Olympics and the Web

Ed: When it comes to global event broadcasts like the SuperBowl and Olympics, TV still wins. However, what was the investment required when compared to a web broadcast campaign?

Trying to Watch the Olympics on TV and the Web

from AllThingsDigital — WSJ by Michelle Quinn

How is your Olympics-watching experience going? You may have caught some of the Olympic Games over the weekend, most likely in front of your television set and not online. NBC Universal, which owns the U.S. broadcast rights, said it attracted a 114 million TV viewers, which was itself an Olympic record…

Olympics: Only 0.2% of Viewers Exclusively Watch Online

Written by Frederic Lardinois / August 11, 2008 12:10 PM

According to the Wall Street Journal, the Olympics are off to a good, but not amazing start on the Internet. Over the first three days, NBC’s online coverage drew an average of 4.7 million viewers per day, with the numbers steadily rising over the weekend. So far, Sunday was the most watched day, with 5.1 million total users and 3.42 million streams. According to the same article, only 0.2% of all viewers exclusively used the Internet to watch the Games, while 90% used the traditional TV coverage exclusively and 10% used both the Internet and TV.

Teens Totally Not Into Olympics

By Betsy Schiffman August 11, 2008 | 3:44:46 PMCategories: Olympics  

The Olympic opening ceremony was reportedly watched by “15 percent of the world’s population.” Needless to say, it was a heck of a weekend for NBC, which paid close to $900 million for U.S. broadcasting rights…

But one area where NBC may have lost: The teen demographic. Only 46 percent of teens surveyed by Harris Interactive showed any interest in watching the Olympics. And if teens are indeed abstaining, it’s not because they think that the Olympics are a crass, greedy commercial enterprise — in fact, 71 percent of those polled “were likely to agree that the games are about more than merely medals and marketing,” according to Harris Interactive. So why won’t they watch? Because it’s not convenient for them.

“Teens want quick-hitting videos,” says Bill Carter, a partner at youth marketing agency Fuse Marketing. “They don’t want the lead-up and they don’t want the analysis. They just want the video. And I’m optimistic that NBC is doing delivering this better than they have before. Although, to watch the [mens freestyleswimming] relay this morning, I still had to download 11 minutes of video, and fast forward through the first 6 minutes to get to the race.”…