More on MSNBC’s online Super Tuesday coverage
I noticed this Valleywag piece today, praising MSNBC for streaming its television coverage of the Super Tuesday voting online. I totally agree – it was a pleasure to be able to have a browser window open on my monitor and check in on how the historic day was proceeding while doing other work.
The more I think about this, it seems obvious that more networks should do this more of the time. And… any reason not to do it all of the time? Think about it – you can still run full-length commercials between content segments (you can actually have advertisers buy up this space as a special ad unit or run in-house content as MSNBC did) and you can even run additional advertising or sponsorship for the entire time that viewers are tuning in.
At least I think it’s obvious to do this. Can anyone give me a reason why it wouldn’t be?
Here are a few counter-arguments I think of:
* Nielsen isn’t tracking online eyeballs so you run the risk of not counting your full audience. But this seems like a ludicrous reason not to go full bore into the online streaming direction. Good content will never go out of style and in fact its in high demand online. Why not give it to those who want it and help grow your online presence… the place where everything is headed anyway?
* Bandwidth costs. This is a much more legitimate reason, I believe, to go slow on rolling out streaming video. However, bandwidth costs have come down dramatically over the last few years, and in fact CDN pricing (Content Distribution Networks) is now at the point of making video delivery a much cheaper option than it ever has been before.
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