Survivor deal excludes millions

Amy Vickers
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday May 22 2001 08.34 BST

Survivor

Millions of fans of ITV's summer sensation, Survivor, are to be left out of one of the company's biggest marketing wheezes - text messaging updates from the jungle.

The broadcaster has signed an exclusive deal with Vodafone, which means BT Cellnet, Orange and One to One customers will be unable to participate in what is expected to be one of the most popular spin-offs from the show, which started last night.

Last year Big Brother paved the way with an addictive text messaging service that updated mobile phone users twice a day on the movements of Nasty Nick, Melanie Hill or the ultimate winner Craig Phillips.

ITV is planning an even more sophisticated feed to Surivivor addicts with polls, quizzes, ring tones, logos and information on contestants.

Rival reality TV show Big Brother, which starts next week, is also planning a text messaging campaign.

However, its deal with BT Cellnet encompasses all UK mobile networks and includes premium priced services.

Cellnet's pre-pay premium Big Brother voucher will cost £4.99 and allow users of all networks to customise the type of messages they want to receive over a period of 28 days.

For instance, a subscriber could choose Menu A: seven text alerts a week; Menu B: two text alerts a week plus gossip and ringtones; or Menu C: one text message a week plus an icon and more in-depth information.

But in addition to the paid-for messages, Big Brother will send out several alerts for free to subscribers who have pre-registered at its website, Channel4.com/BigBrother.

Until now it was thought that the only way to charge for premium text messages would be to bill each user for each message received, something which Vodafone has so far been the only operator to launch in the UK.

Vodafone's average message cost will be 20p, although users will be told beforehand of how much they will cost.

Duncan Eaton, the marketing director at Carlton Interactive, who is running the service, said Carlton had made the right choice with Vodafone as it gave them access to the biggest share of the mobile population.

He also said Survivor would be offering a strong selection of mobile services.

Mobile pundits defended Vodafone's exclusivity, pointing out that the company is way ahead of the pack for providing ad-hoc premium services.

"Vodafone is right to make it a service only for their customers. It makes great content part of their package," said one text messaging expert.

Channel 4 remained bullish: "Survivor has already been filmed so there's only so much that can be done in terms of content," said a spokeswoman.

"Who knows what will happen with Big Brother, that's why SMS is so important to us, and it's important to get everyone involved and alert them to the live action."

The Cellnet text messaging services will be the first Channel 4 has done for Big Brother.

Last year, the Sun newspaper cottoned on to the idea of instant mobile message by rehashing Big Brother news from the website and sending it out to mobile users.

The newspaper declined to reveal how many users it signed up for this one-off service, or whether it had decided to repeat last year's unofficial service.

MediaGuardian.co.uk special reports
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