Soap Confidential: Unfolding the Drama

Drama and more drama! Soap Confidential is a new program designed to give ABC soap fans sneak preview information from their favorite characters through premium text messaging service. Fans who sign up for Soap Confidential will receive exclusive messages from ABC Daytime’s most popular characters – isn’t that so exciting?

Fans can sign up to receive messages from any or all three of ABC’s top Daytime soap operas – “All My Children,” “General Hospital” and “One Life to Live.” They will receive several messages weekly from ABC Daytime’s most popular characters, detailing their thoughts on unfolding events. For instance, “All My Children’s” Greenlee might preview whom she’ll be trying to romance next, or in the case of “General Hospital”, Sonny may share his innermost fears and desires.
“Creating meaningful ways of extending ABC’s soap franchise through new technologies is an important strategic priority for ABC,” quips Mr. Gersh, vice president of ABC Daytime’s Business Development. (Source: Hotproductnews.com)
For this initiative ABC Daytime will partner with Telenor, the first company to provide premium text messaging services in the United States. “Premium text message services have proven to be an incredibly effective method of increasing viewer loyalty by allowing them to directly communicate to characters with which they have developed an emotional attachment,” said Steiner Svalesen, CEO of Telenor Mobile Interactive. Text messaging services provide a portal for developing new marketing programs and revenue streams, he adds.

Let’s Get Down To Business…
TV stations can increase their viewership ratings and also maintain viewership loyalty by enhancing their viewers‘ experiences and truly connecting them with the TV characters. This will in turn translate to greater revenues from advertisements! And interactive, real-time services such as text messaging and sms polling are proving to be the next BIG thing for capturing the eyeballs of couch potatoes.
So if you intend to run a content provider (like MediaCorp and MediaWorks), you should provide such enhanced, premium interactive services. Besides soap operas, you might also want to open your options to include dramas and even synopsis of entertainment or variety programs. In fact, this concept can be extended to radio programs, movies, books, films…..

This cool business idea works; we’re sure you can’t wait to hear about the latest developments of the characters and silly things that Ross or Rachel has to say in F.R.I.E.N.D.S, right?
There’s money to be made too by being the provider of these services. With hand phone prices and subscription fees on the decline, many people would certainly sign up for interactive mobile text messaging! And you can then charge them for your services and make big bucks 😉
Related Ideas & Trends
http://www.hotproductnews.com/detail.htm?sku=12961&News_Categories=Entertainment
http://abc.go.com/daytime/soapconfidential
http://www.telenor-interactive.com/pressrelease/pr070404.asp