Background

In the spring of 2009, CNN produced a television broadcast titled America Votes during which time on-air viewers were asked to rate members of the US government on their efforts in the first 100 days of President Barack Obama’s administration. In support of this, CNN created a single question web polling object to collect data and push it to the on-air team during the broadcast.

While this effort was deemed a success, it birthed the desire for a stronger solution.

Task

CNN engaged Realtime Media with a request for building a brand-new dynamic polling system that built upon lessons learned and which integrated a host of new features in time for a television broadcast only weeks away coinciding with the 200 Day milestone of the Obama Administration.

Solution

After extensive consultation, RTM devised and built a system which incorporated core features and administrative controls that would augment and improve the user experience while at the same time equip CNN with precise control over content management and real time voting return data as only a premier broadcast news organization was accustomed.

Users on the web interacted with a dynamic Flash-based application that displayed the questions side-by-side with selected news stories, video clips, and infographics to help inform participants before casting their votes.  After casting their vote for a given question, a US map that graphed vote totals and grade breakdowns from across the country was displayed. Once the on-air team closed a question for voting, the web view revealed the national average to the web community just as it was being displayed live.

In addition, RTM added further augmentations which allowed CNN content creators the ability to deep-link to a specific question in the system from a related story elsewhere in the CNN website. This had a measurable impact on cross-pollination and overall traffic to the promotion.

Displaying information for voting on the web was only half of the task. The RTM solution orchestrated collection of data from SMS (text messaging from mobile devices) and IVR (Interactive Voice Response through phone calls) voting components as well; pushing realtime aggregate totals to the on-air team for display during the live broadcast.

Results

Realtime Media tabulated just under three million votes, with peaks of over 16,000 votes per minute during the live broadcast.  Turnaround for data transitions was measured below 40 seconds on average - a phenomenal feat- given the many opportunities for lag in such a complex system. The front end design was also featured on CNN’s famed “Magic Wall” to demonstrate how easy it was for viewers to weigh in.