Missed calls are most preferred voting system for TV reality shows: Survey

The survey delved into the voting habits of 2,500 reality show viewers in India.

According to a research conducted by Mobilox Innovations, a majority of respondents prefer using missed call voting system to vote for the contestants in reality shows. The survey delved into the voting habits of 2,500 reality show viewers to know how voters are adapting to the new process of missed call voting.

Mobilox used missed calls as a voting method in Zee TV's Dance India Dance and DID 'Lil Masters, Star Plus' Jo Jeeta Wohi Superstar, Nach Baliye and History Channel's Greatest Indian and Bollywood 100. The viewers of these TV shows were the respondents of the survey.

Respondents were asked whether they preferred missed call voting over SMS voting. Eighty six per cent of the voters supported missed call voting. Of the 86 per cent, 48 per cent of the people supported it since they found it easy, 37 per cent supported it since it was free and 8 per cent found it very convenient. However, 10 per cent people preferred SMS voting since they have a perception that they can also pass comments to their favourite participants.

When reality show viewers were asked how often they vote, 37 per cent of the 2,500 surveyed said that they vote regularly for their favourite contestants. About 30 per cent of the respondents vote every time just for the love of voting, while 21 per cent of the surveyed reality show viewers voted for the first time this year.

Further into the survey, the voters were asked whether they had ever participated in reality show voting but not through missed call. A whopping 66 per cent admitted that they had never used any other medium to register a vote, in comparison to 33 per cent who had experimented with SMS voting before.

Speaking about the objective and idea behind the survey, Abhijit Saxena, MD and CEO, Mobilox, says, "The simplicity and convenience of mobile tools like missed calls has been instrumental in reaching an audience of every kind and for a variety of reasons. Missed call voting per se cannot be generalized to reality shows but in fact finds tremendous utility in gathering quality public opinions. Missed call voting comes with a clear objective - to maximise brand-viewer engagement. That is what the survey tries to establish."

Commenting about the plans for this year, Vishwajeet Sukhija, director, innovations and marketing, Mobilox informs that this year, apart from entertainment channels, a lot of news channels will also use similar innovations, especially for taking opinion polls during elections.

According to Sukhija, in the past one year, there were five major implementations of missed call voting in the entertainment industry by Mobilox. During that, the company has managed a cumulative volume of more than 11 crore missed call votes.