Must-Read: The Delivery
by Brian Reich | 2 Apr 2010, 9:04am
From 1997-1999 NBC used the slogan “If you haven’t seen it, it’s new to you” to promote their summer reruns — a painfully simple and yet absolutely genius concept that re-imagines the opportunity for individuals and organizations who create and promote (little m) media to find and engage an audience. Remember, we live in a time when the user is in near-complete control. We can pick and choose the media we want to consume, when and where we want to receive it, and increasingly how much we are willing to pay. That gives me the option of tuning in to watch something on television when it first airs, but doesn’t mean that effort is required.
To that end, I love The Office (on NBC), but have never been a loyal viewer. I haven’t consistently watched prime time television, during prime time, since we got our first TiVo back in 2003. I haven’t watched nearly as much TV since our son, Henry, was born in November 2007, period. If, or when, I sit down on a Thursday night to watch TV, Grey’s Anatomy (on ABC) is typically my first choice — my wife and I are both fans — but since Grey’s Anatomy airs opposite The Office - on Thursdays at 9:00pm - its inevitable that I have missed a good number of episodes over the years. For a while I set up our TiVo to tape The Office, but I couldn’t keep up and eventually removed it from our Season Pass List.
Of course, I have seen episodes in syndication and read enough of the media/blog coverage about The Office to know was happening — most notably that Jim and Pam finally began dating, got married, and were preparing to have a baby. All of a sudden, the fictional (?) life of the characters on The Office started to overlap with my real life — remember, my wife, Karen, and I are expecting baby #2 any day - literally.
So, it was a combination of TV-fandom and real-life curiosity that drew me to the re-airing of the episode of The Office last night in which Pam goes into labor and has her baby. Needless to say, the episode, entitled The Delivery, which originally aired March 4, 2010 in two-parts (both Part I and Part II are available for viewing online until April 9, 2010) was hilarious. It absolutely… um… delivered.
I can easily argue that The Office is must-watch television every week. In fact, its one of the few shows that makes me to laugh, out loud, nearly every time (another is Family Guy, if that tells you anything - about me, or The Office). And f you are a parent, with fond memories of your own birthing experience, or a soon-to-be-parent with a combination of media-driven impressions of what its like to have a baby, The Delivery episode(s) are even funnier.
At first I thought it was an April Fools joke, that The Delivery episodes were airing so close to when #2 is supposed to arrive. Then I began to think it was a sign that my wife would go into labor before the day ended. It was neither, but The Delivery episodes are definitely a must-read (or in this case, must-watch).
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: baby Must-Read NBC The Office
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ThinkingAboutSports: Perfect is the enemy of… something I want to watch
by Brian Reich | 13 Feb 2010, 4:26pm
The first day of the Winter Olympics in Vancouver did not go as organizers planned.
First there was the tragic death of 21-year-old Georgian luger, Nodar Kumaritashvili, following a crash during a practice run just hours before the opening ceremonies. Within minutes of the accident, graphic images showing the unsuccessful attempts to revive the stricken athlete were available online. And almost immediately the media began focusing on the safety of the sliding center, with various conspiracy theories emerging. Then, a technical issue during the lighting of the Olympic flame caused some very tense, and somewhat awkward, moments during the big finale of the opening ceremonies, compounding criticism from fans who found the entire production underwhelming. The games hadn’t even officially begun and it seemed nothing could go quite right. Before the first medals have even been awarded Olympics organizers were on the defensive and NBC was scrambling.
Thank goodness.
The Olympics organizers have been planning for these games for years, and every painstaking detail about how the competition has been considered and carefully planned. NBC has written a very elaborate script for their Olympics coverage — they have stories they want to tell, athletes they want to highlight and results they expect to see. Both the Olympics organizers and NBC want everything to be perfect. They both want to be in control.
Well, perfect is boring. I don’t want to watch perfect.
