Beijing Olympics: A test for TV

The Beijing Olympic Games will surely be a test for the TV industry. For the first time in Olympic history, there will be complete global online coverage of the events.

Major broadcasters such as NBC and BBC, technology providers like Adobe and Microsoft and content networks like Google's Youtube are all getting ready for the online battle.The Athens 2004 Olympics broke all global TV viewing records with near 4 billion unique people watching the games at least once, and a cumulative audience at around 40 billion. However, at that time online broadcast coverage was only available to a few territories.

But times are a-changing. This will be the first games when online streaming video will be availabile to mass audiences. NBC will offer more than 2,000 hours of live video coverage and 3,000 hours of on-demand video on its website. The BBC holds the exclusive rights for the Olympics content in the UK and will bring daily highlights to its iPlayer service. Meanwhile, Youtube has managed to get the rights for online video coverage of the event in the 77 territories that aren't officially covered by Olympic sponsors.

The increasing popularity of streaming video combined with the expectations raised by the Beijing Games will surely boost web traffic and possibly be the greatest test the broadcast and telco industries have faced to date.

What will you be watching on TV this Christmas Day?

TV is as big a part of the UK Christmas experience as turkey and presents. Who can forget Den giving Angie divorce papers on Eastenders in 1986, Del and Rodney finally hitting the jackpot in 1996 or the Queen’s ‘annus horribilus’ in 1992?

Actually, many of us could forget the Queen’s Speech according to new research commissioned by ANT into the ultimate Christmas Day TV. Her majesty’s words of wisdom limped into the top 10 at number nine, and the charts were dominated by blockbuster films and comedy programmes like Only Fools and Horses. Interestingly, in the 18-24 age category the ultimate Christmas TV program was The Simpsons, which made only number eight in the overall list.

But audiences have been declining for Christmas Day TV for years now, so is TV’s importance to the big day also in decline? I’d say not – the difference is that there is much more choice now, in terms of volume of channels available and ways to watch the content, such as IPTV. Viewers are no longer dictated to by the schedules, and with content freely available for download we are genuinely not far from away from having our own personal Christmas Day TV schedules.