Commentary
Just An Online Minute... Election Streams
- by November 4, 2004
If election night was all about television, on the day after the election, I sought close contact with the Web.
While I typically find music or radio of any kind highly distracting at work, yesterday, I sought out NPR on the Web; I wanted more context on the outcome of the election. I also wanted to hear, but more importantly, see Senator Kerry's concession speech and President Bush's victory address. We don't have a TV in the MediaPost offices.
I went first to CNN.com and found no button or direction for accessing streaming video. I saw no promotion of the 2 p.m. address. Was it possible that CNN wasn't offering the speeches live?
I scooted over to MSNBC.com where I was assured free, live streaming video of both speeches and a crisp interface that showed me exactly how to access the upcoming live video of Kerry's concession speech and Bush's victory address. Beyond that, I found a complete gallery of video clips featuring NBC correspondents reporting on the election.
At 2 p.m., I fired up the video, turned up the speaker volume, and was able to watch an event I might not otherwise have seen in its entirety. The video of the 20-minute concession speech was a bit grainy and it froze several times, but overall, I was pleased and astonished that I could get exactly what I wanted, when I wanted it. Thank you, MSNBC.com.
I'm told that while all the data isn't in, there were 82,000 simultaneous streams at the start of Kerry's speech; this isn't the total number of streams, nor does it include people who will watch it later online.
Interestingly, MSNBC.com counts 81,000 simultaneous streams at the start of President Bush's hour-long address, with the same qualifications applying to the Bush clip as to the Kerry clip.
The number of simultaneous streams accessed, "is far greater than what we had for the Reagan funeral, it's about a third better than what we had for that event," recalls Dean Wright, editor-in-chief and vice president, MSNBC.com.
Wright says MSNBC.com served a total of 250,000 streams on Election Day. "What this night really told me is that there continues to be a demand for live and on-demand video. We're really living in a cross-media world and the ubiquity of broadband is making that possible," he says.
There was evidence of cross-media consumption on several blogs that appeared on MSNBC.com, Wright points out, citing the fact that reader comments on several blogs on the site revealed heavy consumption of TV election coverage.
"The overall lesson is that it's a cross-media world and [Internet] video is really here to stay," Wright says, adding: "We saw it as a big part of our post-election day coverage and [we see] the at-work audience as our primetime audience. For a lot of people, that's the only way they're going to be able to see [events] live in real-time."
It was certainly true for my colleagues and me, as some gathered around the computer in my pseudo cube to watch the Kerry speech. It reminded me a little of the lean back experience I'd had the night before in front of that other glowing media surface - the television. On a completely unrelated matter, Time Warner yesterday reported it must set aside $500 million to cover legal fees related to federal investigations of advertising deals and accounting processes within its America Online division prior to 2002.
While AOL's ad revenues grew 44 percent for the quarter, due in large part to its acquisition of Advertising.com, subscriber defections continued. The AOL subscriber count now stands at 22.7 million; the company lost 646,000 subs during the quarter. Interestingly, just a day prior to the Time Warner earnings announcement, published reports noted that AOL plans to lay off 700 employees. When MediaDailyNews asked AOL representatives to confirm the reports, it was told that the matter would be addressed in the earnings conference call. It was not. Nice going. They probably think it's a dead issue, buried under the weight of election news.