I want to see what happens when you have to stray from the script. I want to see what happens when the plans need to change. I would never wish for an athlete to get hurt, or worse. And I don’t want to see anything bad happen. But I do want to see what creative solutions the people organizing the Olympic games can come up with when pressed. I want to see some underdogs win. I want the weather to continue to cause problems. I want to see what happens when the people NBC puts in front of the camera have to offer real-time analysis. I want to see the athletes have to answer tough questions. I want the detailed plans and pre-packaged stories to have to be scrapped.
That’s when it gets interesting. That is what I want to watch. That is what would make these games truly exciting.
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: NBC Olympics ThinkingAboutSports
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ThinkingAboutSports: The Olympics Experience I (Still) Want
by Brian Reich | 12 Feb 2010, 10:19am
The Winter Olympics have arrived!
Tonight’s opening ceremonies in Vancouver kick off a 17-days of intense competition among the world’s greatest athletes, in a variety of sports that test the physical and mental abilities of the competitors and the imagination of the spectators. You don’t even have to be a sports fan to find the Olympics engaging and inspiring. But for sports fans, myself included, the Olympics offers nothing short of a global sports orgy.
I am not able to attend the XXI Winter Games — for those keeping track that’s 16 consecutive Olympics since I was born that I haven’t managed to see in person. Some day I will go. In the meantime, I will have to rely on NBC — the official broadcast network of the OIympics here in the United States — and the media, mainstream and otherwise, to provide me with access to the pageantry and competition that the Olympics offers. Two years ago, when the Summer Olympics took place in China, I wasn’t able to attend, so I looked to the media to provide me with the most compelling Olympics experience possible (I wrote about the Olympics experience that I wanted to have at the time) — and while I certainly enjoyed the games, there were some missed opportunities.
Fast forward two years and there are many more options for accessing information about the games — thanks to the continuing growth of the internet and the reach of technology. And I have done everything I can think of to find those tools and channels and prepare my ultimate Olympics viewing experience: I have collected a half-dozen Olympics preview sections from newspapers and magazines — Sports Illustrated, the New York Times, Esquire, Time Magazine, etc. I have downloaded the broadcast schedule and programmed my TiVos to capture the key coverage that is available on TV. I have bookmarked several official Olympics-related websites, dropped the best sports and related blogs that I know of into my RSS reader, and set up news alerts for topics related to the games that I figure might not be covered through the normal channels (I’m hoping, for example, to get some good coverage from outside the United States as well). I am following a variety of people on Twitter who I think will offer compelling insights during the games and signed on as a fan of both the Olympics and NBC Olympics Facebook groups. I downloaded the official NBC Olympics iPhone app — as well as the NBC Olympics Cheer app (which allows you to simulate applause) and the Bauer Goal Light app (which allows you to set off the siren when your team scores a goal during the hockey competition). And I have signed up for a handful of different text message alerts, both official and unofficial.
The question remains, however, will the coverage of the Olympics that I am able to access through these channels — the stuff that gets pushed through the pipe if you will — meet my expectations? The early evidence would suggest the answer to that question is no — I won’t find all the coverage, or types of coverage, that I would hope to see from the Olympics. There are some obvious reasons for this:
- The ‘proven’ method of telling the story about something like the Olympics is to focus on the stories that are likely to have mass appeal. In the case of the Olympics, and US-based coverage of the Olympics for that matter, the focus tends to be on three things: the athletes who are most likely to bring home gold medals, the sexiest athletes or those who have the most interesting back-story, and the sports that garner the broadest interest. NBC, the US Olympic Committee, and much of the mainstream media have decided that the primary reasons to watch the Olympics are, in order of priority: Lindsay Vonn, Shaun White, Shani Davis, anything having to do with Figure Skating — and maybe superstars like Sidney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin (who, of course, aren’t Americans, but do play professional hockey in the United States when not representing their home country during the Olympics). There is some coverage of the Nordic Combined and Biathalon events (because Americans may medal, which is very uncommon), Bobsled (because the US Men’s teams enters the Olympics as the top-ranked team in the world), and even luge (where Erin Hamlin, the defending World Champion, has an above-average chance of winning a medal, and because the man carrying the flag for the United States during the opening ceremonies is luger and five-time Olympian Mark Grimmette).
