(Bloomberg) -- Comcast Corp. wants to do for TV what Pandora and Spotify did for music.
When the Winter Olympics begin Thursday on the company's NBCUniversal networks, the cable giant will let subscribers select curated channels based on their preferences. If they only want to watch curling or events with snowboarder Shaun White, for instance, they'll be able to choose playlists to see just that.
Comcast's vision goes beyond the Olympics. The cable giant wants to use the games to test a new way of showing a vast library of TV shows and movies. Soon after the games, subscribers may be able to create a channel of Tom Cruise movies or kids programs that combine both TV networks and online services, from Netflix to Nickelodeon. Comcast executive Matt Strauss calls them “super networks.”
“What has happened to music is about to happen to TV,” Strauss, the executive vice president of Xfinity services, said in an interview. “It's the next evolution of where television is going.”
The games give Comcast a unique opportunity to test its curation technology, since there are more hours of events than anyone can possibly watch. Comcast employees will work around the clock for more than two weeks in South Korea to create 50 different playlists, or channels, based on NBC's 2,400 hours of live coverage.
After the Olympics, Strauss wants to take the same approach to customizing Comcast's library of more than 160,000 television shows and movies. Eventually, the Philadelphia-based cable provider may use algorithms to predict what subscribers want. Viewers would be able to use the on-demand services alongside the traditional channels they have.
Like Netflix before it, Comcast is challenging what it means to be a television network. For years, every channel has had a programming department with employees whose job is to figure out the right time and day to air a show -- an approach based on how people originally watched TV.
Today, many people watch programs whenever they want. And Strauss said consumers would prefer to have a playlist of shows customized for them -- just like a playlist of songs for going to the gym -- instead of searching for a program to watch.
While programmers would some lose control over scheduling under Comcast's new approach, Strauss says it would increase the probability that a viewer will get exposed to a specific program or movie -- like you might discover a song on the radio.
“We're just scratching the surface in how this can be applied across any genre of content,” he said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Gerry Smith in New York at gsmith233@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Crayton Harrison at tharrison5@bloomberg.net, Rob Golum
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