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> Back in June, Steve Burke described what he called his Olympics “nightmare.” “We wake up someday and the ratings are down 20 percent,” the chief executive off

> Back in June, Steve Burke described what he called his Olympics “nightmare.” “We wake up someday and the ratings are down 20 percent,” the chief executive officer of NBCUniversal said at a conference. “If that happens, my prediction would be that millennials had been in a Facebook bubble or a Snapchat bubble and the Olympics have come, and they didn’t know it.” I'm 49 (Gen X), but ... this was basically me. I literally had no idea the Olympics had actually started until occasional posts about it showed up on Tumblr. Nor did I realise it was in Rio until then. The media hegemony broke as absolutely soon as we could escape them.

wahern 10y ago
I surmised it was happening based on various news reports, but I just assumed that it was impossible to view online unless you had cable. I know Hulu and other outlets stream NBC content, but for stuff like this I assume they put it behind one of those "login to your cable account" portals. I get NBC over-the-air, but work and family mean parking myself in front of the TV at specific times just isn't possible. Other than local news and a show here or there, we watch television using our Roku. I'm not a huge fan of the Olympics, but it's definitely something I'd watch if it were easy, and even tolerate commercials for. NBC and other producers aren't embracing streaming fast enough. They're losing whole generations of viewers, and recapturing them will be more costly than taking a hit now and making on-demand streaming a first-class content delivery channel. It's like herding cats--they managed to get Americans to spend 4+ hours per day sitting in front of the television. If you start to let them wander off in random directions, it won't be easy to get those eyeballs back. There's no reason I shouldn't be able to go straight to NBC.com right now and view every new and archived episode of every show they've ever produced. Why NBC allows Hulu and NetFlix to operate as middle-men, I'll never know. Hulu, et al should be technology providers similar to Roku; instead they sit directly between NBC and their revenue stream. Whatever NBC charges, they're almost certainly losing more money than if the ecosystem was more open and centralized portals less important. And why aren't local affiliates storming the castle? They're getting screwed six ways from Sunday. Maybe NBC is a bad example because they're owned by Comcast, which heavily distorts their incentives and biases them to the status quo. But that's not the case for other media companies.
- davidgerard 10y ago
  Yep. But mostly, I'm just delighted I literally never have to think about this mass media BS any more. I'm off trawling the bottom of Bandcamp and writing about it on Rocknerd. It's the dream.

wahern 10y ago

I surmised it was happening based on various news reports, but I just assumed that it was impossible to view online unless you had cable. I know Hulu and other outlets stream NBC content, but for stuff like this I assume they put it behind one of those "login to your cable account" portals. I get NBC over-the-air, but work and family mean parking myself in front of the TV at specific times just isn't possible. Other than local news and a show here or there, we watch television using our Roku. I'm not a huge fan of the Olympics, but it's definitely something I'd watch if it were easy, and even tolerate commercials for. NBC and other producers aren't embracing streaming fast enough. They're losing whole generations of viewers, and recapturing them will be more costly than taking a hit now and making on-demand streaming a first-class content delivery channel. It's like herding cats--they managed to get Americans to spend 4+ hours per day sitting in front of the television. If you start to let them wander off in random directions, it won't be easy to get those eyeballs back. There's no reason I shouldn't be able to go straight to NBC.com right now and view every new and archived episode of every show they've ever produced. Why NBC allows Hulu and NetFlix to operate as middle-men, I'll never know. Hulu, et al should be technology providers similar to Roku; instead they sit directly between NBC and their revenue stream. Whatever NBC charges, they're almost certainly losing more money than if the ecosystem was more open and centralized portals less important. And why aren't local affiliates storming the castle? They're getting screwed six ways from Sunday. Maybe NBC is a bad example because they're owned by Comcast, which heavily distorts their incentives and biases them to the status quo. But that's not the case for other media companies.

davidgerard 10y ago
Yep. But mostly, I'm just delighted I literally never have to think about this mass media BS any more. I'm off trawling the bottom of Bandcamp and writing about it on Rocknerd. It's the dream.