• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, Yesterday

Are there undiscovered lead-in/lead-out benefits on streaming video on demand platforms?

Live broadcasts might be where you might find those results.

Near the end of the live broadcasts of the current Tour de France on NBCUniversal’s Peacock, hosts tout “The Move” -- the long-time Lance Armstrong cycling podcasts, featuring fellow cycling teammate George Hincapie, and now Tour de France champion, Sir Bradley Wiggins.

A year ago, for the Tour de France, “The Move”  was aired selectively after stages of the race. This year, it’s every stage -- 21 of them. But little in the way of on-screen active promotion. Armstrong’s “The Move” has been around -- first as an audio podcast -- since 2017.

After a post-roll advertising pod on Peacock, an onscreen tab popped up to “Watch Next” video tab to watch the near-hour-long video podcast. This is a new element for the biggest and well-known cycling race -- a three-week contest.

What effect has there been?  On July 7, Armstrong commented-- after Stage 3 -- that “The Move” rocketed to the number one podcast level, according to one estimate -- for the first time ever.  As of July 10, “The Move” was the third-highest Apple U.S. sports podcast, according to Podchaser. 

Peacock now pushes more content -- as well as its own adjacent  “Beyond The Podium” YouTube-Peacock show featuring Peacock’s Tour de France’s in-studio analysts, former racers Tejay Van Garderen and Brent Bookwalter.

So a strong lead-out still matters for live streaming -- especially for those sports intense fans. So.. is streaming looking more like TV?

And it's not only live sports, but live special events -- award shows, reality-TV “live” finales -- that are ideal high viewing places for adjacent programming to feed users' interest. 

The biggest benefit now for lead-out/lead-in programming still comes with another sporting event: NFL’s “Super Bowl,” where broadcast TV networks traditionally use the the big NFL game in the hope for a big launching (or boosting) of a scripted/unscripted show.

In the future, will streaming be able to do that as well -- that is, launch a new streaming show? 

Another question: Is this necessary when streamers have stronger first-party data than linear TV, via their servers, to better predict the success of new streaming content?