As anyone who read my monster post on "Free Ride" knows* I have been thinking a lot about the creation and distribution of culture and content.**
That thinking came to a head last weekend when I attempted to watch the webcast of the Superbowl.
Some context, I haven't had cable since 2004***, and I also haven't bothered with a TV antenna. This works fine for me as nearly everything I want to watch is either streaming on-line or available on DVD. The exceptions are when the Red Sox make the playoffs and Superbowl.
And so I was really pleased that the NFL had finally decided to join the real world and make the Superbowl available over the internet. After all this is an event that is being BROADCAST FOR FREE, THROUGH THE AIRWAVES, and as such, there is no logical reason why they should try to restrict access. If anything, you would think they would want to encourage people to take advantage of the web broadcast because they could actually calculate meaningful statistics on viewership, instead of relying on Nielson ratings.
And, to be fair NBC's heart was in the right place. You could see the vision for the Superbowl on line and it was a good and compelling one: an online, fully connected event where you could choose the camera you wanted to view the action from; create and share your own instant replays by rewinding your chosen camera or synchronizing the various feeds, a live feed of social networking sites so you could keep up with the vast community of other people watching the event, and finally, the superbowl commercials available on demand so that you could rewatch your favorites, or watch them during a break in the action.
But, of course, as we all know, modern media companies suck at the internet.
Let's compile a brief list of how NBC and the NFL failed.
1) The usability was really bad. It's great that you can switch from looking at different cameras to looking at the commercials and vice versa, but it was totally not clear where you were supposed to click to get back to the previous screen. Plus, when you switched to full screen mode, the entire layout changed. Finally, at the bottom of the screen, where the new commercials were supposed to be, they had at most 3 available, at any time. They didn't update frequently, and more than half the time the links were to things that weren't even superbowl commercials. To get to the actual list, you had to click through to one of the commmercials, wait until the end, when you were presented with a much longer list of the available videos.
2) No half time show. Which is too bad, since the on the internet no one would have blinked at an errant middle finger.
3) They managed to choose the most inane set of twitter feeds you can possibly imagine. I stopped looking at it after 10 minutes and just looked at my phone.
4) We didn't get anywhere near all the commercials. No Clint Eastwood, no Avengers Trailer, No OK GO. Instead we got the budweiser platinum add set to Kanye West's Runaway****, the sexist and tone deaf Fiat and Go Daddy commercials, and the trailer for Battleship. Enough said.
5) Worse still, the webcast had its own commercial feed which would play both during the actual Superbowl commercial breaks, and when you would switch views, say, to watch one of the superbowl commercials. Yup, that's right, you had to watch a commercial in order to be allowed to watch a commercial. And it gets better. Most of the commercials in the webcast feed were these Chevy commercials that started off by insulting you for watching the webcast, and then invited you to go online to watch their commercials. Yeah, that's right. You had to watch commercials, for commercials, in order to watch commercials. (And they insulted you to boot.)
I want to emphasize points 4 and 5)***** NBC is making it as difficult as possible to watch a video that they are broadcasting for free, over the airwaves, that is supposed to make me want to buy the products of the companies that gave them a lot of money. Near as I can see, NBC would have been better off if I'd watched a pirated UStream feed of the Superbowl. Seriously, the culture business doesn't need pirates to destroy their industry--they're doing a fine job by themselves.
* I am aware that the number of people who read my monster post on Free Ride is, at most, 3.
** Spoiler alert, I hated Free Ride and think its author is an idiot.
*** The author of Free Ride would think that I am an enemy of the culture industry and actively contributing to its deminse, but I refer you to footnote **.
**** A toast to the douchebags, indeed.
***** I know I said "enough said" in point 4). I changed my mind.
