TEACHERS STORM TO VICTORY
Televoting triumph for S4C with "biggest ever" song competition
13 March 2009
A teacher and her former pupil won £10,000 in S4C's annual Cân i Gymru (Song For Wales) competition, in a televoting event that drew tens of thousands of votes within a 60 minute voting period. Once again, S4C production partners Avanti Media selected the STORM™ platform, operated by Content Guru, to host the phone vote and text interaction services.
The winning song, Gofidiau, (Sorrows) was written by Welsh teachers Elfed Morgan Morris from Deiniolen and Lowri Watcyn Roberts from Tregarth. Elfed is a former pupil of Lowri, who taught him Welsh at Brynrefail School near Caernarfon.
"STORM was the natural choice for us, having proved itself with last year's vote," said Jonathan Davies, Producer for Avanti Media. "This is a highly popular event that is fiercely contested by the supporters of each entrant and it is vital that the latform has the capacity and stability to ensure a visibly fair vote."
Cân i Gymru was established in 1969 to encourage songwriting hopefuls to create a new song in the Welsh language. 2009 saw the biggest ever entry, with more than 120 songs, from which eight finalists were selected.
"We operated a narrow voting window between the competition broadcast and the results programme," says Jonathan Davies. "STORM allowed us to manage the high spike in traffic, and to reassure viewers who called in too early or too late. They were played a message advising them that their vote would not count, but that they would not be charged."
STORM is co-owned by Content Guru and Cable&Wireless and offers 30,000 simultaneous channels, including the capability for 10,000 channels of VoIP. For Cân i Gymru, it offered a capacity for up to 200,000 calls per minute within the 60 minute voting period.
"The bigger the vote, the fairer and more representative it is," adds Jonathan Davies. "Ofcom's standards for the operation of votes of this kind are clear, and STORM gives us the ability to ensure that our events are fully compliant.
"In particular, if there are any concerns, it allows us to produce comprehensive reports that demonstrate clearly how the vote was conducted."
In the event, Gofidiau emerged a clear winner, with Gafael yn fy Llaw (Hold my Hand) by Tesni Jones and Ceri Bostock of Caernarfon in second place, winning £2,000. In third place were Merfyn Hughes of Dinas and Steve Pablo Jones of Caernarfon with their song, Fy Enaid Gyda Ti, (My Soul With You) winning £1,500. Their song was performed by Angharad Brinn.
Elfed Morgan Morris and Gofidiau will now represent Wales at this year’s Pan Celtic Festival to be held in the town of Donegal in Ireland in April.
For further information call +[44] (0)1344 852 350 or text Guru to 66663.
