Sports and Live Content

Netflix streaming was down by up to 25% during the 2012 London Olympics. With Netflix beginning to create its own original content, are sports and live content ways that television will be able to stay ahead?

Staying new and relevant is so important to television programming. At this stage, Netflix and other online streaming services are comprised primarily of old content.

It is also important to remember that the coverage of the recent Olympic games in London was marked by controversy. Much of the outrage in Australia was channelled into the Facebook group Channel 9 Olympics Coverage sucks. Similar criticism was directed toward NBC in the United States for their coverage. The delaying of major events so they could be broadcast during primetime outraged many NBC viewers.

With this in mind, perhaps live content is better suited to online streaming. Will audiences be more satisfied if they are able to stream live content on demand? What will this mean for television?

Pulling Together a Feature

At this stage of our project we’ve found several important angles to explore regarding the way online streaming will affect the broadcast industry if legal streaming alternatives became available and popular in Australia. We have divided up the story angles between our group members.

I will be examining the effect of services such as Netflix on children’s content, utilising case studies from the United States. I will also be examining the way local content has been affected using Canada as a case study. Live content seems to be a way to keep television on top at the moment and hence is another important angle to explore.

Sarah B will be looking at the legal implications of online streaming in regard to intellectual copyright and copyright. She will be interviewing people at the forefront of their fields to help explain the complexity of these ideas.

In some ways online streaming has been shown to help ratings on television. Eryk will be examining the catch-up effect. He will also be looking at ways that people are already streaming content in Australia, whether legal or illegal.

Tyson will be looking at the way the presentation of websites allow the effective dissemination of information to audiences. He will also be considering the appropriate publication and style for our website.

Jessica will be examining the impact on advertising. Television and online content work according to very different business models and advertising on each medium have very different levels of effectiveness.

We will be researching these in more detail and outlining our findings in the blog.