When Content Is King

Image by Nathan Umstead

I just finished watching an NFL “Short Cut” from DirecTV. As part of their partnership (aka NFL Sunday Ticket), they made previews available for the first week of the season. In addition to highlight videos from some of the major games of the week, they have compiled, in classic NFL Channel fashion, what they are calling “Short Cuts” videos for NFL Sunday Ticket subscribers. Every week you can now not only watch any NFL game in HD, you can catch a compressed 30-minute version later in the week via On Demand. They skip through the dead space in between plays, commercial breaks, and time outs, and give you a full game experience in a shorter time span.

A couple of things that struck me watching the preview…

1. It shows you how much ‘filler’ content there is in any given football game.
2. The NFL understands - at least in this case - how to deliver content that people want, while protecting their brand/product.

If I was a die-hard NFL fan, I probably wouldn’t skip a beat to shell out the dollars for the subscription. Not only could I follow my favorite team, no matter where I lived in the U.S. (we face this deficit as OU fans living in SEC country), I could also keep up with other spotlight games from the previous week, without having to constrain myself to an often less-than-satisfactory ESPN highlight reel.

But the only place I can get those perks and content is from the NFL itself. ESPN might show some quick clips from the games, but they do so courtesy of the NFL.

Where do you have to go to watch the incredible plays from earlier games? NFL.com or via an NFL Sunday Ticket subscription.

I know… the new model is ‘Free’ (I’m reading Chris Anderson’s Free! Why $0.00 is the Future of Business right now). But I think too many times businesses place extremes on their content. They either give it away without thought, or they lock it down with too much concern.

I’m not saying that the NFL is a model case. I am saying that, as someone who works for a company where content is crucial, we need to strive for the happy median - where we strive to deliver what people want, while protecting what we have.

Posted 09.21.2009

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