Text Santa

Is bitching about a charity event really necessary?

Exactly, the vast majority of Children in Need money will come from Non Uniform Days at school, Cake Sales at work and people rattling tins and doing a sponsored exercise bike ride in the supermarket. I doubt a great deal is people ringing in with a fresh donation on the night, no more than a third at the most.

I don't believe the first two figures are on the night totals - according to last year's thread, the 2012 total was "just over £5m".

Also, according to last year's thread, I actually watched the first hour or so of last year's show before being summoned out for a drink. This is the first year I've watched out of choice rather than it just being on.

Well in 2011 they didn't have any totals, and the amount raised was announced on This Morning on the following Monday.

In any case, that says to me that the "fall" is not as big as those figures would suggest.

Yea, like I said, it will probably hover around the 4/5 million mark each year unless corporate sponsorships increase.

One has to question it's future given last nights donation total. Still shocked by how low it was.
Perhaps a new approach is needed with less emphasis on soaps and downmarket game shows?There will be head scratching at ITV towers.

Nah I don't think we need to be questioning the future of the show at all.......Yeah the donations total was lower than last year but remember the show still raised millions for charity and in my opinion text santa was highly entertaining.

Why? Most programmes don't raise any money for charity but they are still recommissioned. This programme doesn't have different aims to any other programme on ITV[1]. It is there to attract advertisers. Like other programmes, it will be the viewing figures that Text Santa is judged on.



ITV[1] are all about soaps and [downmarket] game shows. What do you suggest they do next year? A News at Ten Text Santa Special?

It does seem a shame that they spent so much time promoting it and have a massive show dedicated to it and in the end each of the six charities will take home less than one million each. I can imagine ITV's various celebrity specials probably raised about the same amount over the course of the year without ITV having invest half as much money.

Still some less well known charities got some big exposure last night which will hopefully translate into more donations for them.

I find it quite bizarre that so many people are talking about how poorly this event did, mostly because of comparisons with Children in Need.

Children in Need is a totally different concept, centering on public involvement and fundraising for a common cause. Itv really haven't pushed any public involvement because it's not what they are trying to do - if it was, they'd have allocated time in the show to report on what was going on around the country.

Text Santa is a show to encourage people to give over the night and it was very successful in doing that. As has been mentioned in this thread, itv went beyond Children in Need in terms of production to create an extravaganza that encouraged people to donate over £4million in four hours.
That's £4million that leading up to Christmas would have been idling in people's current accounts or wasted on Christmas indulgence, only encouraged by some entertainment on tv - no sitting in baths of beans or growing/shaving beards.

A success? Totally!

I don't think there will be any head scratching at ITV Towers. The point of Text Santa is to make an entertaining show that gives several charities a lot of exposure that they wouldn't normally get at this time of year, whilst also getting viewers involved by raising money.

Children In Need gets about 10 million viewers and has about £8 million in viewer donations over a six hour period. Text Santa got 5 million viewers and had about £3.5 million (taking out corporate support) over a three hour period.

The VTs were not too harrowing, what with it being the season to be jolly, and the hosts were not too pushy in terms of getting donations, there was more in the way of promotion for the individual charities and what they do.

Plus it was the highest rating programme in its slot on what is generally a low rating night (due to Christmas parties) and #textsanta was the top trending topic all night.

Christmas is a very difficult time to run a telethon, and I think ITV have got it right. It's more like a live entertainment show with an option to text to donate, rather than a hard-sell telethon.