RSSNBC failed to leverage Web for Olympic video, say reports
By Ed Oswald | Published August 25, 2008, 12:21 PM
The TV network lagged behind competitor Yahoo in terms of traffic to its Olympic themed Web site, while its decision to limit Web video may have crippled online advertising revenue.
Although during the first three days of the Summer Olympic Games, NBCOlympics.com was able to hold onto the top spot, Yahoo's Olympic-themed site was able to beat NBC's since Day 4 in the race for Web eyeballs, according to Nielsen.
AOL also did well during the Games, and was the only other site to regularly average for than one million unique visitors per day. Rounding out the top five was Sports Illustrated and ESPN.
Typically, noon was the busiest hour for most sites, leading Nielsen to believe that during the workweek, Web users were using their lunch hour to stay up to date on the day's events.
About 1.5 million users per day visited NBC's online video site for the games, generally about a third of overall traffic. Some research firms, including eMarketer, say the network's decision to limit online video in the end may have actually cost it some revenue.
Based on video stream figures released by NBC, eMarketer estimated that the network made about $5.75 million in revenues during the Games. While it may sound like a healthy number, the potential was likely there to make a lot more.
For example, CBS' online presentation of the NCAA Basketball Tournament earned that network $23 million. Unlike NBC, games were streamed in their entirety from the Web site. NBC, on the other hand, chose to run clips instead.
EMarketer also fingered the network's decision to force users into downloading Microsoft Silverlight, pointing to studies which show it serves as a deterrent to many, it said.
"One might just award NBC's online presentation of the summer Olympics a bronze medal then," senior analyst David Hallerman quipped.
NBC is in a tail spin. GE better sell in a hurry or there management is going to reduce the value of NBC/Universal to 0. They are now putting game shows on Si Fi and cancelling the Si Fi Shows. The folks at NBC/Universal are....well morons. The networkds of NBC are in danger.
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CBS had excellent coverage of the NCAA Basketball Tournament. You were able to watch entire games in real time. I was one of the regular visitors to Yahoo!'s Olympic website and never once went to NBC as I wasn't downloading Silverlight, my computer already has Adobe Flash isn't that insult enough?!
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The Commercial Broadcasting Service had excellent coverage?
They're the people who interrupt the action to talk about "Big Brother" and let you watch the teams in time outs.
You must watch a different CBS.
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The TV coverage was decent, but basically the same as any other year. Throw in some human interest stories, focus on the USA and only show a few events of interest.
Why can't the networks dare to show Table Tennis or something different?
To be sure I didn't watch all the coverage so maybe they did show it, and I didn't go to the website either. I just didn't find anything compelling to watch aside from the swimming. Basketball didn't even seem to be in prime time.
There should have been highlights during the broadcast of things to find on-line but instead all I saw were little blurbs but no real info.
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NBC's coverage sucked.
They spent WAY too much time focusing on far too few events and attemting to create just a few stars (as they ignored other considerable accomplishments!)
But who can forget Bob Costes, when he had the rare moment to interview both Spitz and Phelps - instead of acknowledgment and treating Phelps' accomplishment as entering into an elite clique of individuals, instead repeatedly trying to bait both with his lame "but if you raced each other, who would win" adolescent speculation...why not wonder who would win if Carl Lewis swam against Phelps? What an @ss!
And how could you miss the ethnocentric coverage! Like we needed to listen to US cheerleaders...especially as we saw little of anyone else competing.
The irony is that most of NBC's affiliates now have multiple digital channels - and they could have multicast on all of them as well as making additional feeds available on demand online.
NBC - the 2008 Olympics covered with a 1960 mentality.
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Their repackaged TVTonic addon for Windows Media Center was pretty decent for on demand viewing of particular events.
Overall though, NBC's coverage was pretty bad. So much useless chatter and lame back stories while there was surely some kind of event going on that was far more entertaining.
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i like the tvtonic setup but most of the events didn't show up for a couple days after they were played. i think they dropped the ball hard on this one.
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Twice you say "limit Web video" or "limit online video", including in your big and important bold leading paragraph. Yet you fail to mention HOW it was limited.
Was the limit that NBC only showed some sports instead of all? Or they only showed things on a delay? Did they charge users to watch videos? Or they didn't show anything online that they showed on TV? Did they limit how many videos you could watch? How was it limited?
How about writing a complete article?
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Actually it did answer it by saying that requiring users to download Silverlight impacted it. Ok so it wasn't spelled out very clearly that was the reason, it was mentioned.
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How is downloading what is essentially a video codec a limit? You need to do the same to view Flash files, is that somehow limiting you? I don't imagine that is what Ed is actually talking about.
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Between using Silverlight, in beta on some machines, and unavailable to many machines, and using AT&T wireless, they just seemed to get it all wrong.
It seemed as if their goal was to show it to as few people as possible, so they wouldn't exceed their bandwidth goals.
Their choices lately seem arbitrary and I'd think that they'll be the first of the big broadcasters to go out of business entirely.
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It was definitely frustrating to even try to search for video clips on the NBC Olympic site. It would only allow you to search for a single category, and not say search for Swimming for USA, but only Swimming OR USA. I stopped bothering with the website after the first few days and just started recording all showings on TV to my TiVo to later fast forward through. Thanks for nothing NBC.
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You're not lying it was so much of a pain in the a** that by chance I saw that Yahoo's was little better. Commentator coverage on nbcolympics.com was poor.
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Smoke and mirrors. Never having bothered setting up a TV (impossible to watch US programming) I was really looking forward to the Olympic online assault. Ultimately I ended up setting up the TV receiver in my HTPC hooked up to the projector to get any decent live coverage.
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