NBC is planning to saturate August will more hours of Olympics coverage than all Olympics TV before combined. 2,000 hours will be featured online and the rest spread across NBC and its assortment of cable stations. But the big numbers cloud NBC’s flawed new media strategy that still focuses on limited, controlled content, missing the perfect opportunity to build new business models.

NBC is limited the popular events to its networks and leaving fencing and kayaking online along will lots of behind the scenes footages only the most die-hard will watch. Other news organizations are banned from using any videos of the events and even have to take down footage of the Olympic trials once the games start.  NBC is also hyping its anti-piracy efforts to keep footage off other video sites with China promising to “attack” websites hosting unlicensed footage.

Ironically, with all this effort, NBC plans to loose money on the Olympics.  Spending $800 million to air the games lets the network publicize its own shows and fall line-up.  If the Olympics are all about promotion, then why doesn’t NBC want it promoted?

By limiting how and when and where people can watch the games only means people won’t watch them or will go behind NBC’s back to get what they want.  If pirated copies of the games meet consumers needs, then that’s what consumers will find.

NBC had a gold mine here where they could flood the web with all the Olympics footage possible.  Provide some embedding code and let the steaming video spread. People could then watch the videos where they want when they want with streamed ads in tacked.  Providing the same content on demand brings more people to Olympics websites, where they can be exposed to more information on events, merchandise, and shows, even if the video isn’t found on an NBC affiliated site.

The fact that NBC already plans on taking a loss should encourage them to take risks with their online strategy.  Instead NBC is pushing leftovers on the internet and keeping the fresh meat for the networks. If its online strategy fails to meet expectations, NBC will unlikely consider the poor choice in content.  If it successful, whatever that means, then I’ll wonder how much better it could have done with real, shareable content.

The Economist has two articles showing the lighter side of piracy, reveal how media and software companies are using file-sharing systems to help their businesses.

Music companies find out which bands are popular using file-sharing statistics tracked by companies like BigChampagne.  These statistics help decide tour locations and target advertising dollars.

Movie and TV companies are using file-sharing statistics from BigChampagne to set advertising rates for online video sites like Hulu.

Software also benefits, as Bill Gates says “It’s easier for our software to compete with Linux when there’s piracy than when there’s not.”  90 percent of PCs in China use Windows from mostly pirated sources. Gates recognizes long term revenue increases from loyal Microsoft users than if the company fought piracy, pushing companies to free alternatives.

While admitting piracy helps their businesses, these companies continue to fight file-sharing in every possible way.  Piracy needs to stop being scapegoated, but rather embraced as a competitor - something to learn from and beat at its own game.

[Via Against Monopoly]

The first episode of Joss Whedon’s Dr. Horrible went live and is as awesome as expected. Check out the musical, super hero extravaganza here with Act II and II coming later this week.

Jon and Al Kaplan continue telling Prodigeek about their unique musical talents.  Click here to read part 1 of the interview with creators of Silence: The Musical and 24 Season 2 Musical.

Prodigeek: What can you tell me about the 24 Season 2 Musical? How did that come together?

Kaplans: Our mother kept bothering us to follow up Silence with this “the musical” or that “the musical” and we just couldn’t stand it anymore so we decided to adapt our favorite season of 24. We also liked the idea of doing a musical that was so weirdly specific and even more impossible to stage than Silence was.

Prodigeek: Haha, very true I’m sure

Kaplans: So we wouldn’t have to worry about other people taking it and staging it

Prodigeek: What musicals did your mother suggest?

Kaplans: Our mom would suggest literally anything she saw on cable. She even suggested a musical about her new husband. Which actually would have been funny but only to us.

Prodigeek: I think the 24 musical is funny, even though I prefer season 4 mostly due to my hatred of Kim Bauer and the killer cougar.

Kaplans: That Kim story is the reason we had to do season 2. And Kevin Dillon. As straight seasons, 4 and 5 were our favorite. 2 had more to offer musically.

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There are many things that go into making a brilliant musical, and thankfully Jon and Al Kaplan ignore all of these. These brothers have written a website full of hilarious musical spoofs, from Silence: The Musical based on Silence of the Lambs to the never-demanded 24 Season 2: The Musical.  Silence: The Musical premiered at the New York City Fringe Festival and is currently working its way onto Off-Broadway.  Jon and Al spoke with me about their unique musical repertoire. Click here for part 2 of the interview.

Prodigeek: What made you think Silence of the Lambs needed to be a musical?

Kaplans: We’ve been Buffalo Bill fans our whole lives. We would quote his lines in school. We thought it would be funny to hear Buffalo Bill sing. That was the original impetus and it grew from there. We saw that there was a song called “Would You” in Singin’ in the Rain and “Would You?” is one of our favorite Bill lines.

Prodigeek: What brought you two together to work on it?

Kaplans: We’re brothers, and we’ve worked on other stuff together. Most people think we are the same person anyway, even though one of us is bald. We’ve worked together on stuff since we were kids making home videos (including an epic version of Rambo that has been finally rendered obsolete by Son of Rambow) and we started writing music together during college.

