Over the past several years television broadcasters have been faced with the challenge to supply new forms of content offering more diverse and interactive programming that their viewers demand. During this same period, broadcasters have had to compete for viewer attention with the growing number of community spaces on the Internet, including simple blogging sites and rich media sites such as MySpace and YouTube.

In order to retain viewer interest, broadcasters have increased their use of User Generated Content (UGC) and viewer participation formats. SMS, MMS and e-mail have all been used in many different ways to incorporate UGC and viewer interactivity in television shows. However, the growing appetite for UGC, interactivity, participation and communities has created many challenges for the media industry. The ability to receive various types of UGC, traditional ‘phone-in’ callers, and now the potential for new ‘video phone-in’ callers, can quickly become overwhelming for any broadcaster.

Acquiring the desired content, however, is only half the battle. Once the user content and lists of interactive participants are identified, there emerges another problem – how to manage and effectively incorporate this content into a broadcast? Furthermore, media companies have both a professional responsibility and regulatory obligation to mediate the content they publish in an acceptable manner.

Despite the market’s desire for UGC and interactive participation, both from consumers and media companies, several technical challenges exist. Providing live and recorded UGC for TV broadcasts requires the efficient management of content – retrieval, screening, classifying, storage and searching – together with the means to easily moderate the content and make it available for live TV broadcasts.

iPoint-media's goliveTV is the world’s first solution to address the needs of broadcasters and media companies to efficiently and effectively offer new, live and moderated participation TV solutions and user generated content services.