Transit TV adds poll-based trivia to screens

October 1, 2008 by Dave Haynes

I very happily work most days from home in my armed mountaintop compound, protected by soulless child ninja warriors, so I don’t ride buses.

If I did, I would probably be much happier to watch a screen than spend 40 minutes trying to determine whether the mole on the back of some guy’s neck looked more like Wolf Blitzer or an angry dog.

So the whole Transit TV thing, as run curiously by the Toronto Star newspaper’s parent company, makes a lot of sense to me.

They run an hour of programming, and keep it different from morning rush to evening ride home, in the markets where the screens are installed and operating. Most of it is repurposed broadcast, and the company sells on the notion that there are no ad-skipping DVRs on the bus.

Now they have added poll-based trivia, from a company called BuzzDash. The press release is just about anything BUT clear on what’s actually going, but the content concept is solid enough.

Nearly 11 million weekly viewers in five metropolitan areas will now get a daily dose of poll-based trivia. Social polling forum BuzzDash has developed a trivia game especially for out-of-home network Transit TV.

Facts

• The game features several questions taken from live polls on BuzzDash
• Questions are selected from BuzzDash’s many categories, including news & politics polls, entertainment polls, sports polls, relationship polls and technology polls
• BuzzDash’s segment runs hourly from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. and twice an hour from 2 p.m. to 10 p.m.
• Transit TV airs in Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Milwaukee and Orlando

Quotes from David Gerken, CEO & Founder, BuzzDash.com

• “Transit TV is the perfect way for us to stay connected with our audience when they are commuting and away from their computers”
• “Everyone has an innate desire to know what other people think about what’s going on around us. This game gives commuters a fun way to keep their finger on the pulse of the nation”

Quotes from Jeff Hartlieb, Director of Content & Production, Transit TV

• “BuzzDash and the Daily Buzz is a great media fit as it provides our riders with daily popular opinions ranging from movies to philosophy”
• “Transit TV caters to young, media-savvy people. The partnership with BuzzDash is a great new way to entertain and inform by mixing social networking with popular opinion”
• “We’re proud to be at the cutting edge of this new genre”

I have read this thing several times now and looked online, and I don’t see where a “game” comes in. I was thinking people were maybe able to SMS their response to poll questions, but it really does look like this is just a roll-up of some of the more quirky polls, packaged up for the bus broadcast.

Still, I’m thinking a lot of tired and yawning people would rather read about some screwball poll than about another IED blast in Iraq or yet more affirmation that Sarah Palin has about as much grasp on global affairs as my spaniel.