Webcasting
Now you see it

Although Web TV has yet to deliver its full potential, streaming video events in 2000 have demonstrated that there is demand. Ironically the driving forces behind the events have come from more traditional sources.

In the quest for revenue generating visitors, web sites have been forced to spend enormous amounts on TV advertising. (Over two thirds of the American Superbowl advertisers were dot-coms.) And if online hits are their only source of income this could prove expensive to exclusively Internet companies. On the other hand if you are already an experienced retailer, well, etailing is just fancy mail order. Few companies know this better than Victoria's Secrets who once again created one of the Web events of the year through their hugely expensive charity Webcast from Cannes in May 2000. According to the company over 2 million Internet viewers watched the fashion show from some 140 different countries, with another half a million people logging on soon afterwards. Sales hit almost Christmas levels in the days that followed. The reasons for the success may be that Victoria's Secrets sells lingerie and the world's top models graced its Webcast. Not every site possesses such attributes.

The same voyeurism seems to have been at work at other sites in 2000. In Big Brother TV show clones, TV and Webcam tie-ups have been extremely popular around the world. The United Kingdom Big Brother sites registered over 3 million visitors during July and August.

However, nothing attracts as much as a big name and Madonna is certainly that. Over 9 million viewers using Msn.net watched her end of year Webcast in November from Brixton!

Now you don't.

One great absentee from the Web this year was the Sydney Olympics. By refusing to allow transmission over the Internet the International Olympics Committee (IOC) managed to channel spectators to the more traditional and rights paying operators. They argue that it is impossible to control Internet coverage in the same way that geographically based TV can be. So in order to protect the commercial interests of major broadcasters the Internet is excluded. At the Sydney games, web journalist were not given accreditation while in the United States NBC, (who have paid some $3.5bn for exclusive broadcast rights until 2008), only put video clips up on the Web after they had already been broadcast on prime time, sometimes 18 hours after the event.

Not all broadcasters are in favour of such a blanket ban. The BBC, which sees the Internet as a complimentary medium to its broadcast role, was uncomfortable about the restrictions and the sanctions imposed. As the Napster case demonstrates once the Internet genie is out of the bottle it is difficult to stop the spread of information over the net. In the age of the digital camera and the mobile phone the IOC is being optimistic to think it can continue to exercise a web blackout for the next ten years.

For links to other articles

Ostic | telecommunications | internet| video games | books | review 2000
glossary | links

Internet