- Ratings and readers are the goal. NBC will make thousands of hours of Olympics coverage available - between their various network and cable channels, and the NBCOlympics.com site — but only a fraction of that will be available live, and what the majority of audiences will see is just a snapshot of the competition that is taking place. Much of the newspaper and online coverage will focus on the results of the competition. NBC wants the largest possible audience to tune in for their nightly broadcasts, which makes sense given the billions of dollars they have invested in purchasing the rights and preparing their coverage of the games. Everyone else wants to be seen as the source for the most up-to-date information about medal counts and athlete performances. Of course, lost in the effort to control the information experience of those who are interested in the games — or those curious enough to go looking for information about a particular sport or athlete — is the opportunity to deliver something that sparks an even greater interest that wasn’t anticipated. In many ways, it doesn’t matter whether the various media covering the games offer an experience that people really enjoy — it just matters that they tune in, or log on.
- I have different interests than everyone else. I like the Olympics. Period. I like the sports - the diversity of the skills on display, the high level of competition, and the powerful emotions behind every event. I am intrigued by the global political element of the Games - so many different languages and cultures on display, the pride and the patriotism athletes show as they represent their entire nation, and the ability to use sport to raise awareness and understanding of our global connectedness. I am also fascinated by the logistics - the schedule, the geography, the details of the construction of the venues (and the manufacturing of snow), the protocols for playing of all the national anthems — all the things that makes the games uniquely complex to conduct yet seemingly effortless when presented for the world to enjoy. I want to see the American team win, but I also want to see records broken, amazing tricks attempted, and spectacular performances - good and bad - unfold before my eyes. A limited number of storylines, particularly predictable ones, just aren’t enough for me.
Instead of trying to control every aspect of the information experience around the Olympics, NBC and the various media organizations who are there to report on the happenings, should focus on creating the best possible information experience for their audience, with the confidence that we will tune in, log on, seek out, or pay for the coverage wherever that experience is available. What might that look like? NBC should be syndicating its coverage to all the US networks (at least) who want to purchase a feed, offer online sites willing to embed NBC-driven players the offer to share their favorite highlights, and inviting individuals to pay a small fee to be able to access and customize extra coverage, on their terms. The media should divide and conquer, so that every sport is covered, in full and with equal intensity and insight, and the stories shared across all online channels and platforms where users might find them. Access to the athletes, the venues, and the behind-the-scenes aspects of the games, should be available to those who are interested — and from those athletes who are willing of course. And the coverage, and those doing the work to tell the stories, should be able to change, and improve, as the games proceed over the next two weeks, to make sure that the interests of the audience are met.
As I wrote in my post two years ago:
There is nothing new about the Olympic Games being broadcast on television, written about by tens-of-thousands of reporters, or even having scores and highlights posted online in real-time. In fact, as sporting events go, the Olympics offers so many storylines (the Olympics isn’t really one event - every athlete, in every event, is being covered by someone, and watched with interest by people in their home country) that no single organization or medium would suffice. But, as technology evolves, the internet expands, and the silos and borders that represent our traditional media environment break down, the challenges are many, new, and intriguing for sure.
So, what is the Olympics experience that I (still) want?
