First Stats Indicate The Time Has Come For NBC To Show The Olympics Live As Well As Its Prime Time Tape Delay

Philip M. Stone August 12, 2008

The world, except for the US, got to see the Olympic opening ceremonies live and In many countries it was close to a 50 share or higher but for Americans trying to see those festivities live on the Internet – about 12 hours before NBC’s telecast – the opportunities were fleeting with most illegal video postings getting removed very quickly.

With NBC spending close to $1 billion for rights it’s not about to let Americans see anything live that it is not transmitting on some platform – the Internet, mobile, cable, or its terrestrial network – and it’s pretty obvious that the likes of YouTube geared up to protect this, too. Non-NBC postings were found and taken down almost as quickly as they made it onto the web. Hitting a YouTube posting, for instance, would often bring a black screen and a single line at the top, “Sorry this video is no longer available.” (See more on NBC cashing in on the internet here)

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) walks a fine technical line in restricting video streaming to access only by those users within the country of broadcast rights. Thus only Americans can access NBC’s Internet streaming; only the Swiss can access streaming by its national public broadcaster in the country’s three main official languages.  So how is this accomplished?

It’s mostly to do with the Internet Protocol (IP) number such as 192.168.XXX.X.  that identifies each and every computer accessing the Internet. Every country has groupings of such numbers used by Internet Service Providers (ISP) so it is very easy for servers to recognize the country from which an access is attempted and to be programmed to deny access unless it is a domestic IP number. With servers recognizing from which country other servers are located it’s a very effective system to automatically police who does and who doesn’t get in.

It’s that same technology, for instance, that means a user from Switzerland accessing the Drudge Report in the US will often get German language ads – the technology, however, not sophisticated enough to know from what part of the country the access is being made from – the German, French, or Italian – so sometimes those German language ads fall on death ears.

A former colleague of this writer has been very active within the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) in delivering such technical protections, and how it’s done is very hush-hush. Taking the colleague out to lunch a few years back was an awful experience, he was obviously very uncomfortable, didn’t want to talk about the subject, and was clearly relieved when his host didn’t press the matter and he could leave!

But there were slip-ups this year. All 61 EBU broadcasters except Germany’s ARD streamed their Internet video of the opening ceremonies through the EBU geographic protection system but ARD  for reasons best known to itself did not, so anyone anywhere in the world had access to the ARD streaming, and there were reports from the US that Internet viewers soon discovered that. NBC wasn’t amused; neither was the EBU whose 61-member countries had paid only half of what NBC paid for just the US. The EBU apparently told ARD to quit its streaming until geographic limits were put in place.

Now that NBC has finally taken the big plunge into Olympic digital broadcasting (see our recent tickle item on NBC’s and the IOC’s long road to digital) everyone will want to know just what effect digital might have on terrestrial broadcasts – even tape delayed terrestrial broadcasts – and the early information coming out is that the Internet has very little effect on TV viewing habits.

NBC’s Beijing TV ratings are the highest of any non-US located Games. Even the Athens Games four years ago that occurred in September when people were back from vacations didn’t do as well the first couple of days and nights of Beijing. On Saturday alone, NBC reported that 24.1 million viewers tuned in the prime time show that featured, live, Michael Phelps not only winning his first gold medal but beating the world record, too, but also that day some 4.8 million people watched 3.1 million video streams.  

NBC research says  that for the first two days of the Games 90% of all viewers watched on TV alone, with another 10% watching both TV and online. Just 0.2% watched on the Internet alone, so the early indications are that live streaming on the Internet, even live coverage on NBCs cable networks, does not have much effect on prime-time numbers. It’s still early days, but it appears the fragmentation that NBC has feared for so long just isn’t there.

Video streaming could become problematic during the work week, not for NBC but rather for companies around the world.  Since much of the streaming is done during work hours there’s obviously an awful lot of lost productivity at stake. But also there is the question of whether internal technical systems can stand up to such increased video streaming taking so much bandwidth?

