Submitted by Mike Grenville on Mon, 19 Apr 2004 12:59

TV chat takes on a new life as viewers in Finland can interact with avatars on live TV in a virtual nightclub.

Double Life 2 has launched on SUB TV and will run on two Finnish TV channels (MTV3 and SUB TV) and on the web portal of SUB TV.

Viewers can participate with animated characters (avatars) in a TV program of completely virtual mís-en-scene night club called “Flame”.

Viewers can create a default avatar just by texting in during the show and can then go online to personalise it with over ten of million personalisation options.

SMS is used to send instructions to the the avatar to interact with and chat to other avatars.

“Double Life 2 is made for adult audiences, especially the females”, says Jan Hagelberg, the producer of the series.” Double Life is not a TV game, all interactions are designed with care not to push away inexperiend SMS-users. The emphasis is on flirting, but this part is not too aggressive”, according to Hagelberg.

What makes Double Life 2 different from any SMS-TV product is the live camera. The director of the show can choose where the best action is and take the “camera crew” right there with zooms and close ups of the participants.

“The SMS traffic is boosted by the director and we can make each show different depending on the users activities, time of the broadcast etc.”, continues Hagelberg.

The concept drives revenues after the show by the web, where the viewers can browse profile gallery and send one-to-one messages at anytime.

“Although brand new and in spite of the higher than average consumer pricing Double Life 2 seems to catch the audience with higher than average yield to TV channel. We expect to build a large community with loyal users, this of course will take some time. Once you have made the character it will be quicker to use it”, adds Hagelberg.

Discussions are in progress to license the product to TV companies in a number of other countries.

www.subtv.fi

www.saraxa.com