Digital technology to play major role in Olympics
The Olympics made a quantum leap in 1960 when CBS crews flew tapes of the Rome Games back to New York to be broadcast. The network coverage included only a few hours from each day's competitions, yet dramatically changed the way Americans interacted with the Olympics.
That's pretty much the way things remained, with network executives deciding what viewers would see. But NBC hopes that is about to change.
With the Beijing Games, NBC Universal is offering more Olympic events on more media platforms and implementing an unprecedented tracking system to record what is watched and when -- whether it's a record-breaking run or swim and whether it's on TV, online, Video on Demand or a mobile device.
The $800-million question for the company is whether its new media juggernaut will produce a corresponding leap in audience numbers beginning Aug. 8.
"Beijing will go down as the first Games in which digital technology was a major player," said Steve Sternberg, an executive vice president with Magna Global, a New York-based media services firm. "It will also go a long way in determining how others use it in the near-term future."
Sports fans have been eager consumers of digital technology, making such websites as Yahoo Sports and ESPN among the Internet's most popular destinations. Even so, media companies and advertisers seeking to attract large audiences will be watching carefully as NBC digitizes what has long been an analog Games.
Past NBC Olympics coverage was "always the Dick Ebersol Olympics," NBC research guru Alan Wurtzel said, in a reference to the longtime NBC Universal Sports chairman. "He made the decisions as to what people would see or not.
"But now we're at the tipping point. You can program your own Olympics experience on television, cable, the Internet and ancillary things."
NBC's programming barrage will dwarf the 1996 Atlanta Games and its then-stunning 171 broadcast hours. When the Beijing Games end Aug. 24, NBC Universal will have beamed and streamed 3,600 hours of programming.
This time, viewers will be able to watch what they want, when they want.
The stakes are high for the network as it tries to lure busy, finicky Americans to its Olympic fare -- as well as assemble demographic data that may help convince sponsors that advertising is resonating across all theplatforms.
