NBC Looks To Add Content, Different Viewing Experience To SB Live Stream

NFL.com and NBCSports.com are streaming Super Bowl XVLI live for free and much of NBC’s attention for the online portion “has been on adding new content and offering a different viewing experience,” according to George Winslow of BROADCASTING & CABLE. NBC Sports Dir of Digital Operations Eric Black said, “The big motto will be to enhance the broadcast experience.” Winslow notes the online viewer at NFL.com and NBCSports.com “allows users to select two different feeds from a number of different options.” The player also “has an on-demand portion for viewers to watch the Super Bowl broadcast ads,” and viewers of the online simulcast “will actually see different ads.” But Winslow writes “just how well NBC’s content delivery network or the Internet as a whole will stand up to the streaming of such a high-profile event remains an open question.” Black: “After four NFL seasons and two Olympics of online streaming, we are very very good at handling a lot of traffic. We have spent a lot of time on this and have developed a very robust network that can deliver the highest quality to end users” (BROADCASTING & CABLE, 1/30 issue).

SHARE AND SHARE ALIKE? The GLOBE & MAIL’s Steve Ladurantaye reports the CRTC, Canada’s federal broadcast regulator, ruled in December that Bell Canada Enterprises “had gained an unfair advantage” through its deals to broadcast hockey and football games exclusively to its own wireless subscribers and “ordered it to make that content available to rival Telus Corp. ‘at reasonable terms.’” But the NFL said that its contract “prohibits any Canadian wireless provider except BCE from gaining access to football broadcasts, including this weekend’s Super Bowl.” Meanwhile, Bell Canada has “quietly renegotiated its deal” with the NHL, and said that it “will share those mobile rights with other wireless carriers.” The NFL “refuses to allow Bell to share its games, saying it doesn’t want its content spread among several different broadcast partners” (GLOBE & MAIL, 1/31).