There is a growing trend of large sporting events to be broadcast for free over the Internet as a compliment to the regular television broadcast. Earlier this year, the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament delivered the full CBS broadcast of every game online. At the time, the NCAA/Sportsline site set a record of delivering 19 million video streams over the course of the tournament.
On the heels of the success of that venture, the PGA Championship is now going to broadcast 11 hours of coverage over the internet. As broadband penetration is now reaching the point where a mass audience can be had, advertisers are starting to jump on board. At this point, the broadband audience is a compliment to the broadcast show, but the future of alternative distribution is being shaped through events such as these.
Check out the news item here
And another article about broadband sports broadcasting
In the “here’s something new” department, NBC has struck a new kind of sponsorship agreement with Toyota. NBC is going to guarantee a specific level of audience engagement with the particular program they are selling. They will track this through viewer surveys.
Now not only do they guarantee a certain number of viewers will be sitting on the couch, but now those viewers have to be paying attention. I’d be putting a lot of sudden loud noises in all my shows.
Check out the story here
An article from the TV critic of the Arizona Republic. I like his points about expanding the story beyond the confines of the show, as Lost is doing with their website and books. The bottom line is good television always comes back to simple, good storytelling. It doesn’t matter what the genre is, as long as we’re enjoying a good story around the campfire, television will endure.
read more | digg story
I listened to a fascinating podcast today, an episode of Inside the Net with the guys behind the highly successful Ask A Ninja video podcast.
Ask a Ninja is a series of video shorts done by a couple of guys in a crappy apartment in L.A. The gimmick is a Ninja answering viewer questions. Most of the time the Ninja is flat-out hilarious, and the shows are around 5 minutes or so, which seems to be the sweet spot with online video content.
In the podcast, they talk about how exciting it was the moment they realized that the distribution problem, which had kept media tightly controlled by the big studios and media companies, now has a solution. The web allows anyone with good content and some tenacity to find an audience. Their marketing budget was zero, so much of the marketing was done through social networking sites such as the now gargantuan myspace and bebo. They’ve been doing the show for about 6 months, and now have 350,000 viewers per episode. Zero budget, zero marketing money, online distribution, and tons of talent. Today’s episode has a small ad for a new movie on the backend, so it looks like they’re starting to monetize that audience.
The tools to create video content are now accessable to anyone. The bandwidth to send a video podcast to millions can be had for as little as $30 a month. What are we waiting for?
Watch Ask A Ninja Here
Listen to the Ask a Ninja episode of Inside the Net here
Update: Here’s an interesting article about the social-network marketing of Ask A Ninja. Check it out here
In the 500 channel universe, there are going to be fewer opportunities for people to come together though the power of television. Channels now are so focused on a particular topic, and the choices are so vast, that further audience fragmentation is the inevitable result. This can be good many ways. We will get to watch what we want, when we want to. User-created media will create a broader media landscape. The risk of putting out a product will be small enough that people can take chances with their product that aren’t currently done on television. The MySpace Generation will be much more empowered to create their own products, rather than rely on media gatekeepers to tell them what to watch.
This creates a problem for traditional television networks that are used to setting the schedule. Therefore the value of things that people want to see live, and feel a connection to will rise. Local programming will once again become valuable if we can get large network entertainment directly from the source. The only communal experience that will be left will be the sporting event.
Two things make the sporting event the perfect television product for the mass audience.
- We want to see it as it’s happening (makes it DVR-proof)
- We want to cheer for the home team (makes it local)
That’s not to say that sporting events won’t be distributed directly by the leagues through the internet in the future (or today, as is the case with MLB.TV), but the ritual of coming home and turning on the game will be with us as long as there’s a local team to root for.
