Canadians to CTV: We love that you're not NBC
Media reporter Steve Ladurantaye reports Canadians are happy with their Olympic options, while Americans vent rage at NBC
Canadians are far happier with their Olympic television experience than Americans, according to an analysis of Twitter comments in the early days of the London Games.
Ottawa-based media monitoring company MediaMiser found 50 percent of the tweets referencing CTV - the main broadcaster in Canada’s Olympic Consortium – were positive in the first three days of competition. The rest were negative (28 per cent) or neutral (22 per cent).
The network has made an unprecedented amount of coverage available to its viewers, with more than 5,000 hours available on televisions, phones, tablets and computers.
BCE converges on the Olympics with coverage on every screenFor BCE Inc., the London Olympics aren't about who can jump the highest or win the most points in the modern pentathlon. The Games of the...- @canfritz totally agree! keepin it locked on @CTV_television, great Canadian coverage and also great coverage of other countries #London2012
- CTV`s coverage SUCKS. CBC where art thou? I can't believe I actualy miss Ron MacLean and his awful puns. #London2012
That stands in sharp contrast to NBC, the largest broadcaster in the United States and sole rights holder in that country. It has faced harsh criticism for its decision to run the Games on tape delay so it can have them on during prime time, although it is allowing viewers to stream the Games online in real time.
NBC-related Tweets have been 83 per cent negative, 11 per cent neutral and 6 per cent positive.
Big media struggles to adapt an old model to a new world at OlympicsThe first Olympic broadcast crackled over the airwaves 64 years ago in London, as a few thousand people who lived near venues were able t...- FACT: The Twitterverse commentary on #london2012 #openingceremonies is far superior to Matt and Meredith on NBC
- These #nbc #gymnastics #commentators are insufferably catty and condescending! #london2012 #bitchy #firetimdaggett
MediaMiser analyzed tweets that were sent with the hashtags #London2012, #olympics or #olympics 2012. It then sorted the 50,000 tweets that came back into two streams – one for CTV and one for NBC.
The company’s software is able to determine tone, after some lessons from a human.
“Our auto-toning engine uses human guidance and machine learning to learn which tweets are positive, neutral and negative about a given topic,” spokesman Jim Donnelly said. “The engine is first ‘trained’ by a human and then deployed as tweets are collected.”
The company deliberately avoided any tweets that were tagged #NBCfail, which has gained prominence in the last few days as viewers vent their frustration at the network's missteps. It felt including them would skew the results because the users were biased.
- For more on Twitter and the Olympics, see the Folio in today's Globe and Mail by Josh O'Kane.
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- elizabethCorrection - I should have said rowing, not sculls.2012-08-02T17:59:16.958Z
- elizabethOh, get off the U.S. CTV is fine but who's the pathetic commentator for sculls spewing out prayers platitudes - pathetic and COXWAIN is pronounced COCKS'N in...Oh, get off the U.S. CTV is fine but who's the pathetic commentator for sculls spewing out prayers platitudes - pathetic and COXWAIN is pronounced COCKS'N in EVERY COUNTRY. Where are you from?? more2012-08-02T16:59:21.724Z





