After breaking a new record with 111 million viewers of NBC's broadcast of Super Bowl XLVI, the first-ever live stream of the big game in the United States attracted 2,105,441 users, the network said.
And so, the network is claiming that the streaming of the Super Bowl on both NBCSports.com and NFL.com was the "most-watched, single-game sports event ever online," per to data provided by Omniture and mDialog.
To be sure, the numbers are impressive, especially considering the best estimates tended to be somewhere around 1.5 million.
But the numbers also suggest a number of questions. For one thing, who were these 2.1 million viewers and why did they watch web video as opposed to a big HD screen in their home or at bar?
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After two years of fighting (er, negotiating?), Time Warner Cable subscribers in the New York area hoping to see the New York Knicks and The Rangers the past week on the MSG Network were disappointed to see that channel blacked out due to a contract dispute. Over the past few years, MSOs and cable networks have increasingly gone past the brink when it comes to transmission fee agreements. As a result, channels have gone dark and cable subscribers have had little choice but to vent frustration and wait until the two sides sort it out over.
But viewers have been increasingly offered other avenues for watching TV programs through a variety of broadband-based systems, from Netflix's streaming of TV show seasons, to devices made by Boxee and Roku, that offer a wide array of streaming programming right on their TV. While the notion of cable subscribers cutting the cord has not gained mainstream acceptance, as video-on-demand becomes more of a common part of viewers’ experience.
Can Over-The-Top (OTT) offer a credible option for subscribers, especially with more cable network blackouts expected over the next few years? We asked several industry insiders for their thoughts on whether OTT will have any impact on the cable carriage wars and they provided a range of opinion on how things are likely to play out in the near-future.
Click below or scroll down for more to read the answers:
- Jon Mandel, chairman Proximic; formerly CEO of Nielsen Connect and MediaCom
- Brian Weiser, Sr. Research Analyst at Pivotal Research Group
- Ashley Swartz, SVP/i2TV Practice Lead, Digitas
- Mitch Oscar, EVP, Televisual Applications at MPG
- Chad Stoller, Managing Partner of the IPG Media Lab
- Tim Hanlon, CEO/founder, The Vertere Group
- Brad Adgate, SVP, director of Research for Horizon Media
Jon Mandel, chairman Dogsled Enterprises, Proximic; formerly CEO of NielsenConnect and MediaCom
"I think the carriage disputes don’t necessarily mean much for the OTT world. Although over time it could be marginally good for OTT and also bad for OTT.
The bigger issue is with the MSO's fighting. (...) The dumb thing here is that eventually it is going to force a situation where cable becomes a la carte. That is something the cable industry on all sides has fought (and I also testified at FCC that this is a bad thing). The reason it is bad is that small networks will die without the per home fees they get now.
One could argue that this is good for OTT because it will cause that programming to migrate to online/OTT. But the math doesn’t work unless somebody is willing to lose hundreds of millions upfront on content for very little pay off down the road. Financially, people will invest in other things (not necessarily program content…other industries) instead because the returns won’t be there versus the amount of money invested. It will also hurt OTT because it will make the big guys bigger and stronger. That will make the noise level that little guys have to break through in order to be heard/discovered/watched that much louder and more difficult.
One of the things that always amazes me being in a world that goes across all media as opposed to specializing and making my bones in just one is that folks get so locked into their perspectives they forget that in the bigger world there are bigger issues which makes their perspective at best cloudy.
For instance, people forget that 30 million views over a month in online is HUGE where in TV which is measured on average minute even a small show on PBS does more in a month. I am not saying 30 million is small, but when one takes the math and multiplies out the dollars available for each viewer times that 30 million it isn't a big enough number. They also ignore that TV is used for IMMEDIATE, BROAD impact, which is why it gets a premium. If this whole thing makes the big bigger, they will only be able to extract bigger premiums which will leave even fewer crumbs for the smaller guys to fight over.
I also think this whole OTT etc thing is going to create more long term, multi device, multi environment deals like Comcast/Disney. Now one could argue Comcast did it because they are in the same boat as Disney given their content businesses. But I think they both were right in it. Disney and other content people would rather have the Comcasts of the world collecting the money and managing the distribution…cleaner, more efficient, and it isn’t Apple or Google or whatever enemy or an army of unknown little guys. Further, that will allow the content guys to keep control of their product. For the Comcasts, it is a way to lock out the OTT."
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