How India's Favorite TV show uses data to change the world
Posted: Sun Aug 12, 2012 12:43 pm
....from http://gigaom.com/cloud/how-indias-favorite-tv-show-uses-data-to-change-the-world/
Every Sunday morning, millions of people in India tune in to watch Bollywood star Aamir Khan host one of the country?s highest-rated television shows, Satyamev Jayate.
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According to one of the show?s producers, the amount of engagement and the number of responses from viewers is ?completely unprecedented.? Here?s a sample of what we?re talking about, just 13 episodes into the show?s existence:
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All this feedback has an impact, both on the show itself and on India. Satyamev Jayate?s voting process, in particular, has yielded some impressive results. After the first episode about female feticide, or the selective abortion of female fetuses, 99.8 percent of viewers said they agreed with the idea of a fast-track court to prosecute doctors who perform such operations. When Khan presented the results to the Indian government, officials agreed almost immediately to amend the court system accordingly, the producer told me.
Every Sunday morning, millions of people in India tune in to watch Bollywood star Aamir Khan host one of the country?s highest-rated television shows, Satyamev Jayate.
........
According to one of the show?s producers, the amount of engagement and the number of responses from viewers is ?completely unprecedented.? Here?s a sample of what we?re talking about, just 13 episodes into the show?s existence:
400 million viewers on Indian television and across the world on YouTube.
More than 1.2 billion people have connected with Satyamev Jayate across its website, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and mobile devices.
More than 8 million people have contributed a total of more than 14 million responses to the show?s content via Facebook, web comments, text-message votes and a telephone hotline. More than 100,000 new people respond each week.
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All this feedback has an impact, both on the show itself and on India. Satyamev Jayate?s voting process, in particular, has yielded some impressive results. After the first episode about female feticide, or the selective abortion of female fetuses, 99.8 percent of viewers said they agreed with the idea of a fast-track court to prosecute doctors who perform such operations. When Khan presented the results to the Indian government, officials agreed almost immediately to amend the court system accordingly, the producer told me.