Commentary: NBC’s Olympic Coverage Marks Major Victory for Streaming Media
To accommodate even the relatively small percentage of total Olympic events aired on TV, NBC’s coverage had to be spread across a half dozen channels, including MSNBC and USA. But it wasn’t as if all these channels aired their Olympics coverage simultaneously, so casual fans of the Olympics who may not be interested enough in a single sport to wade through the channels and schedules could easily be left in the dark, not realizing that their favorite event was, indeed, televised, just not on NBC itself.
The need for a more centralized location to find Olympics coverage became especially apparent on the first Sunday, when NBC preempted its Olympics coverage in order to air the Daytona 500. And the decision of when to broadcast the games on NBC seemed somewhat surreal when, on the first Saturday at noon, viewers were treated to an hour-long infomercial instead of Olympic coverage.
NBC’s on-air coverage also suffered from the demands of trying to accommodate what is essentially a collection of niche audiences through the use of the mass-market broadcast medium. Its efforts to do this resulted in odd collections of primetime coverage that bounced from events that draw younger audiences, like snowboard cross, to those that skew older, like figure skating.
Additionally, the huge delay in on-air coverage from when the event actually happened was only made more obvious by the instantaneous nature of the Internet. This was never more apparent than during the women’s figure skating finals when, on Feb. 23 between 4 and 5 p.m. EST, NBCOlympics.com brought in 5.5 million viewers as surfers sought updates on the competition as it was happening in Italy. Yet, NBC’s on-air viewers weren’t able to witness that event until after 11 p.m., EST that night.
Improving and Expanding for Tomorrow
While NBCOlympics.com only included coverage of the most popular individual events, NBC’s online coverage achieved a significant milestone by offering a live stream of the gold medal men’s hockey game on Sunday, Feb. 26. Since it aired at 8 a.m. on a Sunday morning, it’s unlikely that event drew an audience on the scale of say Live8 this past summer, but it does speak to a welcome shift in NBC’s attitude towards online video. (NBC hasn’t released viewership numbers for the game.)
The hope is that with the success of this year’s online Olympics portal, NBC will continue to expand its online coverage of the Olympics for the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing. Even if it doesn’t choose to offer all of its on-air footage online in order to protect its more established asset, there are still thousands of hours of competition that never make it on-air but which often have fiercely loyal audiences starving for a way to watch their favorite sports.
The opportunity exists for NBC to monetize that unused footage and drive significant revenue through its online portal. With the sharp increase in online ad dollars over the last year, streaming has now entered a place where the more you stream, the more you earn, assuming a successful ad model is in place. At the same time, with an event like the Olympics, there are myriad possibilities for offering pay-per-view or subscription content that takes advantage of niche audiences and the relative dearth of available content online. The question shouldn’t be "Is online stealing dollars from on-air?" It should be, "How do we take full advantage of everything online has to offer in order to generate additional revenue that’s not even possible or available through on-air broadcasting? "
With this year’s online coverage of the Olympics, NBC seems to be beginning to see the light, slowly but surely. It’ll be interesting to see how far they’re willing to push the envelope the next time around when the Summer Games begin in 2008.