NBC's Kliavkoff: Digital Drives TV Viewership

As media continues to fragment into millions of finely-targeted shards, much is being made about how increased usage of digital media affects usage of existing media. As one example, NBC Universal’s outgoing chief digital officer, George Kliavkoff, says that online streaming of video content actually drives TV viewership.

Kliavkoff, speaking yesterday at a New York Media Information Exchange Group breakfast, noted, “If someone watches a primetime show online, it actually drives incremental television viewership in following weeks. It’s sort of an opportunity for people to catch up on a drama and stay with the story.”

This proved true even during the Beijing Olympics, he added, when there was an astounding supply and demand for Olympics content online. The network provided 2200 live broadcast hours during the Olympics, and provided 10 million hours of online streaming to 52 million unique visitors who racked up a total of 1.4 billion page views. Still, according to Nielsen Media Research, it was the most watched television event ever in the U.S., with 211 million people, or 86 percent of TV households, tuning in.

Why does this dynamic happen? I’d argue it’s about the power of the story. In the main, print news media is being cannibalized by the Internet, but when there’s a heavy element of drama, all media benefit from the increased interest. It doesn’t matter whether that drama is fiction, like a compelling primetime drama, or non-fiction, like the Olympics or the presidential election. Something tells me that non-episodic series, and run-of-the-mill news stories, never see this benefit.