Earlier this week The Guardian reported that one of the judges on the BBC's new talent show, 'The Voice' had been "given a ticking off by BBC bosses after being caught using his mobile phone during Saturday's first live show". Yes, apparently Will.I.Am had been tweeting while he was on-air and this was a definite no-no.

Two things occurred to me when I read this:

1. That the BBC isn't always down with the kids. Last year I interviewed Asha Oberoi, the Managing Director of ITN Source, who told me that when she worked at the corporation in the early Noughties and was urging her colleagues to add more video to the BBC News website she was rebuffed by a senior figure who said that "the only thing broadband would do for the internet was make the delivery of text faster!"
    
2. That Tony Wang, the UK General Manager of Twitter, must be rolling his eyes and trying not to sigh. Why? Because Wang recently explained how broadcasters can use Twitter to increase audience share and help viewers to engage and participate with programmes. Of the three strategies he outlined, Wang suggested that an 'organised' approach - which included having the talent (programme presenters) live-tweeting from a show - may lead to a significant rise in viewing numbers.

Further, Wang said that using an 'artful' approach - where viewers get to see an entirely different perspective from a television programme - may lead to even greater engagement. As an example, he showed us footage filmed by actor James Franco who co-hosted the Oscars in 2010. Franco recorded - and later tweeted - the scene as he saw it on his iPhone while walking on to the Oscars stage for the first time. You can check it out below - scroll over the big black box - the good stuff happens after the 25 second mark.

Okay, so the initial conclusion is that the BBC may have missed a trick on this occasion. But let's look at the power of social networks a little more and what they can do for broadcasters both in terms of live audiences and VOD playback. Four observations:

#1. Frequency & Reach: The Voice vs. Britain's Got Talent

The media has loved this contest over the past few weeks writing stories about who has the best talent, who has best judges and, of course, which programme is winning the ratings wars. Until last week The Voice was just ahead with, on average, 10 million viewers against BGT's 9.3 million. Then, last Saturday, BGT registered a peak of 9.9 million whereas The Voice dipped to 9.3 million viewers.

Has the novelty value of The Voice tailed off? More importantly, how are the two shows appealing to social media? I watched the first 25 minutes of both on catch-up (via iPlayer and ITV Player) and found that:

• The Voice made two references to social media. The first was a simple caption for the Twitter hashtag #thevoiceuk. The second, rather more innovatively, involved one of the presenters doing a piece whilst standing in front of a video wall which showed live tweets as they were coming in.  

• In the same time-frame, Britain's Got Talent was even more active. Within the opening titles alone, BGT had cited its own hashtag (#BGT), its online VOD channel (itv.com/talent) and its Twitter handle (@gottalent) via a screenshot. For many individual acts, BGT also mentioned specific hashtags like #labamba and #classact and, at the first commercial break, ITV flagged up its mobile app.

Now here's the really interesting bit: Britain's Got Talent is way ahead in terms of Facebook 'likes' with 2.2 million versus The Voice's 107,000. In mitigation, BGT has been running for six years and launched its Facebook page in 2008; The Voice is only in its first season and went live on Facebook in August 2011.

But on Twitter, the gap is much, much closer. Here, BGT has 181,000 followers compared to The Voice's 146,000 followers.

What's going on? Is Britain's Got Talent diluting its social media messaging by presenting too many URLs, @handles and hashtags? Is there a demographic / service-related bias (BGT fans like Facebook, The Voice fans like Twitter)? This isn't just an academic exercise and here's why…

#2. Bigger Picture: The Value of Video-on-Demand

Talking to a senior source that used to work in the ITV sales team this week I learnt that Britain's Got Talent makes up to £570 CPM per full VOD playback. Assuming that figure is accurate, and that all ad spots within the playback are sold (and viewed) at this rate, we can make some rudimentary calculations:

• 1,000 VOD views = £570 revenue;
• 10,000 VOD views = £5,700 revenue;
• 100,000 VOD views = £57,000 revenue;
• 1 million VOD views = £570,000 revenue.

With 2.2 million 'likes' on Facebook, how many BGT devotees can ITV persuade to watch the show again on-demand? Clearly, for broadcasters there's a big potential upside to having a well thought out social media strategy.

#3. Using Talent to engage Audiences: Doctor Who

Since 2010 the actress Karen Gillan has played the part of Amy Pond, the Doctor's loyal sidekick on Doctor Who. Gillan joined Twitter on April 12 this year. Within 24 hours she had 50,000 followers. Today, less than a month later, she has over 87,000 followers.

Lessons: fans like to hear from their idols (duh!) and that all broadcasters have multiple conduits - via their performers - with which to address audiences. The real question is how they choose to use these channels. 

#4. Social Media in Advertising: Prometheus

Last Sunday was special in that, for the first time on British TV, a television advert incorporated live tweets. Channel 4 broadcast the new trailer of Ridley Scott's movie, Prometheus, during the first ad break of the drama 'Homeland'. Viewers were then invited to share their thoughts on Twitter using the hashtag #areyouseeingthis. Finally, some of those tweets were featured in a follow-up ad during the second commercial break.

So how did it do? Twitter reported that almost 25,000 tweets used the related hashtag on the night and since the stated aim, according to the movie's media agency, Vizeum, was to amplify "the anticipation and conversation that has already started for Prometheus" the ad campaign seems to have worked.

Incidentally, Homeland got a viewing audience of 2.3 million viewers that evening - not including PVR - so we can calculate that approximately 1 in 90 of the audience engaged with Twitter. That's pretty impressive.

As Jonathan Allan, Channel 4 Sales Director, said this week, "genuine engagement can be achieved through a powerful combination of TV and social thinking."