Olympics encouraging use of new platforms-at least in the States

Some interesting news from across the Atlantic.

With the Olympics nearly a week into play,Broadcaster NBC is reporting that

About half of the people who are using mobile phones to pull down video or information about the Olympics have been trying out that technology for the first time,

via AP

It adds that

NBC Universal, a unit of General Electric Co., has been using the Olympics as something of a research lab to track the adoption of new media technology. Since the opening ceremony last Friday, the company has made content available online, through video on demand and via cell phones along with traditional TV.
The number of people requesting Olympic content over their phones is still relatively small — 494,506 on Sunday and 476,062 on Monday — but NBC executives say they're stunned at how many of those never used the phones for this purpose before.

On the back of Michael Phelp's performances viewing figures in the states are well up on four years ago.The 200m butterfly event saw 39m viewers

So far over here the figures have not been brilliant certainly TV wise but interviewe over at Paid Content,Ben Yallop head of BBC Sport interactive is in bullish mood.

video output has doubled and the website clocked more video views in the first two days of these games than during the entire fortnight at Athens 2004: “We’re just seeing enormous traffic, record levels that we’ve frankly never seen before...”