Media firms cry foul over their share of the SMS pie

NEWS UK media firms have hit out at the poor returns they are getting from operators and suppliers of SMS services. As revealed yesterday (see http://www.silicon.com/a55893 for more), 80 per cent of media companies have implemented SMS strategies - but few are happy with the share of the revenues they are getting. On average, broadcasters, publishers and websites running SMS services are seeing a revenue share of around 40 per cent, according to a Benchmark Research survey commissioned by Opera Telecom. While SMS has been a massive success, with 'text voting' taking over TV in particular, with programme formats such as Big Brother and Pop Idol, the media companies are concerned that they are merely lining the pockets of operators, for little return on their application and innovation. Gary Corbett, MD of Opera Telecom, said: "A large percentage of media companies are not getting a fair share of revenues from the SMS campaigns they are running. If this continues it will have a detrimental impact on the uptake of new services and will stunt the growth of the premium-rate mobile industry." In July, Channel 4 show Big Brother smashed all previous SMS records for a single event, with viewers casting 955,861 text votes the week housemate Adele was evicted. In total, mobile phone operator O2 processed more than 10 million SMS messages - charged at 25p each - during the series.