Wrestling seems an unlikely leading edge idea, but it is. These guys shook up television ratings a couple of years ago. Now they have a cool idea. Manage fans and viewers by merging TV and the web. Essentially, wrestling drives people from their USA network broadcast to their website where action continues unabated during TV commercial breaks. Advertisers are in a tizz.

But think about it. Why stop watching any live sport just because the network cuts away? Last year ESPN showed a football game,  with ESPN 2 showing what was happening in the producing booth in real time. With digital TV presenting many different feeds at one channel stop this would  all be possible right now.

And for networks, instead of allowing channel surfers the freedom to test other stations at ad breaks, why not push viewers to their own website or blog to continue the experience of the show immediately? It's not going to work for everyone (TV is entertainment after all) nor for every show. But it shows imagination.

But it does mean advertisers are going to have to be more creative about placing and managing their messages as the one size fits all environment collapse virtually every day.

This entry was posted on October 27, 2005 at 6:20 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Posted in Main Page by Richard McKinnon No Comments Yet