As usual in Europe the TV numbers are high, but not as high as Athens four years ago (same time zone for most of Europe whereas Beijing is six hours ahead of central European time). Also these two weeks are the prime holiday dates for European vacationers whereas Athens in September was better suited for more European viewers.

On a global basis it seems these are the most watched Games so far, but a lot of that can be placed on China’s 1.3 billion population taking particular interest. Friday’s opening ceremony saw shares there between 63% (AGB Nielsen) to 68.8% (CSM Media Research).

Film director Zhang Yimou’s display of national culture drew rave global reviews, with many viewers often expressing, “How did they do that”? The Chinese director obviously didn’t need Steven Spielberg’s help (the US director had pulled out of his advisory role, criticizing China’s for a lack of Darfur diplomatic efforts). Those reviews quickly made it to the Internet, so Americans knew beforehand they had a great show to watch when they tuned in for the tape delay prime time broadcast. It may have been one of the few times whereas a tape delay actually helped build an audience!

In Europe the opening ceremonies took place in the afternoon so people were still at work, but most broadcasters then repeated the opening ceremonies during the evening (but at least there was the opportunity to see it live!).

In the UK, which hosts the next (2012) summer Olympics in London,  the BBC’s live terrestrial broadcast drew just under 5.5 million viewers –a 51% share, and another 700,000 watched the events live on the BBC’s website. Those combined numbers, however, were 1.3 million viewers less than the live primetime Athens ceremonies four years earlier. London organizers must have been in awe of the reported $100 million that the Chinese spent on those opening ceremonies – the UK budget is said to be much less, yet London’s opening ceremony will certainly be judged with its predecessor.

Not that the Brits don’t know how to throw a party. They held one the day before the opening of the Beijing Games, enticing sponsors, advertisers and the like who were in Beijing. Cost was said to have been around £2 million – that sounds like an awful lot of Peking Duck!

In Germany, ARD’s share was a respectable 52.3% share, but that pales to major nighttime international football clashes where the share approaches 80%. Its coverage of swimming on Saturday, for instance, pulled just 35% and even its women’s football game against Nigeria mustered just a 40.6% share with ZDF’s coverage of Germany’s women’s hockey team thrashing the UK women’s team only garnering a 22% share.

France 2 had a 48.2% share for the opening ceremonies with viewing numbers off some 2.3 million (down one-third from Athens but still not bad considering this is prime vacation time in France – it is said that in August the only ones moving around in Paris are mad dogs and tourists); Italy’s RAI hit 49%, and TVE in Spain scored 38.8%.

Incidentally, in Australia, two hours ahead of Beijing, the broadcast started at 10 p.m. and ran through  until 2:17 in the morning but the 7 Network still got a 52% prime time share, not as many viewers as for the Sydney 2000 Games, but second best all the same.

With global newspaper web sites not having access to athletic competition video (Reuters and APTN, for instance, supply interviews and what goes on around the stadiums but not actual competition) they should be very grateful that the IOC permits running still pictures without limitation (many major international sporting organizations these days are trying to limit how many still pictures a web site can run).

But US newspaper web sites were full of reader complaints that competition video was missing and they understood why. One posting on the New York Times web site said, “I can’t understand how in 2008, in the arena of  instant access, with multiple media outlets, NBC behaves as if we are in 1950, and has the guts to make audiences ‘wait’ for a live coverage that many other countries in the world can see as they are taking place.”

And a reader posting on the San Francisco Chronicle’s site understood the financial ramifications. “NBC is an acronym for ‘Not airing Before making big Cash! The Chinese may censor their people over politics – our corporate overlords censor us over profits.”  At least he understood how capitalism works.

The hope, of course, is that when the Olympics are over that NBC’s research department will come out with numbers confirming that live coverage on various platforms doesn’t affect terrestrial prime time tape viewing. NBC wants the most profit possible and certainly wants to ensure no financial loss; Advertisers are after the largest total viewership, no matter how many platforms are used and surely the NBC sales department is smart enough to know how much to charge on each platform to gain the maximum overall monies.

And if that happens then Americans may finally be able to join the rest of the world for their Olympic coverage, no matter what time of the day it may be.