- The Long Tail of Olympics Coverage. I want to see the spirit of the games, the complexity of the events, the diversity of the athletes, and the excitement of the competition on full display. There should be media, bloggers reporting out on event event and happening taking place over the next 17-days in Vancouver — and not just what happens inside the venues, but on the streets and throughout the world where people are watching and talking about what they see. There should be real-time coverage of every sport, every event, every heat and every athlete streamed live. Every athlete should have a video camera and an open portal to share their perspective with the world. There should be explanations of each sport, the rules and technology, the training requirements and analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the competitors. The Olympics organizers, and the individual nations, should become media organizations themselves and ensure that access to, and coverage of, all the athletes and sports are given the attention they deserve - and the opportunity to attract an audience. Fans should be invited, and encouraged, to share their insights. Some of this is happening, but not enough.
- A truly Social Olympics Experience. The Olympics is the ultimate shared experience. It is a sport-centric reflection of what is happening more and more in our society. But while the Olympics reflects the diversity that exists around the world, the Olympics doesn’t truly reflect the social nature of our society. The athletes live together in a village, make connections and form friendships. Fans have a shared experience, watching the competition unfold and sharing their stories. In some cases people on the outside are now able to to connect with athletes, but mostly just as fans, as onlookers. But for the most part the worlds remain separate. The Olympics aren’t truly social yet. The Olympics don’t fully reflect the connections that exist - and the potential those connections offer - in today’s technology-enabled world. A truly social Olympics would invite conversation and collaboration, among athletes, fans and organizers. Stories would travel in both directions, to and from Vancouver. Questions would be answered. Ideas would be shared. Fans would have greater understanding of what is required for the athletes to perform at the top level, and athletes might gain insight from the experiences that the rest of the world can offer.
- A single global focus. The National Hockey League takes a break during the Olympics — because 140 players from the league will be competing — and will offer fans an “all-access” service to help keep up with what is happening. But other major sporting events are taking place. The NBA is still operating — in fact, the All-Star game will take place this weekend in Dallas. NASCAR kicks off its season with the Daytona 500 on Sunday. College basketball games are being played. The PGA will hold two big tournaments while the Games are taking place. Soccer leagues in Europe have scheduled matches. The Olympics is a big deal - one of the world’s great sporting events, an unprecedented gathering of global leaders and meshing of cultures and personalities from all over the world. The Olympics deserve our full attention. We should, as a sports community — if not as a world community as well — be able to pause, focus, and enjoy the games. We should be able to schedule around the Olympics so that we can appreciate the competition and entertainment they create, and the message they send.
The Olympics experience I want is probably unrealistic - in today’s media culture, with the competition for dollars and eyeballs more fierce than ever. It may even a little naive — with the political, religious, and cultural differences that exist around the world — to expect that people want to come together and have a shared experience around sports. But that’s a big reason I want that kind of Olympics experience. The Olympics are more than just a great sporting event. Sports has the power to entertain and inspire people, to bring us together, to teach us about ourselves, and others. Sports has a powerful impact on me every time I tune in, turn out, log on, or get out there and play myself. The Olympics experience that I want isn’t just for me - it would give anyone, or everyone — sports fan or not, athlete or not — the chance to see the excitement, importance, and inspiration that the Olympics provides. And I just think that would be pretty cool.
Let the Games begin!
Media Should Follow Our Habits
by Brian Reich | 14 Dec 2008, 4:15pm
NBC announced this week that Jay Leno, who retires as host of the Tonight Show in 2009, will get a new show - to be aired five nights a week at 10:00pm. The Tonight Show, which will now be hosted by the far-funnier, far more creative Conan O’Brien, will still air at 11:35pm.
NBC offered Leno a new gig, in this time slot, for financial reasons: the cost to produce Leno’s show five nights per week if far less than the cost to air a full season of an hour-long drama (production costs for an hour-long show run between $3 million and $5 million per episode; by comparison, Leno earns $30 million per year and his show has very low production costs).
Still, today’s New York Times Week In Review section suggests there might be another good reason NBC is mixing things up. Charles McGrath, quoting Leno, writes “People go to bed earlier now; 10:30 is like 11:30 used to be.”
