DC Games 2014: The Blueprint that Changed The Game

By DC Cueva

@DC408dxtr

We are nearing the closing weekend of the XXII Olympic Winter Games in Sochi, a very eventful Olympics to say the least. Aside from me being an MTV fan, outside of their world I watch a lot of sports television. But I'm actually one of those handful of people who actually doesn't have an ESPN network as the default sports channel in my room as, among the sports channels, I would usually have NBCSN, Golf Channel or the two Comcast SportsNet channels on more than than others. I've grown a very good relationship with the NBC Sports Group, having become a loyal viewer to virtually all the properties it airs - Olympics, NFL, golf, NHL, EPL & the like, this dating all the way back to them airing the NBA.

   But there's one particular experiment along the way in the peacock' sports history that they might look back on with mixed feelings, but was forward-looking for the time it was released in. It was the Olympic Triplecast, a pay-per-view experiment of presenting around-the-clock coverage of the Barcelona Olympics. And although in the short term it wasn't nearly as big a financial success as NBC envisioned, in the long run its ambitious blueprint of offering Olympic action on multiple channels would ultimately change how viewers would consume Olympic coverage in the digital age, and would signal the beginning of a shift towards speciality sports television that is now commonplace today.

In the late '80s & early '90s, cable television had increased sports fans' television viewing habits beyond the traditional weekend afternoon slots on the networks and some weeknights nationally & locally to the 24-7 machine we now take for granted today. ESPN had acquired rights to televise NFL and Major League Baseball to add to its stable, while regional sports networks popped up across the country to show more of the local pro & college teams.

   In 1992, looking to cash in on this new phase of sports television, NBC partnered with New York cable provider Cablevision to broadcast coverage of the 1992 Barcelona Olympics on pay-per-view. Their collaboration, the Olympic Triplecast, offered three channels to televise events live, while still continuing to show them later on tape delay on NBC in primetime, a practice that continues to this day. The channels were branded Red, White and Blue, and a special free three-button remote control was even offered by some cable operators as a marketing tool for viewers to sign up.

   The channels aired for 12 hours a day from 5am ET to 5pm PT, then repeated for the next 12 hours, carrying the natural world feed of Olympic coverage instead of the traditional unilateral coverage used by the U.S. broadcasters. The Blue channel featured swimming and track & field; while White focused on gymnastics, boxing, equestrian, rowing & other minor sports; and Red covered basketball, baseball, volleyball, water polo and team sports.

However, like many other start-up operations, a number of issues came about in this ambitious experiment.

- First, there were the logistics of it and whether or not a viewer's cable system was taking part, even with a national call center being set up to help out. 

- Second, there was a lower uptake in the amount of people subscribing to the event. Internal & external projections had the number ranging from 125,000 to 250,000 subscribers, but slow sales would ultimately lead to damage control. Discounts were offered midway through the Games but to mo avail, then bought time on CNBC with a split screen of all three channels.

- Three, there was advertising, including NBC & Cablevision being given a slap on the wrist for deceptive advertising early on, and a number of NBC affiliates rejecting Triplecast advertising out of fear of promoting competiton for their Olympic broadcast.

- and Fourth, there were fears that the Triplecast was cannibalizing NBC's main coverage, offering the same events the service was offering on a pay-per-view basis that the network was showing free.

In the end, and though the firestorm started before the flame was lit, the Olympic Triplecast was nothing but a failure by the time the cauldron was extinguished. Only 200,000 total subscribers were clocked in, leading Cablevision head Chuck Dolan to concede that this wasn't the home run they had expected. Many media outlets, from the New York Times to Entertainment Weekly, chimed in to declare that the Triplecast was a flop. And the final financial number would eventually prove that point: a joint $100 million loss for NBC and Cablevision.

While the Olympic Triplecast cast the lone dark spot on an Olympiad highlighted by the Dream Team and the first Games under the new NBC Sports regime of executive producer (and protege of ABC Sports head Roone Arledge) Dick Ebersol and primetime host Bob Costas, its ambitious blueprint of offering Olympic coverage on multiple channels would ultimately change the way fans would consume the biggest event on television. While there was no cable coverage of the Atlanta Olympics, and CBS & Turner teaming up to provide some cable coverage of the Winter Games in the '90s (a precursor to their March Madness partnership), later deals NBC would make with the IOC eventually allowed for coverage to expand to its cable channels. 

   After offering coverage in Sydney and Salt Lake on MSNBC and CNBC, the series of acquisitions made by NBC Universal of numerous cable networks, first with General Electric partnering with Vivendi and later by Comcast, would ultimately expand Olympic TV coverage to USA Network, Spanish language network Telemundo, Bravo and other channels in the NBCU family. And it all culminated in London with NBC Sports Network (rebranded from Versus) showing Team USA basketball, women's soccer and other marquee events, plus marquee live events from these Sochi Games including the USA/Russia and USA/Canada hockey games to record audiences.

   And recognizing the increasing amount of consumption of web video in the digital age, plus advancements in technology, in 2008 NBC made a bold step in offering 2,200 hours of live streaming coverage of 25 sports on NBCOlympics.com and offering tons of other Olympics video as well. It expanded in London and in Sochi with all competition & medal events being streamed online, delivering record amounts of live views and total video consumption, online, mobile and tablets, peaking with over 2 million streams of the USA/Canada semifinal on Friday during school/work hours.

   Along with that, in the manner sports which have gone virtually unnoticed by American television in the past such as archery, badminton, table tennis, team handball and the like would finally get their due in being showcased to viewers in America, along with expanded coverage of action in team sports besides of course Team USA games. Of course, the catalyst to the expanded exposure of those aforementioned sports was the surprise hit of curling at the Salt Lake Olympics.

And the Triplecast would prove the viability of showing more sports events on a pay-per-view basis beyond only boxing, wrestling and later mixed martial arts. Out-of-market sports packages such as NFL Sunday Ticket, NBA League Pass, MLB Extra Innings, NHL Center Ice and ESPN's Game Plan & Full Court eventually came about because of the Triplecast.

   And the success of those packages also inspired specialty sports channels such as Golf Channel - which came on the air in 1995; Speed Vision - which became Speed and then became Fox Sports 1 last year; Outdoor Life Network, which evolved into Versus and became NBC Sports Network in 2012; and NBA TV, which went on the air in 2000 as the first of the league-owned specialty channels.

   So, with the closing weekend of Sochi 2014 now here, and with the reality setting in soon that the next time we'll have this all-encompassing 24/7 Olympics fever again in a long 30 months from now in Rio (it'll only be a one-hour time difference from there to NY meaning it will be an entirely live Olympics), many can give a nod to that failed experiment called the Triplecast for giving the world the eventual blueprint of covering the Olympics in the digital age.

Stay here on DCBLOG for more Games 2014 posts during Sochi 2014 as we cover various aspects of the Olympics, the sports and events from Olympic world as the action unfolds from Russia. And these posts will continue to March until the end of the Paralympics. And Twitter @DC408dxtr will offer live tweeting (Pacific time) of TV coverage including primetime and live streaming & cable coverage, time permitting.

   We're also covering MTV's Real World Ex-Plosion and Are You The One? here & on twitter, including a Fan's View of the RW After Shows and SocialPulse diaries of this week's RW episode which will be posted over the weekend. For now, until I join you on twitter and then here on the blog later, thanks for reading and see you then.

- DC