UPDATE: Lesson #1 (via Vince Patton at Oregon Public Broadcasting)
To watch any of the streaming coverage, either on a tablet or computer, NBC wants you to log in with your cable/satellite account. That freezes out over-the-air viewers.
So will this drive subscriptions or create a booming black market for cable logins?
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Dear friend, colleague or other innocent person who has somehow crossed my path,
This is one of those letters where I hit you up for support in a worthy endeavor. Although if I’m honest we may disagree on just how worthy this is.
In 24-hours, 204 nations will converge on the field of competition to entertain us and provide filler content between commercials for 17 days. There will be 14+ hours of programming on TV daily. But more importantly, online there will be 3,500 hours streaming video across all 32 sports.
So what you ask, or at least you thought it. Well, here’s the thing. I will attempt to extract lessons or at least some insight by watching as much of this as I can. I call this effort, Things I Learned Watching the Olympics, or TILWO for short. (Look, I never said I was creative.) And I will serve these up online daily over at ToddCop.com.
What kind of insights might I pick up from this Herculean effort? Well… Yeah, I don’t know. But I expect to learn about how digital and traditional media can combine in new ways. There’s bound to be lessons in what works, and what fails miserably in marketing. And the potential for meaningless insights about the athletes, countries, broadcasters and Brits is simply staggering.
Now, this is where you come in. Help me. Please dear god don’t leave me hanging out here to do this all by myself. Send me your tips, witty comments, even insightful guidance.
You can drop by the site, drop a message on Facebook, shoot a tweet (I kinda like how that sounds) with the hash tag #TILWO. Or you can drop me an email. And then tell your friends, or at least those with whom something like this wouldn’t ruin a relationship you’ve worked hard to cultivate. (Oh, and if anyone wants to knock out a logo for this epic effort, I’ll make sure to share the glory.)
Yours truly in the olympic spirit (small o in order to avoid having to pay licensing fees),
todd
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