#NBCFail - The audience wants a better product experience, but what they don’t seem to realize is that *they are* the product.
excellent recap by @farrahbostic on the collision betw. old&new media& the biz model issues. It’s a classic case of trying to change the engine while on clocking 120mph on the highway… Will prep a follow-on post asap.
The audience wants a better product experience, but what they don’t seem to realize is that *they are* the product. The customers for the IOC and NBC and Comcast are advertisers – those big brands who paid for exclusivity and fierce enforcement of that exclusivity, but don’t seem to be getting much credit. NBC and its cable provider parent Comcast paid $1.2 billion to the IOC for broadcast rights. No wonder they only permitted paid subscribers to MSNBC or CNBC to watch the livestream on nbcolympics.com; no wonder they interrupted the opening ceremonies to show commercials; no wonder the coverage of competition feels sub-par and strained. They have sponsors and advertisers to serve, and money to recoup.
The way they do that is promising brands aggregated audiences who are likely to see the advertising that occupies 16-18 minutes per hour of prime time American television. To make good on that promise, they do all they can to ensure we’ll be there when they said we would be – so they circle the wagons of content access. No truly free livestreams, no commercial-free or -limited broadcasts. If we could watch it for ‘free’ on the web, without commercials, whenever we felt like it, we wouldn’t need that $100+ cable subscription, and NBC wouldn’t be able to charge hundreds of thousands per half-minute to P&G or Coca-Cola or McDonald’s… and by extension, they wouldn’t be able to afford the IOC’s asking price.
