Audience Interactive Social Media Toolkit

The BBC currently relies on IMI Social to capture, route, and curate audience contributions from SMS, social media, and WhatsApp, integrating them into BBC production workflows. This enables various on-air applications, such as reading SMS messages on the radio, playing WhatsApp voice notes, and rendering audience data for on-screen graphics. The platform processes millions of messages each month across radio, podcasts, news, and TV. Audience contributions via social media and SMS are a vital editorial component of live radio and TV programmes, often shaping content in real-time. Approximately 4,000 BBC users rely on the system to receive, moderate, and publish around four million messages per month. To ensure continuity, the BBC is procuring a new web-based Social Audience Engagement Solution. A well-structured system will provide key benefits including compliance, auditability, and adherence to governance models. Without it, there is a risk of operational gaps and non-compliance, potentially disrupting editorial workflows and impacting regulatory assurance.