Archived 'niptuck' posts:
Member Spotlight: Scott Ryan “As Seen on TV”
Scott Ryan spends most of his time finding great speakers to present to the DRT or running his highly successful IT support business. But every once in a while he gets his feet wet in one of his other investments. September has been very exciting for his team known as Big in Japan. The month began with INC Magazine selecting the company’ marque product as the “best” in class (PodServe). Soon you will begin to hear how his product is taking Hollywood by storm.
The Big in Japan team has partnered with Rupert Murdoch’s FX Networks (owned by News Corporation) to build a customized platform based on the highly popular PodServe podcast system. The system combines a highly scableable ruby on rails application with a VoIP based phone system capable of handling more than 30,000 telephone connections.
This summer they began working with the producers of Nip/Tuck, the Golden Globe winning drama, on their community interaction efforts. The program is cables’ top-rates series with adults 18-49 with more than 2.6 million viewers. The first program consists of two fan generated podcasts. The first is titled the Nip/Tuck Fan Question Podcast. Where viewers can interview each member of the cast or crew. Each week five of the best questions are answered by the appropriate cast or crew member and then the content is posted to the system. The second is titled the Nip/Tuck Fan Comments Podcast. Each week the IVR system will prompt viewers to comment on various topics about the show.
The system consists of a white label version of PodServe using multiple load balanced DELL Poweredge servers to consume and organize recordings generated from Podcall using one or more Dell Poweredge servers running in series to generate dialtone, outbound calls, covert .wav and compress into .mp3 ready for iTunes. The tightly integrated system is known as the Fancast system. The servers are located in our state-of-the-art data center and network operations center. During programming our technicians watch the program on one screen, server and call statistics on another and errors on a thrid.
Starting this week FX will begin to promote the launch of the system using television advertising. Here is a screen shot of the section with the Fancast system, Kimber is waiting for your question, what are you waiting for? Call her!
Will it work? According to Arbitron/Edison Media Research more than 27 million Americans have listened to a podcast, half of whom are under 35 years old. Using the Fancast system, Nip/Tuck’s producers can empower their own community of 2.6 million viewers to deliver content via iTunes to more than 30 million iPod listeners. Converting just 2% of those iTunes users might deilver 600,000 viewers to the program. Additionally, FX has the option of inserting advertising into the consumer generated content as they moderate and process it allowing for additional marketing channels for their advertisers.
The Fancast system combining PodServe and Podcall into a single platform allows users to easily create recordings for inclusion within hosted podcasts. Podcall is a multiprotocol PBX on Linux that provides all of the features you would expect from a high-end PBX and more. Podcall supports voice over IP in many protocols, and interoperates with all standards-based telephone equipment. Podcall can serve as a gateway to PodServe for inbound, outbound telephone lins (POTs or IAX) as well as conference bridges. Features include: Automated Attendant, Blacklists, Call Detail Records, Call Forward on Busy, Call Forward on No Answer, Call Forward Variable, Call Monitoring, Call Recording, Call Retrieval, Conference Bridging, Fax Transmit and Receive, Interactive Voice Response, Predictive Dialer, Route by Caller ID, SMS Messaging, Spell / Say, Talk Detection, Text-to-Speech, Graphical Call Manager, Outbound Call Spooling, and TCP/IP Management Interface.
