NBC To Football Fans: You’re Welcome
The tech world – and sports fans – were more than a bit disappointed in the way NBC handled the rights to its online Olympics video during the Beijing Games last month. The network kept all its Web video footage under strict lock-and-key, not allowing clips of any length to appear anywhere else besides NBC properties online. What this accomplished was, pretty much nothing, as sports news sites and blogs – where millions of people get their sports news from – were shut out from airing any Olympics footage.
Who knows how much NBC lost in ad revenue due to this ham-handed over-managing of video rights, but the broadcast giant reportedly generated only $5.75 million. It could have undoubtedly made millions more had it figured out a viral distribution scheme that carried along embedded ads - it’s not too hard to figure out.
The Peacock redeemed itself a bit on Sunday, though, with its cool, new streaming broadcast of Sunday Night Football on NBC.com. Check it out (click to enlarge):
First off, the stream is in HD – beautiful – and it gives viewers the power to control which camera they’re watching, giving them the ability to follow different aspects of the play, rather than the action where the ball is. They can follow receivers running routes to check how tightly the defense is playing them, follow the offensive line’s blocking scheme as well as the defense’s blitzing and coverage patterns. You’re still somewhat at the mercy of whomever is controlling the camera at the stadium, but at least you have a choice – and choice folks, is what online broadcasting should be about.
So while NBC got a big, fat “F” for its online Olympics coverage, so far, it’s passing the NFL season with flying colors.
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