Text Santa

Thanks, In comparison Radio 2 raised that for Children in Need alone. Down 20% year on year is a lot.



Might be the problem, no appeal to viewers outside ITV's soap audience?

It works as a 3 hour show as it means less padding, no repeats, and none of Wogan's long links that never go anywhere.

It's a slick show because it will be made by the ITV Studios production team at The London Studios that have a lot of experience making live entertainment shows.

There was less and less experience of this at the BBC at TV Centre and now Elstree meaning Children in Need looked more tired and cobbled tigether as the years went on.

To be fair it is no different to Children in Need which is now a conveyer belt of BBC presenters and programmes, Strictly, Doctor Who, Midwife etc etc

My point is about audience appeal. Strictly/Midwife, Doctor Who and Eastenders all have 3 different types of audience profile . Corrie and Emmerdale are roughly watched by the same demographic.

Much of Comic Relief/CiN's money raised is via corporate sponsorship rather than viewer donations (The totals they run through the night are largely pre-planned and they know a rough grand total at the start of the show)

The concept of Text Santa is far better as a charity platform; the money goes straight to the charities, without the ridiculous admin costs that Children In Need has.

It's crazy how much superior TS feels as a production compared to the BBC's efforts. It feels like they've spent one hell of a lot more time organising the thing than Children in Need but I can imagine that has a lot to do with the fact that they've got a lot less time to fill as mentioned. Great graphics and studio as well.

Their use of background music during the presenter handovers (actually they only seemed to do this during the first one) kept the pace up and is one thing CIN should definitely adopt to make Wogan's non-jokes feel less endless.

One thing that didn't really work was the way they'd play Catchphrase and Ant vs Dec for money for Text Santa. Seemingly guaranteed money from ITV that was added to the end jackpot?

Not seen anything of tonight's show but The Chase was brilliant earlier, and actually feels like a Christmas special or charity special rather than just yet another celebrity edition.

Sorry but that's not true on both counts, 80% of C.I.N on the night total is from on the night donations and amounts the public raised. Only Corporate stuff announced on the night is from CIN partners. Both CIN and Relief double their totals of course in the months after unlike TS.Children in need has no admin costs and what it does have is offset from interest unlike the Text Santa charities!

Anyway neither explains the massive 20% year on year drop in donations for text santa. I imagine there are some unhappy heads at ITV tonight. As I pointed out above Radio 2 raised that alone for Children in Need this year.
Something clearly isn't working! Sad

Year on year drop? NO....................

2011 £4,200,000
2012 £5,500,000
2013 £4,187,686

Do you know what year on year drop means? By those numbers it's actually down 25% on last year.

Yes it means is always been dropping, but what I postage show its has gone up then down.

Straight forward 'on the night' donations (which is what Text Santa is all about) make up nowhere near 80% of the amount raised on a Children In Need/Comic Relief night.

"Children in Need has no admin costs and what it does have is offset from interest".... it either has admin costs or it doesn't? It does, and many feel these are excessive, irrelevant of whether covered by interest, considering they just issue grants to other charities which also have their own admin costs. Text Santa manages to do that with NO costs of its own.

And it's not a 'massive' 20% drop when you're only talking about 4 or 5 million. Text Santa will probably always float around the 4/5 million mark each year. It's so close to Christmas, it's never going to attract the big money the BBC charities do..

Ultimately, it was an entertaining show, really well thought out, and managed to raise some money for charity in a straight-forward manner. It's a brilliant thing for a commercial network to put together in the way ITV has.