First, NBC did a great job providing complete online coverage of the final round of the US Open on Monday and now comes word that NBC will be streaming their coverage of Wimbledon for free:
On Monday, it said that next month’s women’s and men’s finals at Wimbledon will be streamed live on NBCSports.com. The network brought “Sunday Night Football” to the Web last year, a ground-breaker for the NFL.
In addition to the two finals, NBC said all of its Wimbledon coverage, starting this weekend, will be available on its site, as well as a separate locale under the aegis of the tournament. The network said online viewers will see different camera angles than what’s on TV for the semifinals and finals. LINK
As I mentioned in my US Open post, I think these sorts of decisions are a clear sign that the networks are not going to sit back and let cable companies dictate how their content can be consumed. Realizing that they are losing out to piracy entirely due to their failure to provide a valid alternative, NBC is doing the right thing bringing Wimbledon online for free.
We will have to see what their actual coverage looks like, though it sounds that with the exception of the finals, the stream will be the same as the one being broadcast on TV. We will also have to see what happens with commercial breaks. During monday’s golf coverage, the online stream did not include the televised ads but instead put up a placard saying, in effect, “be right back.”
It is not clear what sort of advertising will be embedded with the online coverage. It would be interesting to know if NBC is sharing any of it’s ad revenue generated online with their cable carriers.
Wimbledon is an especially exciting offer for online viewing since, for US viewers, much of the best coverage occurs during normal business hours when access to TV can be impossible.
New Balance is behind an extremly well-made doc-reality series called SEASON IN THE BALANCE, that follows around a high school lacrosse team. As AdRants says, “Think Friday Night Lights with lacrosse sticks.” Also reminds me of MTV’s “Two-a-Days” series.
It appears that a great of deal of thought and at least some financial resources were dedicated to this project but it looks like it is being nearly completely ignored. This is based mostly on the viewcount on YouTube, where the five episodes posted so far are averages something like 200 views. Now, to be fair, there could be huge traffic to the home site or maybe on some other platform but YouTube tends to be a solid indicator of popularity and 200 views is miserably low.
Even if these numbers are lower than the actual viewership, it can’t be much lower. So, what went wrong here?
For starters, the only way I even found out about the series was via a posting in the industry-centric AdRants. I’ve seen no promotions or press releases or ads that would create even a whiff of awareness. Since the nature of the content is not sensationalistic or star-filled or just plain crazy, there is little chance of the videos gaining traction in the world of Facebook updates and Twitter ReTweets.
Oh, and it is about lacrosse, a sport this country has shown an extreme reluctance to embrace outside of high school and college.
What can we learn here? First, just making a great series and putting online is not nearly enough to guarantee viewership. TV networks spend millions to promote their shows so that they can boast of huge viewerships and raise their ad-rates. If a brand goes it alone and creates and releases their content outside of the traditional TV network marketplace it is now up to them to do that marketing. Otherwise, the show will go unseen as will any embedded marketing.
Second, you need to target your key audiences. Maybe New Balance did this and I am just not part of that target (fair enough) but if they did it was clearly unsuccessful. I wonder how many high school and college lacrosse teams have been directly contacted and made aware of a series that speaks directly to their life experiences? Not only could these players become viewers but they could also become brand evangelists for New Balance.
As it stands, this is a great looking webseries that deserves some attention but this won’t happen all by itself.
There is a closed beta test coming up in which the NFL will live-broadcast a game into a theater with 3D capabilities.
Not only does this sound like a pretty cool way to watch football, it is a step in the right direction when it comes to figuring out how to offer viewers new reasons to spend their money when so much content is available for free – legally or otherwise.
Something like watching a live 3D broadcast of your local football team in a theater full of like-minded fans sounds like a pretty damn marketable endeavor.
Although NBC decided, with what seems like very little fanfare, to put on the ladie’s Wimbledon finals on the internet Saturday. They did not, however, do the same for the men’s final which meant I went back to the pirate option. It appeared to be a feed from a local Utah NBC affiliate meaning I actually sat through all the commercials.
So, what did NBC gain by NOT officially putting the broadcast online? Well, they lost a lot of potential ad revenue but did not convince me to buy my friends a cable subscription so I could legally watch the game in their home in Vermont.
Now, the Versus network is making all the same mistakes with the Tour de France – that’s the race that used to be called the Lance Armstrong Race but now that he’s done American’s don’t really notice it.
“It appears Versus has had a partial change of heart and is at least saying on its Web site it will carry parts of the first two stages live on the Web, prior to the beginning of each day’s TV broadcast. You can catch Stage 1 live from 6:30-8:30 a.m. today, and Stage 2 from 7:00-8:30 a.m. ET on Sunday.”
Yup, they’re putting on the two least important stages of the race on days when most people will be home and can just watch it on TV – Versus is now widely carried.
The real need comes when all the bike fans head off to work on Monday and want to check in on the race live. They won’t find any help from Versus. So, what do you think they’re going to do? I’m guessing someone out there sees the need and a chance to make a liitle ad revenue at the same time. Will they be breaking the law to do this? Sure. Would they bother if Versus simply offered the service themselve? Nope.
Converse has created over twenty unique websites each with their own URL and original content. AdWeek says:
“Many of the Converse sites feature video vignettes with characters. “Out of Your League Girl” stars in five videos that give guys advice about how to get women. “Silky Steve” is an unlikely basketball star — he’s English and not particularly tall or athletic — waiting to get picked during the National Basketball Association draft.
Other sites veer toward oddity. At Kissingwithross.com, a bearded guy makes out with the camera (warning: he uses tongue) for over a minute. Oneshoestringfilms.com has shoestring puppets performing a short skit. Atleastyourenotlostatsea.com has film of a man lost at sea for eight days philosophizing on life. Atleastyourenotlostatseafor10days.com and atleastyournotlostatseafor13days.com continues the story.”
The reason for creating each site separately is interesting as it allows for any one site to take off within a community and allows Converse to reach a potentially broad audience.
Whether or not these sites, which have little or nothing to do with Converse products, will help sales is a completely different question.
This is the entry point for the campaign: www.thisistheindexpage.com
Sometimes a scheme comes along that just ticks off every one of my “this is terrible” boxes.
Sprint’s new campaign for the Instinct (the phone that wishes it was an iPhone but it isn’t so it’s just lame) includes a contest whereby you insert a very ugly video of a hand holding an instinct phone into your YouTube video. In return, you will be entered to win $10,000.
Here’s the thing: we all hate this sort of product placement so why would we want to inflict it on our friends, the only people likely to be watching our videos in the first place?
Way to go Sprint! First your idiot CEO runs his email address at the end of all those ads and then never replies to email I send him and now you want me to make my own videos horrible for you?
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June 23, 2009 9:26 am | 
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