As a parent of a 1-year old, with a full-time job and a host of other responsibilities, that is so true. As much as I want to stay up for the late night shows (though for the record, I would watch Letterman), its not practical. If, or when, I do stay up late, I regret it the next day. So instead, I TiVo my favorite late night shows and watch them when I want.
I would like to think the TV industry has been looking for ways to suit my needs and interests. But its not true. Aside from making a little bit more content available online — which they did almost against their will — they have done little to make it possible for me to watch good television when and where I would like. They air whatever will generate the most money, and do it when they think they can get me to watch. They are clinging to the same old broadcast model as before, hoping I will adjust my schedule so I can tune in. That is simply not going to happen.
The worst offender of this, as long as we are on the topic, is football. Both the Sunday Night Football broadcast on NBC and the Monday Night Football broadcast on ESPN don’t begin (or kick off at least) until well after 8:00pm. The World Series, which takes place each fall, isn’t any better. The games don’t end until after midnight. I love sports, and I want to watch these games, but I simply can’t make it past halftime (or in the case of baseball, maybe the 5th inning - when it begins to get really tense) and expect to be coherent the next day.
My point is this: I am the audience, and if the networks want me to watch (and the advertisers want me to see their ads) they have to understand, and respect, my behavior. Part of that is scheduling, and part of that is programming. Jay Leno’s new show satisfies neither - he’s not funny (in my opinion), his show isn’t compelling, and its barely worth staying up for even if it starts at 10:00pm. But he’s just the latest example of the television industry compromising great programming in favor of cheap programming. As McGrath notes, “What’s thriving on TV these days, spreading all over the schedule and seemingly seeping into every hour not already occupied by a certified hit, is reality programming of one sort or another: talk shows; news shows, or pseudo-news shoes; singing, dancing and weight-losing contests.”
I love television and I watch a lot of it. But the shows I am devoted to now, and watch religiously, are those that have great storylines and high-drama (some written, some reality) and air when I can watch them, which means on TiVo. Everything else, including football games, will have to be watched by someone else in real time.
Television has a future, a bright one, but it still has a long way to go before it realizes it. It might start by looking at how I spend my time, and what I want, and then programming accordingly. Just a thought.
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: football Leno NBC television
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The Olympics Experience I want
by Brian Reich | 10 Aug 2008, 2:00am
I have been waiting for the Olympics to begin for a long time.
I am drawn to the sports - the diversity of the skills on display, the high level of competition, and the powerful emotions behind every run, throw, stroke, spike, vault, lunge, and lift hold my attention for the full two weeks, and inspire me to be active.
I am intrigued by the global political implications - so many different languages and cultures on display, the pride and the patriotism athletes show as they represent their entire nation, and the ability to use sport to bring war, famine, poverty, AIDS, human rights and the challenges of world diplomacy into clearer focus for so many people who have chosen to ignore them the rest of the time.
I am fascinated by the logistics - the schedule, the geography, the details of the construction, and all the things (like the playing of all the national anthems) that makes the games uniquely complex to conduct yet seemingly effortless to pull off.
And with the XXIX Olympic Games in Beijing, the first in the broadband area, I have something else to pay attention to - the media.
There is nothing new about the Olympic Games being broadcast on television, written about by tens-of-thousands of reporters, or even having scores and highlights posted online in real-time. In fact, as sporting events go, the Olympics offers so many storylines (the Olympics isn’t really one event - every athlete, in every event, is being covered by someone, and watched with interest by people in their home country) that no single organization or medium would suffice. But, as technology evolves, the internet expands, and the silos and borders that represent our traditional media environment break down, the challenges are many, new, and intriguing for sure.
