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NBC sees social as a way to engage millennials in Olympics

A main focus of NBC’s research during its Olympic coverage this summer will be to test whether social media activity affects television viewership. NBC will have a group of millennials keep three-day written diaries during the Olympics to find out how they used social media during the 17-day event and whether their social media activity led them to watch more or less of the Rio Games on television.

“One of the questions everybody has is whether social media will cannibalize the prime-time mothership, and that’s something we really want to understand,” said Alan Wurtzel, president of research and media development for NBCUniversal. “My hypothesis is that not only will it not cannibalize it, I think it’s going to enhance it.”

NBCUniversal’s Alan Wurtzel thinks social media could bring younger viewers to prime time.
Photo by: NBCUNIVERSAL
NBC’s research executives have long viewed the Olympics as an opportunity to identify media trends before they take hold. For example, Wurtzel cited the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver as the point when he realized how popular apps were going to be in a mobile environment. “It sounds crazy today to think that’s an insight,” Wurtzel said. “But frankly in those days the Apple Store had very few. Most people at the time were on very bad smartphones.”

From the London Games in 2012, Wurtzel realized that viewers used second and third screens while watching the events — another finding that seems obvious today. During the Sochi Games in 2014, Wurtzel said that NBC gleaned data to back up the theory that Olympic viewers wanted more control over what events they wanted to watch and where they wanted to watch them.

“The Olympics is a billion-dollar lab for us where we learn about more than just the Olympics,” Wurtzel said. “We get a glimpse at the future of media behavior. Every time we’ve done this, we’ve seen out into the future. That is enormously helpful in a world where the changes and disruptions are happening so fast. If you can get some sort of insight into what you think might be going on, it’s very beneficial.”

While Wurtzel says social media will be the big story followed from Rio — from how each platform operates to whether it can move TV ratings — so far, he has been skeptical that social media has had any effect on viewership. “I believe that ratings drive social media. Social media doesn’t drive ratings,” he said.

Still, Wurtzel thinks social activity could bring a younger audience to NBC’s prime-time telecasts. It’s not a secret that the Olympics skew older than many sports events — the average age for 2012’s prime-time telecasts in London was 49. Because millennials use social media so much, NBC sees an opportunity to get them more invested in the Games.

“I don’t believe that it’s going to make a huge difference in the overall viewing of the Olympics,” he said. “But I think it can fuel the conversation among, particularly, younger viewers.”

Wurtzel bases his optimism on the FOMO theory: the Fear Of Missing Out. He expects that once people see Facebook posts, tweets and snaps about events during the day, they will want to tune into NBC during prime time and see it for themselves.

“That’s what I think the impact is going to be,” Wurtzel said. “Because the Olympics is so big, and there’s so much content on so many places, it enables us to measure things that we normally couldn’t measure.”

The way NBC is programming the Olympics, with every event available live via digital, has changed drastically over the years. This spring, NBC signed a deal with Snapchat to show Olympic highlights through a dedicated channel on the app, marking the first time NBC has allowed the use of digital highlights on a non-NBC platform. The network also plans to be active on other social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, during the games.

“Social media has become, obviously, a significant platform. It’s something the Olympics has to do going forward,” Wurtzel said. “We’ve come a long way from a couple of Olympics ago when nothing was anywhere except on the broadcast network. Now, it’s in a variety of places because we understand that’s how people want to consume it.

“It’s a tough world out there now,” he continued. “Nobody knows anything. The one thing that is fascinating is how quick the pace of change is. All of this cross-platform behavior and alternative platforms, it is no longer the province of early adopters — 25-year-olds who wear black and live in Williamsburg [Brooklyn]. It’s mainstream. We have to stay in front of it. You can’t bemoan the fact that technology is here and disrupting the old models. It just is.”

John Ourand can be reached at jourand@sportsbusinessjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @Ourand_SBJ.


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