March Madness the First Big Test for Live TV on the iPad?
CBS and Turner Sports announced last week the launch of a new iPad version of the popular March Madness On Demand (MMOD) app with free streaming of college basketball games during the NCAA tournament. Not only is this big news for college sports fans, it’s a major event for anyone watching the evolution of live, mobile television. The iPad wasn’t even available at this time last year, but MMOD stats from 2010 suggest that viewers are very interested in watching games from their mobile devices. And given how beautifully the iPad displays video, it’s a good bet many will take advantage of mobile access with a larger screen.
This year’s tournament is the first big live event we’ve seen showcased on the iPad. Like the Olympics, or a presidential inauguration, March Madness is a great testing ground for new TV-watching features, and a chance to gather large amounts of data on viewer behaviors. What will the iPad tell us about MMOD viewing that smartphones and PCs haven’t? How will consumer behaviors differ on this still-new platform? We’ll find out when the NCAA tournament begins on March 15th.
August 23rd, 2011 at 7:07 pm
[...] MediaPost is reporting today on a new study by Omnicom suggesting that video streaming has become exceedingly common in the US. According to the study, more than half of Americans now regularly stream video, and the same can be said for more than 80 percent of US Internet users. It’s not clear how Omnicom defines “regularly,” but the study is still telling. It presents another data point in the clear trend of online video’s growth. [...]