Over the years, I've run and been involved in, a large number of 'live' events online that are designed to provide coverage of that event for an online audience. Usually, this also sits alongside some other 'coverage' in another medium. When I used to do this for British Touring Car Championship and Formula 1 sponsors, it was TV and Press. With our recent 'Big Zoomy Photo Thing' for Radio 1, the alternate coverage was TV, interactive TV and Radio of course.
The question then of how online and digital complements those other media and brings to life events beyond the medium for which they were already conceived is then a key part of establishing what exactly you do online.
For me, every case is slightly different, but it does boil down quintissentially to three things:
Community - most of these events are communal affairs in some way or another. Whether it is the physicality of being at a concert, or the sense of simply 'being a part' of something, it amounts to the same thing. Online coverage should always aim to provide that sense of community.
Access - I once stood inside a Formula 1 pit lane garage whilst the public pitlane walkabout was in progress. The Commercial Director of the F1 team we were working for pointed to the people gathered the other side of the barrier and said "those people would kill to be stood where you're standing". Whether it's backstage at a gig, in Mission Control for a round the world record attempt, or in the inner sanctum of a Formula 1 team, these are places that are quite rightly, reserved absolutely for those that have to be there - but equally hold great intrigue for those who can't be. Why shouldn't we 'let them inside' in a way that safeguards any necessary secrets, and of course means we don't get in the way of the operations.
Proximity - TV coverage of any event always brings this. It's the need to 'get close' to the action. An artist on stage, cars on a track, players on a sports field, and it's the reason people who saw Madonna live on the weekend also go home and watch it on the TV, or go look at our Big Zoomy Photo Thing.
The validity of these principles are all supported by the evidence of recent developments in TV and Radio coverage of various events. ITV started doing pre-race features on the things that made F1 tick, a few years ago. These were things that were not immediately obvious to the casual observer, but to a fan, are a fascinating insight into the world of F1. I like to say we led the way, when in 1998, we were doing online pieces on what it was like to have to cater for an entire motor racing team at venues across the world, and interviewing the team chef for the Vauxhall touring car team! But I'm not sure the ITV team were watching our coverage back then, but before we knew it ITV F1 were doing interviews with the guys that run the catering, doing pitlane walkabouts and all sorts.
Complement, don't compete
Whatever you are doing online, it is rare that you are providing an absolute alternative to the TV or Radio coverage. There is a user group who are cut off from TV and Radio (stuck at work during the England game), but that's not the audience we focus on for these things- they're easy to cater for, just switch on the live TV stream to the website). Instead, we try to create assets and content that complement the other media and also create a long tail for the event for those that did see it to come back to.
For a gig, festival or concert, a big part of being at the event, is not just what happens on stage when the main act comes on. It's the build-up, the queuing, the sights, smells and sounds of the venue, and the crowd, before the main event. It's also the parties and barbecues afterwards, the getting home, the absolutely brilliant support act that weren't on the TV coverage, the warm-up act who said some incredibly funny things to get the audience going... The same applies to pretty much anything else. When I've been to Silverstone for a weekend for the British Grand Prix, and had to travel home to London every night, I've been glued to Radio Silverstone all the way to the M40, hearing about the fun that was still going on at the circuit, and cursing that I had to leave - and it wasn't all interviews with the drivers. I remember vividly the mobile reporter being ferried around the various campsites on the back of a motorbike, just chatting with fans, off-duty team members and all-sorts. It's a similar story with Wimbledon, Ascot, the Henley Regatta, anything where a sense of belonging and community develop over a period of days.
So, don't try to bring lap by lap or ball by ball coverage. We have to assume that people will swtich to the most relevant medium for that. Instead, whilst these are going on we're busy preparing the stuff we got from the artists, the players, the drivers, before they went on. How did they prepare, why are they here, what are they looking forward to, what should we be looking for from them? All these questions and answers seem much more relevant during the event, and afterwards when people are digesting the event and its results.
What assets do we have?
What does digital have that these other media don't? What can we leverage to create something that TV, Radio or the Press can't?
Well, the first is depth. These other media are editorially very tight on space. Time and column inches are precious. So, the editorial selection of what goes on or in, is very tight, and generally kept to the things that tell someone what went on. So for Wimbledon, it's the 'money shot' of the winner holding the trophy aloft. For Madonna at Big Weekend, it's highlights of the stage set, and one, maybe two very good photographs.
Online however, we can loosen the editorial reigns. We can let a lot more through, and provided we guide our audience to find it and navigate their way through it, we can go into a lot more depth. Instead of one or two images, we can unleash 100's (yes, back to this again).
The other obvious one is interactivity. When we covered the Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer - we learned a lot from the first time around, and for the second record attempts, we made sure that our audience had a direct line to our people who were covering the event. We answered their questions live, and allowed them to direct our coverage to areas that interested them rather than scratching our heads trying to make waiting for an aircraft to land interesting. We engaged the audience, and we allowed them to participate. Not in an unmoderated user generated content way, but in a way that was valuable to us and to them and generally made the content and coverage better.
Some more golden rules
The web audience for some things that are covered online, is sometimes, but not always, bigger than the reach of the broadcast medium that also covers the event. If it's not however, getting resources and attention on the online coverage can be hard. So here's what I've learned from doing this since 1996:
The 'long tail' of an event lasts much longer online than in other media. If prime-time media covers something when it is happening on a weekend, say, the really serious web traffic comes on Monday - and it lasts... when we did Touring Cars, 24h Le Mans and F1 for DHL, the traffic lasted online for about three weeks. For Radio 1's Big Weekend, traffic to the Big Zoomy Photo Thing has only now just dropped off... When we did the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, we didn't rival the number of newspaper inches, or TV and Radio coverage, but what we did do was engage the audience for much much longer than any single one of those other media. Our online readers were loyal, and came back over and over again, and stayed after the TV Crews had gone home.
Consequently... this is worth investing in. It requires a very different focus to those putting it out live on TV or Radio, or writing a single 500 word piece + photo for print. It needs a dedicated team who understand what they are trying to achieve. They need to have access, not only to existing assets (official photographers), but also to create their own (to get their own photographer out there to fill the gaps for example). This stuff doesn't work if you just try to piggy-back from existing assets. I learned that one to my cost when I tasked our CEO who was in the Mojave Desert for an aircraft unveiling to make sure we had enough material to work with... more on that another day! The first pro' photographer I worked with at one racing event years ago promised us 'all' of his shots. After hours of poring over his Mac, he emailed us one image. We'd waited all day, we'd published 20 articles across a variety of topics, and this photographer had been around for all of it. Today, the photographers we work with, both our own and for example the BBC's do understand what is required and aren't precious about letting their stuff go provided it meets a certain quality standard.
We already see some maturity developing in web coverage, with people like the BBC, who have awesome set-ups for events that indicates that the medium is now taken seriously and not as an add-on. This is the golden rule really... unless you have someone who cares about the web coverage, and has as unfettered access as any other news or media reporter, the web will end up doing a bad re-hash of other assets intended for other media.
So - unlock your potential... as a rights-holder, or sponsor, you probably have access to way more than you can ever use in the media you are focusing on, and you can engage a whole new audience online - IF - you have the right creative & editorial thinking, a team who have the skills to do it, and preferably the experience, and that the digital medium is considered as an equal to some of those other media you're more used to dealing in.