I think you're probably spot-on about television consumption being fundamentally different than Internet usage and sadly, generally agree that it's not discussed much because it doesn't jibe with a pre-determined narrative.

Those storylines were: 1. NBC's tape-delay strategy was obsolete and would never work in the new media world and 2. Online viewing of the Games would make up a significant percentage of all viewing.

In fact every part of NBC's scheduling worked brilliantly and traditional TV obliterated online viewing, but unfortunately those facts went largely unacknowledged, even by trade press that should know better.

These Olympics call into serious question the conventional wisdom that the public “wants what they want, when they want it.” Given the chance to watch whatever they wanted whenever they wanted, the public overwhelmingly chose to watch what NBC gave them, when NBC gave it to them. There is something compelling there about the nature of television consumption and how it's fundamentally different from internet use, but it rarely gets discussed because it doesn't quite jibe with the pre-determined narrative.

So my hat is really off to you guys for being one of the few outlets to follow this data where it leads and not just where you expected it would lead.

I also tip the cap to NBC. Maybe they were not completely transparent with their data, but give them a break; this is still the corporate media world and not an academic exercise. They could not have been more transparent with these numbers without essentially embarrassing their online division. They made a very high-profile effort to contextualize multi-platform usage and they did the whole industry a service.

It was fun and we learned a lot. Bring on football season.