Brighton-based digital media company Victoria Real has been working behind the scenes to make the latest series of Big Brother even more popular.
The company, which was involved in the two previous series of the reality TV show, has developed and managed the user interfaces for the web, interactive digital television and wireless communications, including texting.
Project manager Darren Prouty said: "The biggest change this time is the level of sophistication and we've taken out a lot of the bells and whistles to make things easier to get into."
The show is famous for its use of multimedia technology and the third series is the most interactive yet, offering fans the option to vote to evict housemates on mobile phones.
Audiences for the third series are up by 15 per cent, or 600,000 viewers, to an Records crash with 3.4m Big Brother votes average of 4.6 million per episode.
Live video streaming has helped digital channel E4 to claim an audience of almost ten per cent of 16 to 34-year-olds viewing in multi-channel homes.
More than six million votes have already been cast, with more than a million of these via text messages.
The web site has been averaging 3.2 million hits every day, peaking last month when one day recorded a almost 3.5 million hits.
Adele's eviction from the Big Brother house broke all previous records for the show as more people voted online or via SMS text message than ever before.
Of the 3,427,202 votes cast, 48 per cent were made by phone, 28 per cent texted and 24 per cent registered online.
Research by Informa Telecoms showed total revenues from Big Brother SMS voting alone was approaching the £1 million mark.
But the programme has also caused controversy by charging fans £9.95 a month to watch continuous footage of the house on the internet.
For the first two series, live video was free online but Channel 4 said the show's popularity had increased costs and forced them to charge for streaming.
Although news, video highlights, interactive games and polls are still available in a free section of the site, it is the first time Channel 4 has charged for online content.
There have been complaints the site's popularity made it difficult to access, while some fans have complained about problems with text voting, which costs 25p per message.
Despite these problems for web hosts Channel 4 and mmO2, which provides the texting service, Victoria Real claims the show has been a multimedia success.
Mr Prouty said charging for accessing certain resources online was becoming more popular.
He said: "More sites will start doing this because they won't be able to afford to give free access anymore, especially as the sites get more popular and require more resources."
Cross-platform development was becoming more important for companies.
Mr Prouty said: "These days, if you have a big site you can't afford not to make the information available on mobile phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and interactive TV.
"For the first time, the technology is at the point where it allows us to put information wherever people want it.
"A year ago if you put information on a PDA nobody saw it but it's different now."
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