Member News

X Factor final breaks UK telephone voting records

21 December 2009

The final of The X Factor this weekend saw UK telephone voting records smashed.

* The total of number of phone votes was the largest ever recorded for a final with over 10 million votes cast
* During Sunday’s show, over 219,000 votes were taken in a single minute, up 11% on the previous best
* The busiest second saw an incredible 3,801 votes cast, a 13% increase on the old record.

David Crawley, Creative Director at BT agilemedia, said “this is a fantastic achievement for everyone involved in the show. BT has invested significantly in the RIDE IVR platform over the last year, and this, combined with the extensive planning and on-the-night network management, has enabled us to support our customer in delivering this amazing result.”

Robert Marsh, Head of talkbackTHAMES digital who manage the telephony aspect of the programme, commented “the success of The X Factor once again proves the popularity of this type of format where the viewers at home get to decide the winner. It is essential that we can rely on the voting systems to handle massive volumes of calls and deliver accurate results very quickly. With BT, we know this will always be the case”

Edward Boddington, CEO of Harvest Media, the service provider responsible for managing the voting, added “within the high pressured environment of the production gallery, it is vital that we have a technology partner with both the solutions and the experience to support this type of high profile event. The BT RIDE platform is the only platform capable of supporting shows of this magnitude and has helped create another milestone in UK Broadcast history.”

About BT agilemedia
BT agilemedia is a communications and payments specialist division of BT Wholesale, based in London. We specialise in services that help consumers interact with high profile media events, charities, businesses and each other, via IVR, mobile and online channels. Our products are used to make interaction easy and commercial transactions simple. Organisations that use our services include all the main UK TV and radio broadcasters, Communications Service Providers, charities, dating companies, magazine and web publishers. For more information call 0800 731 3050.

About Harvest
Harvest Media Group is a participation company which specialises in voting in both the UK and the US. The group was formed in 2004 and consists of Harvest UK and Telescope Inc in the US. Harvest has worked on all series of The X Factor so far and also works on Britain’s Got Talent and American Idol. For more information see www.hmg.tv

About talkbackTHAMES
talkbackTHAMES is one of the UK's largest production companies providing award winning programming for all major terrestrial and digital channels. With an unparalleled range of programming spanning all genres - The X Factor, Britain’s Got Talent, to The Bill, Grand Designs, Property Ladder, Never Mind The Buzzcocks, The IT Crowd, QI, The Apprentice to Stephen Poliakoff’s award winning dramas - talkbackTHAMES has aired over 500 hours of programming on terrestrial TV in the past 12 months alone. talkbackTHAMES is the UK Production arm of FremantleMedia.