Anika Begay
Peacock’s editorial team edited and rearranged video content on the fly. Viewers and reviewers raved about Snoop Dogg’s segments, so the team created a scrollable playlist of Snoop clips. Users searched for award show 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 wash over you, less as a spectacle, more as a state of being. Campbell says about half of Multiview users click on a specific sport, then use the split screen as a “discovery tool,” while the other half stay in the control-room-style experience.
Control is the name of the game; we’re all getting more accustomed to multiple screens and data sources in front of us at all times. YouTube TV, which has offered a custom multiview feature since last year, promoted preset versions of the Olympics this summer. DirecTV has its own version, too. People are getting more accustomed to “using more than one screen at a time,” Campbell says.
NBC has about 20 actual control rooms operating at any time between Paris, New York and NBC Sports headquarters in Stamford, Conn. For the visually stunning Gold Zone, producers in Stamford select 16 live feeds to monitor at a time, then directors move from event to event, hoping to capture every medal race.
Gold Zone usage more than doubled in the first few days of the games, Campbell says. Multiview has also been used by millions of subscribers. Of course, fans are always wanting more: One woman tweeted to @Peacock on Sunday, asking about the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics: “Can we make a custom multiview where you can pick the four things you watch?” (NBC won’t commit to that, but I’m willing to bet it’s already in the works.)
As I spoke with Solomon, I realized I hadn’t watched a single minute of NBC’s traditional primetime coverage. And she agrees! When I asked her to define success in 2024 from NBC’s perspective, she said, “Success is the audience engaging with the Olympics on social media; on TV; streaming on Peacock. And that’s why we’ve given them all different flavors of the Olympics. Find what you’re happy with, and as long as you’re with us in some form on some platform, it’s a success.”
Because NBC has your attention, and therefore the company’s advertisers. The medium formerly known as television is becoming more and more like an endless Instagram scroll. But some moments (like Team USA’s dominance in Paris) are still big enough to capture nearly everyone’s fragmented attention. “At the end of the day,” Solomon says, “we’re all watching the same team.”
