NBC Continues To Score With Record Online Page Views, Streams

For the first time since the Beijing Games started, traffic for Yahoo’s Olympic coverage topped NBCOlympics.com on Monday. The latest figures from Nielsen Online showed that online traffic to Olympics-related content and video soared Monday, as users kept up with the Games from work. Unique visitors to Yahoo's Olympics section grew 85% compared to daily traffic on Sunday. Below are Olympics-related sites, ranked by unique audience (000s) on August 11 (Nielsen Online).

NBC STILL STRONG: Through the first five days of the Games, NBCOlympics.com has attracted 373.9 million page views, up 63% from the total page views for the entire '04 Athens Olympics. The site for the first five days also had registered 21.1 million unique users, up 90% from 11.1 million for the entire Athens games, as well as 17.7 million video streams, up 705% from 2.2 million from Athens (THE DAILY). NBC Universal President of Research Alan Wurtzel: "The Internet is not cannibalizing the audience for the NBC network. Instead, it's actually fueling buzz and interest and driving people to NBC's primetime schedule." But a former network sports exec said that NBC is "holding off lots of content for streaming until after it has run on broadcast TV." The exec said, "That's clearly about preserving television viewership. I just don't agree with holdbacks. You can't really hold this stuff back any more" (DAILY VARIETY, 8/14). The Wall Street Journal's Matthew Futterman said the important thing for NBC is people "are not necessarily using the Internet instead of watching the primetime broadcast. It's not cannibalizing the primetime broadcast which is the bread and butter for the network." Instead, the online content is "driving the coverage ... and the more that this stuff is on your mind the more you want to watch it because it's incredibly compelling" ("The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer," PBS, 8/12). USA TODAY's Michael Hiestand writes NBCOlympics.com's record numbers "undermines any notion that online coverage will ever threaten the appeal of TV sports." The "biggest online sports winners ... might just be those musty old 20th-century networks that were supposed to get mouse-clicked to death" (USA TODAY, 8/14). Nielsen Online VP/Media Analytics Jon Gibs: "The TV ratings alone suggest this is an absolute banner year for the Olympics on TV. I don't see the Internet replacing it; what we're seeing is an augmentation" (SACRAMENTO BEE, 8/14).

EDITORIAL REAX: Two editorials note the heavy online coverage and consumption. A N.Y TIMES editorial under the header, "A Cutting-Edge Olympics," states the Beijing Games are "about technology and how it is shaping both the athletes' performance and the viewers' experience." NBC “seems to have realized, wisely, that viewers want access as much as they want live drama” (N.Y. TIMES, 8/14). An L.A. TIMES editorial, under the subhead, "The Lesson Of This Year's Olympics? The Internet Drives Viewership, Both Online And Off," states as NBC's "statistics show, people will watch big televised events on their TV sets, not on their PCs, if they can -- even when the programming is available in advance online" (L.A. TIMES, 8/14).

Olympics Coverage Helping NBC Trounce Its Previous Online Traffic Records

AND THE SCORES FROM THE JUDGES...: USA TODAY's Robert Bianco reviews NBCOlympics.com and notes that it is "offering more than anyone could possibly watch," yet as "impressive as the technology is, it's still in its infancy, and like most infants, it has issues." Moving between formats on the Web site "can cause the player to crash, and switching between sports causes the ads to play again." Users can "end up watching more ads on the Web than you do on NBC, as impossible as that may sound." What the webcasts "mostly offer is variety and novelty." What they "lack is either the sense of communal participation created on TV by its announcers, or by the unmatched thrill created by being at the event yourself" (USA TODAY, 8/14). INFORMATION WEEK's Cora Nucci watched the Cameroon-South Korea men's soccer match August 7, and wrote the picture quality "was outstanding, even on my IBM ThinkPad, and to a lesser degree, my second display, a Samsung SyncMaster 172N." Nucci wrote the picture was "best on my iMac running OS X, though the maximum screen size was smaller than I wished." However, Nucci noted in order to utilize NBCOlympics.com, users "better be on a PC or newer Mac and have Silverlight 2 onboard, because NBC and Microsoft have shut out some Mac and Linux users." In a "slap to the Olympic ideal of everyone playing by the same rules, NBC and Microsoft have essentially said to some Mac owners and Linux users: you can't play" (INFORMATIONWEEK.com, 8/13).

MICROSOFT EXCEL: EWEEK.com's Darryl Taft wrote if Silverlight "continues to have the success it has had in streaming video coverage of the Olympic Games around the world, it could mean gold for Microsoft." Microsoft Group Product Manager Brian Goldfarb and NBC set up a "feedback alias that receives about two e-mails per minute." Goldfarb: "We get a phenomenal amount of feedback from users." Goldfarb added that in terms of feedback, he has seen "'pockets of communities' crop up from people who typically do not have access to coverage of sports like the equestrian events, fencing and air rifle, thanking NBC for providing the coverage online" (EWEEK.com, 8/13).

BBC Official Says Net's Goal Is To Offer As Many Olympic Viewing Options As Possible

SEARCH & FIND: MOCO NEWS' Tricia Duryee as part of a series of presentation of Olympic content on mobile applications reviews which search engine is "providing the best mobile experience." Google is given an "18 Karat Gold" rating, as its "first item in its results is the entire medal count for the top three countries." Duryee gave Yahoo's OneSearch a "14 Karat Gold," while handing a Silver to AOL and a Bronze to Microsoft's Live Search (MOCONEWS.net, 8/13).

Print This Article