Influx

The next stage in the evolution of interactive television programming will feature characters that viewers create online.

The BBC show, called “Fightbox,” lets users make elaborate customized monster characters, complete with quirks and personalities, who then interact and fight online. If they do well enough, the characters make it onto the weekly television program.

An advantage of the BBC’s model is that when participants devote such a high level of time and energy into customizing their characters, it can yield a kind of loyalty and daily involvement that borders on addiction, as seen in the research about online role-playing games.
http://www.bbcfightbox.co.uk/index.php

MTV is testing its “MeJay” show in the Netherlands, in which users create video deejay characters online. They then record audio messages by telephone, introducing their favorite videos. A computer program syncs the characters lips so that the character is speaking with the viewer’s voice. The best and most original of all submitted viewer characters and deejay messages are broadcast between the videos during MTVs nightly MeJay show.
design a character
mejay business presentation
see their (Dutch) broadcast spot

The BBC and MTV programs create both the excitement of a contest and the social quality of a peer showcase. This level of creative participation in combination with social interaction has the potential to generate strong program/brand advocacy and loyalty. These interactive programming models also take into account the trend we’ve explored in our research on gamer media habits: namely that an increasing number of young internet users spend a great deal of time sculpting complex online identities or characters, and then once they are built, they seek forums where these identities are legitimized. This means an advantage for pieces of media or branded content that allow users to create and then bring their characters to life, to give the characters some validation outside of the internet.