The network no one owns
: Broacasting & Cable’s blog reports that the number of online streamers who watched pope coverage on MSNBC far outnumbered those who watched on big, old TV:
Earlier this week, MSNBC said there had been 850,000 accesses of Pope-related streamed video on its Web site, msnbc.com. By Friday, it said, that number had jumped to almost four million (3,989,000)….
Now, some of those hits are certainly repeat customers, but it is still an impressive number, particularly given that in March, MSNBC averaged 336,000 viewers per day to its cable channel.
Imagine how much bigger it would be if the audience didn’t have to stream and could watch anytime, anywhere… if MSNBC provided downloads the audience could distribute.
I’ll take any excuse to repeat my favorite stats: Jon Stewart’s Crossfiricide got a few hundred thousand views on big, old CNN but 7 million on iFilm and untold millions on Bittorrent.
: Now look at how Ian Schwartz, Trey Jackson, and others are making a name for themselves recording segments off TV and putting them up online.
Uh, hello, networks, you should be doing this (too). You should be putting up all your stories with permalinks so they can join the conversation.
If you did, you’d grow your audiences, improve your branding, add to ad revenue (if you attached ads to the videos), and build a new relationship with the audience. Simple.
