NBC Lays Out Final Digital Plans for Olympics

Provides further details on digital platforms that include additional social media partnerships

By George Winslow -- Broadcasting & Cable, 7/24/2012 12:56:55 PM

NBC Olympics Tuesday laid out additional details of its record digital coverage of the London Games that include some new features and partnerships with tech companies.

In addition to the previously announced apps and partnerships with such companies as Facebook, Twitter, Adobe and YouTube that will provide coverage and social media tools for the delivery of a record 3,500-plus hours of content on digital platforms, NBC Olympics also announced that it would be working with Google+, Shazam, Instagram, Tumblr and GetGlue.

A centerpiece of the coverage will be NBCOlympics.com, which will live-stream 3,500-plus hours of coverage, up from 25 events and 2,200 hours at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

As previously reported, the site will also include live streams of the Olympic content on four NBCU cable channels, rewinds of all the event coverage, news, highlights and athlete profiles. It will also feature multiple streams for certain sports, such as gymnastics or track and field that would allow the user to choose a stream dedicated to the long jump or javelin.

To make it easier for users to find and keep track of major events, NBCOlympics.com is offering the Gold Zone video channel that will take viewers from a swimming final to a soccer shootout as the live events unfold. A text commentator will provide context and material as the video player switches from event to event.

As previously reported, two apps developed and powered by Adobe will play a key role in the digital coverage. Live streams for 3,500-plus hours for all 32 sports are being offered for free to authenticated subscribers via the TV Everywhere app called NBC Olympics Live Extra.

A second app NBC Olympics can be used by anyone, including those who don't have a multichannel subscription. It has much less video content but includes groundbreaking "Primetime Companion" features. This will offer a variety of social media tools on Facebook and Twitter as well as trivia, polls, slideshows, videos and athlete bios that are synchronized to the live primetime coverage on NBC.

Primetime coverage on NBC is one of the few things that will not be streamed.

With the 2012 Games being widely dubbed as "the first social media Olympics," NBC is providing an unprecedented amount of social media features.

As previously reported, NBC Olympics has inked extensive partnerships with YouTube, which will provide the video player technology, hosting and infrastructure for the live streaming of all of NBCOlympics.com's content online. YouTube will also promote to NBCOlympics.com's content from YouTube.com.

Major partnership with Facebook and Twitter will play a key role in both the digital and on-air coverage, with on-air commentators using social media tools to track what people are talking about on Facebook and Twitter during the Olympics.

As a result of the partnerships, NBC will launch Talk Meter, a new Facebook data tool to track the stories that fans are talking about on Facebook, and provide the first-ever Olympics event page in the U.S. at Twitter.com/#Olympics.

The digital coverage will also be Shazam-enabled and NBC Olympics will be taking over the NBC Sports Google+ page that is in over 1.1 million circles.

In addition NBC Olympics will be on Tumblr and have an Instagram page, where users can share Instagram photos through Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.

Finally, GetGlue has developed a variety of NBC Olympics stickers for fans to collect during the Games during various events.