do this because they are the television equivalent of Paris Hilton and find the spending of money oddly satisfying.  No, they expect to make big bucks through commercial breaks. Companies are willing to pay vast amounts of money to have their advertisement air during a hit tv-show. 

Not every developed pilot becomes an instant success however, and networks have to promote the show in order to reel in the viewers, and the money that comes with them.  Their goal is to generate positive ‘buzz’. This is a phenomenon where people talk about the show to other people, creating word-of-mouth marketing. 

Back in the day this used to happen  at the water cooler in one’s workplace. A wonderful place it was, this water cooler. It gave people the opportunity to take a break and share stories about their lives and interest with their colleagues, before having to return to the dullness of their work. But nowadays there are social media, where people can talk about their interests to their heart’s content. In a way, social media act as a virtual water cooler. Sites like twitter, facebook, reddit and so forth, can create the positive buzz that networks crave.

This blog will focus on the opportunities that social media provide for the world of television. We believe it is an upcoming phenomenon that will be employed more and more often in the future. On this blog you will find information about the different types of social media, in what way they can influence the world of television and how they are used.