The First Digital Olympics

I had some trouble this week trying to find something relevant to new media techniques and sports. Thankfully, I remembered that the Olympics just began in China and I decided to search for related stories. This article in Business Week just about covered what I was searching for.

I really can’t remember the last time I was interested in watching the Olympics. Maybe it was when the NBA sent its ‘dream team’ of players back in 1996 to win the gold or when Tonya Harding ordered Nancy Kerrigan to be attacked just before her performance at the U.S. Olympic qualifier. No matter the sport, it seems that the media tries their best to capture the public’s attention with the best headline.

Since ‘new media’ is my flavor of the month, I focused on something other than the competition and analyzed how media outlets are strategizing to deliver the Olympics to viewers and the new media techniques being used.

I’m sure you are familiar with the term ‘new media.’ For me, the term means; a medium that is not as traditional or widely accepted as other mediums but is gaining momentum. You may not see that definition in textbooks but like I said, it does it for me.

‘Younger audience’ is pretty much synonymous with ‘new media’ so I’ll go out on a limb and suggest that media networks will be targeting this younger audience with new media techniques. Social networking sites like Facebook and YouTube will be playing most of the competition to engage this audience and increase their exposure to a variety of sports. Google has publicized a new mobile search tool to help track Olympics results from mobile phones. It also set up a mobile Web site specifically so viewers of the games can check results and events.

NBC and the NY Times have created podcasts to allow interested viewers to recap past news, sights and sounds that have already been reported. The creation of an Olympic wiki by the Olympic Committee has enabled officials to create real-time schedules and starting times for these events. This same wiki also keeps officials, fans and media current with possible venue changes, meetings, and upcoming news. NBC will also stream 2,200 hours on-line video across 25 sports on NBCOlympics.com. The Web site will recycle these events already seen online and TV channels into thousands of hours of on-demand encores of full events and highlights.

These techniques not only bring the Olympic Games into the digital age but it also forces the advertising agencies to use these techniques in order to reach their audiences. Increased mediums of communication also mean increased advertising revenue for these media outlets.
According to the AP, before the Olympics started, NBC earned more than $1 billion in advertising revenue for the event for which it spent $894 million to acquire the U.S. broadcast and digital rights. I wonder what NBC has made since the Games began.

Seems that strategic communication is alive and well.