NBC has showed an impressive commitment to providing content online, and not just by their partnership to create Hulu. NBC's own website not only delivers handily on the basics, but also shows some real effort on features to engage the audience.
Almost all of NBC's prime-time and late-night shows have full episodes available on NBC.com. And virtually all of those are available in sharp HD using NBC Direct, which is a desktop application that uses P2P in the background to power quick, high-quality downloads. Now that NBC has built up that broad selection of HD content, the only obstacle is going to the trouble of actually installing the program.
If you prefer to watch your shows in your browser, NBC.com's native player has a lot to recommend it. It runs smoothly, it's well-stocked with extra features, and it's fairly easy to use. (Right now, you can even watch full episodes of 22 shows commercial-free. How cool is that?)
As a standard feature, the background automatically darkens during playback to aid viewing, a feature shared by the ABC.com player and which is optional on Hulu.
Additionally, NBC has a variety of features for sharing the viewing experience. Not only can you embed videos and share them through email or social bookmarking sites, you can also join or host "viewing parties" so that up to 10 viewers can watch episodes together, comment on them and answer customized polls and trivia. Click on the image on the right for an example of setting up one of these parties.
That complete package earned NBC's full episode player the 2009 Webby Award in the Broadband category, which is for:
Sites fully integrating bandwidth-intensive interactive content. This content may include video, animation, and like dynamic elements that bring the computer, television, radio and film one step closer to convergence.
NBC also integrates its website into the full experience of its shows by creating exclusive online content like webisodes (including whole web series) and themed websites around their shows, not only to keep viewers thinking about the show but even to provide extra back story in some cases. Web content can especially come in handy when a show has a long break between seasons, to stoke continued interest in the series.
And for that extra content, NBC (perhaps unsurprisingly) has its own social network, myNBC.
As you can imagine, users build and style their profiles around the shows they enjoy, and are encouraged to join groups, participate in forums and the like. But the social network is also integrated with the extra content that NBC produces, and users can upload photos and video, write their own blog posts and use special widgets and modules to stay in the loop. If the myNBC members list is roughly complete, they can boast almost 900,000 users.
But NBC's online content doesn't end there. The network provides episodes of classic shows like Quantum Leap, the original Battlestar Galactica and many more, and during the Beijing Olympics NBC invested heavily in putting content online despite the high difficulty of translating that into revenue.
Clearly, NBC isn't timid about embracing the internet, but is instead experimenting boldly by creating unique value online and embracing the web as part of their wider business model.
The venerable Peacock Network has put a lot of eggs into its web basket, and anyone who likes any of their shows has reason to be pleased at what's available online. If fans didn't have enough reasons to enjoy their content the safe and legal way already, NBC seems determined to give them as many more reasons as they need.
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