NFL Network and Fremantle Earn Top Social Media Honors from 7th Annual Shorty Awards

By May 7, 2015

Burbank, Calif.May 7, 2015

Congratulations to RCS clients NFL Network and Fremantle! The Shorty Awards – an annual event honoring the people and organizations developing groundbreaking real-time, short form content for Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, YouTube, Instagram, Vine, and the social Web – recently named NFL Network’s Total Access Social Experience “Best Integration with Live Television,” and recognized season 13 of “American Idol” with an honorable mention in the category of “Best Data Visualization.” RCS is proud to have supported both projects, and couldn’t be more excited for our clients, who are making huge strides in the ways they interact with and engage fans via social media.

NFL’s “Total Access” offers fans social highlights and stories seven days a week via the show’s signature “Live Intro Wall,” a 7’X36’ video wall. Powered by an array of cutting-edge technology, the display culls real-time Tweets, Instagram pictures, Facebook posts and other social media data from the cloud, organizes the material and then populates it on-screen in a dynamic graphics layout, allowing social content to help drive storytelling. RCS worked with Creative Services on the designs, layouts and templates for the wall, and developed an innovative workflow to transform social media data into compelling graphics.

For season 13 of “American Idol,” Fremantle, Fox, Telescope and Facebook teamed up to bring fans an interactive social media experience unlike anything seen before in a broadcast. Using Facebook information from voters, the show displayed real-time voting results and Facebook voter avatars live on-air. The RCS team devised custom software and middleware to integrate with one of our Bullet mobile graphics systems, which read and processed the incoming social data and populated the information and imagery as graphics on screen in real-time.

We’re thrilled for both of our clients, and honored that they continue to leverage our solutions. We can’t wait to see what they dream up next. All of the honorees of will be celebrated on April 20, 2015 at a special ceremony in New York City’s TimesCenter. For more details about the Shorty Awards and these projects, check out these blog posts: 

American Idol Facebook Visualization

NFL Total Access Social Experience

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