Is Text-to-TV worth $1 a text?

Link: GigaOM : Text-To-TV: Worth A Buck? .
I was reading Katie Fehrenbacher’s article on GigaOM this evening about interactive TV. She finishes the article with a question:

The WSJ seems to be pretty bullish on the popularity of premium SMS for interactive TV. Naturally so is Telescope. Edward says ‘if it’s packaged in the right way, consumers will definitely pay that much,” he says.-What do you think? Would you be willing to pay a dollar to text TV?

No. $1 is the magic mark — the same with £1. Anything after a dollar or a pound requires some sort of potential return, even if the chances of winning are ultra slim.

Here in the UK, we think nothing of paying £0.50 (plus the cost of a standard rate text, so roughly £0.60ish in total) to vote for someone on Pop Idol or Big Brother. Over the course of a month, an excited, engaged viewer may well find themselves voting once or twice a week — and multiple times at that.

However, the bulk of TV text voting audiences is generally skewed to the younger age groups who generally have a razor sharp focus on cost. £1 to vote someone on or off Pop Idol is asking a lot. A significant amount. That’s 10 text messages to your friends. If you’ve £10 credit left on your handset, that’s a big deal.

I will be very surprised to hear of any mass market applications that require users to blow a pound a message. Fair enough for game shows or competitions — that’s a different cost-benefit-analysis.

For me — 50p or 50cents is the premium voting ceiling and will be for quite a while.