Channel 9 interactive offer eyes ad dollars

Channel 9 is thought to be weighing up the pros and cons of interrupting its block of interactive services, which runs for five-and-a-half hours in the late morning and early afternoon during the week and for four hours on weekend mornings. "A lot of companies are asking for it," said Asim Qureshi, chief technology officer for WAP Portal, a sister company of Channel 9, which coordinates Mobile9 for the broadcaster. The segment already carries banner advertising. Mobile9's success had also prompted Channel 9 to look at extending its screen time to a post-midnight slot, Qureshi said. Channel 9 has been rolling out a range of interactive activities such as games, contests, polls and downloads on Mobile9, which has been attracting an average of 3,000 premium rate text messages per hour. The broadcaster shares the revenue from the text messages with WAP Portal, after the telcos take a 30 per cent cut. "SMS is a big thing now, it is a money-making platform," a Channel 9 spokesman remarked. One of the channel's latest applications has been to post MMS pictures of viewers up on screen then asking other viewers to vote for a winner using their mobile phones. Viewers will be able to chat with the winner live on TV. Channel 9's CEO, Encik Abdul Aziz Hamdan, said: "With the proliferation of mobile usage in Malaysia, we see the benefit in offering broadcasters new and innovative ways to use mobile as a means to attract and retain audiences." Malaysia's other broadcasters are also stepping up their interactive services. TV3 recently added multi-player SMS games based on football and motor racing to its chat-focused late night programming. Navonil Roy, general manager of TV3's creative marketing group, said that the growing importance of SMS as a revenue stream had prompted it to create a special team to identify new opportunities. "SMS is primarily used to build interactivity to our programmes and stickiness to the overall channel." The initiatives come in the wake of a storm over the legality of SMS contests in Malaysia. Practitioners fear that potential clients may avoid the medium rather risk controversy after the fatwa council decreed that SMS contents are a form of gambling and therefore contravene Islamic law.