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Eckoh Gives Music Fans a Voice    12/11/04 Print E-mail
Eckoh Technologies has made the UK Music Hall of Fame the first mass-vote TV series where screaming at the telly really did make a difference.

For fans armed with phones, voting for their favourite rock and pop idols really was as simple as saying their name. The programme’s innovative iTV voting platform, which was capable of recognising individual artist names, made easy work of welcoming the likes of The Beatles, U2 and Robbie Williams into the UK Hall of Fame.

Eckoh, which provided the platform to programme makers Endemol, has revealed this is the first UK use of speech recognition for a series of mass-call shows in iTV. It is a step change in interactive voting, as viewers can call one premium rate number, rather then a range of numbers, and a single spoken word can trigger the vote.

Chief Operating Officer for Eckoh Technologies, Nik Philpot, comments: “This is a defining moment in the history of iTV. IVR-based interactivity has already proved hugely popular. ASR platforms like ours add further value and give greater scope for new initiatives.”

He adds: “Speech recognition provides a quick and easy one number solution, which really simplifies the on screen proposition.

“The technology recognises all UK accents and works equally effectively for a simple vote as well as more complicated recognition such as name and address capture.” Nik says: “Until now, speech recognition has been used predominantly in the corporate sector – however we believe the potential for iTV formats is enormous.”

Eckoh Technologies has made a significant investment in adding speech recognition to its call processing platform, and the company can handle over 5,000 simultaneous calls utilising the technology, allowing it to terminate over a million votes in an hour.

Nik says: “This means that TV producers looking to run mass call events can at last seriously consider using speech recognition, as we have the necessary capacity to handle the large spikes of calls that are produced.

“We are the only company in the UK to be able to offer this, and we believe that this significantly differentiates our offering in the competitive media market.”

UK Music Hall of Fame enabled viewers to honour the greatest musicians of the last five decades. A choice of 10 influential artists from each decade, chosen by a panel of industry experts, was featured each week. Viewers were then invited to vote for their favourites by calling Eckoh’s premium rate number (09011 331133) and simply ‘speaking’ their votes.

This latest collaboration with Channel Four features VISTA, Eckoh’s new web-based software package that allows broadcasters to track viewers ‘phone’, ‘red button’ and ‘web’ votes in real time.

Issued on behalf of Eckoh Technologies plc by TDM Marketing Associates
For further information, please contact:

TDM Marketing Associates
Rachel Conway / Simon Shrouder
Tel: 01625 575592
Fax: 01625 574313

Eckoh Technologies plc
Paul Parry
Tel: 08701 100 200
 
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