Carte Blanche celebrates birthday with requests

At the start of the broadcast, anchor Derek Watts will announce that viewers need to visit the Facebook page to choose which story goes out next and in what order. There will be more than four stories to choose from too, which means some of them will not go out.

"In a sense we're allowing our audience to act as gatekeepers by letting them decide which stories go out on the night and, by encouraging the audience to suggest scripted links, we're putting some editorial power in the viewers' hands," says executive producer, George Mazarakis.

The Carte Blanche team will allow viewers the opportunity to participate in writing the studio script via Twitter and Facebook - telling Derek what to say.

Testing new format

According to Peter Griffiths, the programme's interactive editor, "The campaign is a good space to test new programming formats, while experimenting with better ways to involve our viewers. It is a bit of fun too - it'll be interesting to see if Derek can keep up with a constantly changing autocue on live television."

M-Net's publicity manager, Lani Lombard agrees: "Efforts to find ways to purposefully integrate current and future social media trends into the programme could take viewer interactivity to a new level. The station is constantly exploring social media opportunities and we encourage strong brands such as this to pave the way into this exciting and engaging new public space."