In the United States, the exclusive broadcast rights for the Games were purchased by NBC. Over the course of the next two weeks, they’ll share over 2000 hours of coverage - live and tape-delayed - across all their stations (NBC, CNBC, MSNC, USA, Telemundo, etc.) and online. Much of their prime time coverage, of course, will be tape delayed because Beijing is some 12 hours ahead of the United States (meaning 8pm EST in the United States is 8am in China, the beginning of a new day of competition). Meanwhile, the broadcast rights for every other country in the world has been sold to local and regional providers, like the BBC, Terra (the largest internet company in Latin America) and Organización de Televisión Iberoamericana, the African Union of Broadcasting (AUB) and the South African Broadcasting Corporation Limited (SABC), CCTV in China and so on.
And that is where it gets interesting.
As the New York Times reported on the first day of the Games:
“NBC’s decision to delay broadcasting the opening ceremonies by 12 hours sent people across the country to their computers to poke holes in NBC’s technological wall — by finding newsfeeds on foreign broadcasters’ Web sites and by watching clips of the ceremonies on YouTube and other sites.”
I admit, I was one of those people. I spent much of Friday morning refreshing my Twitter feed hoping to get live updates of the opening ceremonies from friends in attendance at the Birds Nest (and then using my insights to enhance the commentary I provided to my wife, and our two dinner guests, while watching the ceremonies on Friday night). And, though I am consuming as much live coverage through NBC’s TV and Internet coverage as possible, I am also looking at the BBC and other foreign sites for video highlights and context from the preliminary rounds of competition in soccer, swimming, team handball, weightlifting, air pistol, fencing (which, interestingly, was dominated by the United States but still received very little coverage on this continent) and other sports where the US-centric coverage offered by the American media isn’t complete or sufficient.
Even with all the coverage on TV and online from NBC (which thus far, I have to say is better than expected - the notable exception being any appearance by Chris Collinsworth, who I never see as adding value to a broadcast, even when the subject is football, his expertise), the peacock folks doing everything they can, it seems to make it more difficult for me to get my full Olympics fix.
Again, from the New York Times:
In response, NBC sent frantic requests to Web sites, asking them to take down the illicit clips and restrict authorized video to host countries. As the four-hour ceremony progressed, a game of digital whack-a-mole took place. Network executives tried to regulate leaks on the Web and shut down unauthorized video, while viewers deftly traded new links on blogs and on the Twitter site, redirecting one another to coverage from, say, Germany, or a site with a grainy Spanish-language video stream.”
I am not an expert in television rights, and I am certainly not on the hook for the billions of dollars that NBC has invested in this venture (roughly $900 million alone for the rights to broadcast Beijing, not counting the actual costs for pulling it off). I spend my time exploring how people get and share information in today’s information age and what that means for organizations - of all types and sizes - in terms of communications, engagement, and mobilization. And even without that knowledge, I could have told you that NBC’s plan presented some serious challenges.
Instead of trying to control every aspect of the information experience around the Olympics, with an iron fist no less, NBC should have focused on creating a better information experience for their audience, with the confidence that we would tune in to see the coverage wherever that experience was available. What does that look like? NBC should be syndicating its coverage to all the US networks who want to purchase a feed, offer online sites willing to embed NBC-driven players the offer to share their favorite highlights, and inviting individuals to pay a small fee to be able to access and customize extra coverage, on their terms.
There are hints that NBC understand this, and is trying to adjust their model. And certainly, NBC deserves a lot of credit for how it has planned its programming (I watched Michael Phelps win his first gold medal last night, live on NBC at around 10pm EST - what a treat!) to deliver as much live programming as possible. But the New York Times article, and other comments on blogs, from conversations I have had with friends in the media business, and my personal observations suggest that NBC is still operating with too much of a finger-in-the-dyke mentality. There is still so much more they can do.
I will keep watching, these games and all those that follow. And the early ratings from the opening ceremonies (34.2 million people in the US, and over a billion people worldwide tuned in) suggest I am far from alone in my commitment as a viewer/consumer. I just hope that NBC and all the broadcast groups around the world will continue to evolve their offering, and work together, to recognize what fans want from their Olympic experience, and try to deliver it. I know I am not alone in that.
(This is cross-posted on my Fast Company experts blog)
