Episode 17: Rick Cordella, EVP & GM Digital Media, NBC Sports Group

 

 

Streaming and over the top service topics are hot right now so it was great to finally chat with Rick Cordella (@RickCordella on Twitter) who heads up NBC’s digital business.

Topics covered include:

— how NBC’s streaming has evolved over the last 10+ years

— General broad discussion of how they make money on streaming, the differences between digital and linear advertising (interesting note here: although streaming of the Olympics represented only 2-3% of overall live video consumption it accounted for 10% of the revenue)

— overview of the breadth of content offered: currently over 16,000 hours of content a year including the six NBC-owned regional sports networks.

— overview of Playmaker Media, NBC’s white-label offering of it’s internal streaming infrastructure offering

— we talk the evolution of the NBC Gold streaming product. What do you do when you have rights to 75 hours a week of content but can only put 2 of it on TV? NBC Gold provides an opportunity to package the hours they couldn’t put on TV.

— the current state of streaming technology and it’s limits

— Rick’s perspective on the current state of Nielsen reporting for linear & digital and where it needs to go

— impact of ad blocking and password sharing

— more on NBC Gold, balancing what’s on TV versus OTT services & what’s going on with making NBC Gold available in public establishments (like bars)

 

 

Leave a Reply