RSSSocial networks, and especially micro-blogging services like Twitter are incredible sources for the real-time release of news and sports results. As a result, as their use grows and expands, television networks are going to face huge challenges to their archaic programming practices.
These television networks are used to being the “only” source of coverage for their customers to keep up with happenings around the world, be they the latest scores or updates on breaking news items. Because of this, most networks, especially in a place like Australia which is far removed in terms of timezone and geography from most locations globally, often show sporting events on delayed telecast, or hold back breaking news items until regular news bulletins or broadcasts.
These days, that is really playing with fire. At any time, it is very easy to use a service like Twitter Search to find someone tweeting sports scores, or commenting on news items. For example, Channel 7 during the Olympics delayed the broadcast of many of the events, including Matthew Mitcham winning gold in the 10m platform diving. As a result, a number of people tweeted the result of the event before Channel 7 showed it (see here for an example). This meant actually watching became a total let-down and definitely encouraged me to switch channels before it was finished.
If the stations aren’t careful this will start happening more and more, and will be just another death blow to the “dinosaur” networks who are under extreme pressure from a variety of sources (including online) already.
Update (1/9/08): About 10 minutes after posting this it was bought to my attention that someone was live Twittering the coup in Thailand (see here). Yet another great example of the real-time news breaking caapbilities of social networks whic television networks (and for that matter newspapers as well) just can’t replicate.
Shugg's World 