There was much ado made about the current Olympics, specifically about how NBC was planning to bring the Olympics into the information age and allow advertisers to get an incredible insight into how viewers were using new media like broadband mobile and web video. I included several articles in the ERA e-Weekly Newsletter written by experts and intelligent pundits who know the space, and can probably rattle off a business plan to justify all of this in less than five minutes.

Of course all of that is very valuable, and as a marketing professional, I can thoroughly understand the appeal of getting more accurate and far-reaching metrics on how my media dollar is translating to eyeballs. It still tells me nothing about sales, but at least I can go to the suits and say that the share for our media buy was X points and that means Y households saw our messaging.

Since I am also a media consumer (and, germane to this rant, a sailor), I assumed that to back up this vast sell of the metrics, there would be a corresponding increase in the quality and breadth of coverage. This was based on the assertion that NBC was becoming a new media company and, while coverage on its broadcast and cable properties would be as it always has been (swimming, gymnastics, sprinting, volleyball and soccer); the doors of the vast media portal would swing wide to reveal a wealth of other sports including judo, rowing, badminton, sailing (of course), and the other 25 odd disciplines out there. Maybe NBC would even have deigned to cut away to the U.S. women’s sweep of the Saber competition in fencing once Michael Phelps had broken the Olympic record in his opening heat, or perhaps found a few seconds to squeeze in a mention that the all powerful Ben Ainsley had finished 10th in the Finn class in sailing. Even the synchronized swimming aficionados would have the opportunity to watch their event in its entirety! That is, if they couldn’t find some paint that was drying (just kidding!).

This would be the most complete Olympics coverage ever undertaken by a media entity since the invention of radio; a shining beacon of media convergence, television, the Internet and mobile, marching in lock step into the New Media Future—a beacon throwing out a light illuminating the Brave New World of convergence, offering consumers unparalleled access to information and a depth of content that would make the mind swim and sate even the most glutinous Olympic appetite! A glowing moment in media history that shows the whole world that America not only embraces the world and enjoys competing in it, but THIS is how you cover the Olympics, damnit! Take that, BBC!

And yet, as is so often true, the execution fell far short of the promise. Looking at the TV listing, I was not surprised to see soccer, volleyball, swimming, beach volleyball…and on CNBC on the Saturday morning of the Olympics’ opening week, believe it or not, paid programming. Meanwhile, the sailing video I watched live at 3 in the morning was just the Chinese media feed (not terrible camera work by the way) without any commentary or added value from NBC. And although it was labeled as the Finn racing (a one-person men’s class), NBC has mistakenly linked the Yngling races (a three-person, all-women boat). Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad to be able to watch the Yngling since the ladies of Team 7 are up against some tough competition and it should be good racing, especially since the Canadians came from nowhere to challenge everybody. But, if you say you’re sending me to see the Finn racing (also a hotly contested class with Ben Ainsley having not lost a Regatta in something like 12 years), you should show me boats with one man in them. As for other sports, remember the women’s saber competition, a U.S. medal sweep, not only is the result still listed as unofficial (Seriously? They gave them the medals; I’m not sure it gets more official than that, and there is no video available for that.)

And what about the bold new foray into the realm of mobile delivery? NBC is supposed to have a spectacular new mobile platform that delivers instant text message updates when something happens at the Olympics. And you can get them by sport, as well! Assuming you are only interested in swimming, gymnastics, track & field, basketball or beach volleyball. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the fencing results on the mobile site are listed as official, so they aren’t working from the same content. And the video offerings can only be described as anemic.

Sadly, the bottom line is that the problem is the bottom line. NBC is walking around looking for a forest and it keeps running into trees. It seems that NBC has placed so much focus on delivering improved eyeball counts to advertisers that they have missed a golden opportunity to grow the audience. Call me crazy, but if it were my advertising dollar going toward the Olympics, I’d be wondering why my money was being spent to count a small audience instead of attracting a bigger audience with better content.

It is no surprise to me that some of the best content on television over the past several years has come from HBO. Its focus is squarely on attracting as large an audience as possible because the viewers are paying for the channel. Thus, the content has to be compelling or it loses its audience. The networks, on the other hand, cling to a broadcast mentality that started drawing a long last breath in the early 1980s when cable appeared. Every year, we see the networks trying new gimmicks at the up fronts to try to lure advertisers to buy into half-baked shows that nobody is watching. Don’t think broadcast media is dying? I submit for your consideration: Next time you’re at your office water cooler, coffee maker, or in a staff meeting, ask what was on NBC last night. But it’s not because there’s no audience out there. It’s because that audience is watching something on Bravo, A&E, Discovery, etc. And there’s a small part of that audience that’s already even farther away, downloading content from the iTunes store or buying DVDs of their favorite shows.

So, back to the Olympics: What’s the value proposition for an advertiser? You can now measure your audience share much more effectively. But that audience is decreasing because the network is spending all its time and energy creating tools designed to measure an audience instead of attracting a bigger audience. I always thought that the purpose of mass-media advertising was to reach the broadest audience possible, not to count a small audience more accurately. Maybe NBC should leave the metrics and response rates to the direct response professionals and focus on what it used to do quite well. After all, you can put the speedometer from a new Ferrari in a 1980s-era Yugo. But, it isn’t going to make the Yugo go any faster.

Peter Howson is ERA’s director of marketing.

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Tags: ben ainsley, Electronic Retailer, ERA, hbo, michael phelps, nbc, new media future, olympics, peter howson, up front advertising

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 13th, 2008 at 4:48 pm and is filed under Advertising, Branding, Direct Response, ERA, Just for fun..., Marketer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.