London radio station LBC will rely heavily on text message interactivity to stay in touch with its listeners when it re-launches in January, despite questions over the stability of the UK's SMS networks, writes John Oates
London radio station LBC will rely heavily on text message interactivity to stay in touch with its listeners when it re-launches in January, despite questions over the stability of the UK's SMS networks, writes John Oates.

Only last week Endemol creative director Chris Short blamed shoddy infrastructure for holding back the development of interactive TV shows. He claimed producers were hamstrung because the technology was not up to the demands of live TV.

He said: 'If you're making live television for a mass audience then the UK infrastructure cannot cope.' Short believes the situation has forced producers to be 'economical with the truth' as to the impact of voting on shows.

David Bainbridge, client services manager at Whoosh, the company providing the technology to LBC, said: 'That's absolutely right - we've spent a year developing a solution to that very problem. We can process up to 3.5 million votes an hour - it's like the difference between a 56K modem and a leased line.' Bainbridge said DJs on the station would have real-time access to listener comments and polls through screens in the studio.

LBC interactive manager Abigail Taylor said: '[The network difficulties] are less of a problem for us because we're regional but the system we've installed with Whoosh means we can take on a far higher volume of messages per second than before.'

LBC will use SMS for a daily vote on an issue or news story and to collect listener comments.

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