As broadcasters and their participation TV partners continue to brace themselves for further fines and PR backlash related to call-in scandals, Eckoh and 2waytraffic, two of the links in that value chain, reported (respectively) an AGM and interim results, both citing the impact of the participation TV scandals:

-- Eckoh: The company which was fined £150,000 by premium line regulator Icstis for its role in the Richard & Judy You Say We Pay controversy says it is refocusing its business to concentrate on speech solutions. While the problems in the interactive TV market have hit the company’s revenues—most notably the now-defunct ITV (LSE: ITV) Play TV channel was perhaps Eckoh’s biggest client—it will not impact profits because that division actually operates on low margins. Eckoh is not moving out of the interactive marketing business altogether: “The investment Eckoh has made to become a ‘best practice’ supplier of IVR (interactive voice response) services has provided a clear opportunity to win new contracts on more beneficial terms going forward, as media owners place greatest importance on compliance, quality and service. Eckoh has also made clear its intention to renegotiate its existing client contracts in this area to either improve on the low margin that it currently obtains or to discontinue those contracts on which this cannot be achieved.” (Financials | Release).

-- 2waytraffic: The company seems to have been hit less hard by these problems. It reported turnover for the first half of the year grew by 341 percent to 39.5 million euros (£26.6 million) versus nine million euros (£6 million). The purchase of franchise rights to Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and rival company Celador largely fueled this increase. The mobile division nearly doubled its turnover to 6.8 million euros (£4.6 million) from 3.8 million euros (£2.5 million). “The first half has been impacted by the well publicised issues around participation TV in 2waytraffic’s European business. This has overshadowed some significant progress in our core businesses where there has been good organic growth across the group in the first half with all three divisions growing as we continue to implement our strategy of developing new convergent formats across multiple media platforms, selling our content in new markets as well as making and integrating acquisitions. The second half has started with trading in line with our revised expectations. In participation TV, we continue to develop our content in accordance with regulations on a territory by territory basis.” (Release | Financials).