TalkBack on SimonTV

A New Feature

I’m convinced the secret sauce to SimonTV’s popularity is the audience participation. Viewers really seem to appreciate that their comments appear on screen and that the hosts and guests respond to them.

Philosophically I love this. I like that the traditional model of Producer versus Passive Consumer of broadcast television has been supplanted by a two-way interactive conversation between producers and consumers, and blurs the distinction between them. It’s participatory, in my opinion a two-way conversation is the way media ought to be.

So I’ve decided to extend the capability beyond text chat to audio-visual talkback. My previous attempt was cumbersome and I wasn’t very good at managing it so this time I’ve developed a version which is simple to use and for me to operate.

It really is simple. Connect to TALK.SimonTV.org on your device, select your camera, microphone and speakers if you need to and click the big green START button.

Hey presto! You’re in the SimonTV Green Room which is the off-air waiting area for guests. You can see and hear me, and I can see and hear you. The audience can’t though.

Once you’re ready I’ll pull you into the broadcast and you’ll be live on air with SimonTV, visible to the audience. Easy.

Two hours of The Floating Head is a lot (I’m better in soft lighting and small doses) so it will be nice to break it up a bit. My intention is to enable the talkback feature during those episodes where I don’t have a guest pre-arranged so other people get a chance to have their say.

It’s probably going to be pandemonium but I think it will be fun. We’ll see how it goes.

-SRA. Auckland, 16/i 2026.