Peacock’s editorial team quickly adjusted and reorganized its video content: Viewers and critics were talking about Snoop Dogg’s segments, so the team created a scrollable playlist of Snoop’s clips. Users were looking for medal ceremony videos, so now there’s a collection of those, too.
Some of the new formats are fundamentally different “ways of watching TV.” With Multiview, for example, the Olympics envelop you; more like a state of presence than a show. Campbell said about half of Multiview users click into specific sports and use the split screen as a “discovery tool,” while the other half are stuck with the control-room-style experience.
Control is the key word. We’re becoming more and more accustomed to having multiple screens and data sources in front of us at all times. YouTube TV, which has offered its own multi-view feature since last year, is promoting a preset Olympics version this summer. DirecTV has its own version, too. Campbell says people are becoming more and more accustomed to “using multiple screens at once.”
NBC is about 20 Actual Control rooms are running 24/7 between Paris, New York and NBC Sports headquarters in Stamford, Conn. For the eye-candy show “The Gold Zone,” a producer in Stamford selects and monitors 16 live feeds at a time, while a director races from event to event, trying to capture every medal shot.
Campbell said Gold Zone usage more than doubled within days of the start of the tournament. Multiview is also being used by millions of subscribers. Of course, fans are always asking for more features. On Sunday, a woman tweeted @Peacock about the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, asking, “Can we make a custom multiview where I can pick 4 things to watch?” (NBC isn’t promising anything, but it’s likely in the works.)
In talking with Solomon, I realized I have never watched a minute of NBC’s traditional primetime television coverage. And she’s OK with that! When I asked her to define success for 2024 from NBC’s perspective, she said, “Success is an audience that tunes in to the Olympics on social media, on our TV platforms, streaming on Peacock. That’s why we’ve offered different flavors of the Olympics to all of our viewers. Find what satisfies you. And as long as you’re with us in some way on some platform, that’s a success.”
NBC has its viewers’ attention, and so do the company’s advertisers. The medium we once called TV has become more and more like a never-ending Instagram scroll. But some moments, like the U.S. team’s crushing victory in Paris, are big enough to capture just about everyone’s fragmented attention. “At the end of the day, we’re all watching the same team,” Solomon says.
