from the an-olympic-gold-in-misunderstanding dept
Of the various television companies, NBC Universal has always had the most trouble grasping the basic economics of scarcity and abundance, so perhaps it's no surprise that it's still misinterpreting the
data that shows its mistake in trying to stop anyone from watching any of the major Olympic events live online. Instead, it forced people to wait until it was aired, hours later, on TV. This is leading to
massive frustration, as people hear about various events, but can't see them for a while. Stunningly, NBC Universal boss Jeff Zucker
seems to think this is a good thing, claiming:
"There's no question we did the right thing in holding the opening ceremony to air in prime time on NBC that night. The excitement that built out of word of mouth that the opening ceremony was the most spectacular thing that people had seen, that China had wanted to make a statement and they made a statement and people wanted to see that."
Read that a few times and spot the logical inconsistency. He's basically saying that by forbidding people from seeing the content and frustrating them, it built up word of mouth excitement. Apparently, it hasn't occurred to him (despite what his own data suggests) that another way to have built up word of mouth about the events would be to show them so that people could watch them live
and tell their friends about it getting them to go see it when it gets rebroadcast again in prime time.
At the link above, Chris Matyszczyk, lays on the satire in responding to this view that forced deprivation breeds word of mouth demand:
So one assumes, given that this strategy has been so successful, the next time NBC's cameras exclusively witness, say, an assassination or a politician saying or doing something nutty, they will keep it to themselves until prime time comes along. You know, just to build up the excitement.
Let's hold NBC to this standard, shall we?
Filed Under: olympics, scarcity
Companies: nbc universal