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Now the second of Geek Musical Week on Prodigeek, I continue my interview with Buffy creator Joss Whedon about his upcoming internet, musical, superhero series, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, appearing next week beginning on July 15th on their official site. Read Part 1 of our Joss Whedon interview here.

Prodigeek - How did you kind of come to this idea of an internet musical about a superhero?

Whedon - I had come up with the concept and the title originally as an audio podcast. I wanted to write a song. I was tired of not writing songs and I wanted a structure to write from. And I though this guy would have a blog and sing about what’s going on with him. It would be a fun thing to do. Then, during the strike, when everyone was looking to create internet content, I thought of it as a limited series. Then when I decided to do it myself, I thought of it as an even more limited series. It played itself out pretty simply. I brought writers in; we knew from the start exactly what we wanted to do. I had written the songs for it a while ago. The first song was called “My Freeze Ray.” I played that for the other writers. We got sort of an idea of sound, and then we started breaking a story. We broke it into three acts, a mini-series event, and then hopefully to make it a downloadable commodity. In addition to creating something out of love of musicals and love of the fans, I also wanted to create something where we could make money doing our own thing, outside the system. I also want to, in a perfect dream world, pay my crew.

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To kick off Geek Musical Week, Prodigeek speaks to Joss Whedon about his upcoming internet, musical, superhero series, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog coming to a website near you next week. The creator of Buffy and the Buffy musical episode, “Once More, With Feeling,” Whedon already has a classic Geek Musical under his belt as he tackles the world of new media and internet distribution, something you surely need superpowers to tame.  Check out part 2 of our Whedon interview here.

Prodigeek - Tell me about Dr. Horrible.

Joss Whedon - Well, I can tell you it’s the story of Dr. Horrible, a low-rent super villain trying to make his way in the world, being evil, defeat his nemesis, Captain Hammer, who beats him up on a weekly basis, and work up the courage to talk to the prettiest girl walking around. It basically follows his travails. It’s about 40 minutes, in three acts, and was designed to be just your typical internet, superhero musical.

Prodigeek - What defines the typical internet, superhero musical?

Whedon - I don’t know, I’ve never seen one. It’s supposed to define the typical superhero musical, by being the first one. We’re getting it out before Spider-Man on Broadway. By the way, they are doing Spider-Man on Broadway, you know that, right?

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Superheroes, demons, and plants are not your standard musical subject matter, but for the unique genre of Geek Musicals, they are the C# to our A major chord.  Musicals dwell in a world of fantasy and disbelief that geeks are well versed in making the genres oddly compatible yet rarely recognized.  Here I highlight the 7 best geek musicals, judged on their subject matter, entertainment value, and quality of songs.  Only musicals with released performances, either on stage or film, were considered.  Each musical includes a musical video, so prepare to hum, laugh, and cry through the list of the Best Geek Musicals here at Geek Musical Week on Prodigeek.

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NBC announced yesterday Tom Brokaw will moderate Meet the Press during the election season, taking over for the recently deceased Tim Russert. The obvious benefits Brokaw are his decades of experience, headlining NBC Nightly News for more than 20 years. Steve Boriss of Future of News points out, this as a step backward.

NBC has decided to take a step backward, replacing Tim Russert with dino-anchor Tom Brokaw on Meet the Press. Actually, the decision was made for them because a step forward, or even a step to the side, does not exist. Network news is over.

Brokaw is an amazing journalist that my parents loved. And my grandparents. Network news wants raise its audience, but playing to the aging baby boomers is short term thinking (not to be too morbid here). There are several generations of people under 40 who don’t care about network news.

Brokaw is especially ironic in an election season pitting the old versus the new. John McCain and Hillary Clinton push the standard baby boomer sales pitches in an election season when Obama’s change mantra became as refreshing as a politician knowing how to use a computer. Tom Brokaw is network news answer to Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.

The problem is there isn’t a new generation of reporters to take over for Russert. Even if Brokaw is only temporary, there aren’t many options to replace him (Aaron Brown please?).  Few journalists today have the years of experience as foreign correspondents and hard news junkies that shaped the last generation of news anchors, giving us credible newsmen. NBC had to move backwards because there isn’t anybody in front.

One of the greatest Star Wars video games owes it all to those little building blocks called Legos. Lego Star Wars gave the duel trilogy a hilarious and enjoyable romp through the galaxy with tons of collectables, vehicles, and playable characters. More Lego games including the just released Indiana Jones and upccoming Batman lead me to wonder what else can the franchise build.

7. Power Rangers

They might be campy and kiddy, but they still have awesome video game potential yet to be realized. Awesome martial arts moves with cool weapons and giant robots all to fight a bizarre assortment of monsters. With hundreds of monsters, Zords, and different kinds of Power Rangers over the years, there’s tons of unlockables to give this game long legs. Just remember co-op. This is a team effort.

6. South Park

Let’s see the mature side of Legos by turning the foul mouthed kids of Colorado into colorful blocks of fun. Let’s even risk the cliched sandbox approach, rebuilding the entire town of South Park in Legos with missions from the show, like fighting vicious turkeys and Mecha-Streisand.

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