NBC is one of the largest television production and distribution companies in the world and their main client base is in Northern American. They have been a company at the forefront of technology within this sector however due to the size and complexity of their operation, legacy technology has become a burden. That is where this new VOD team has been created to help create new and exciting propositions for every customer of the NBCU landscape

The main proposition the team was asked to focus on was to create a VOD platform for the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics. This was to take inspiration from previous iterations of VOD platforms such as their hugely successful paid VOD platform Peacock. However, the spin on this was that the platform would be available for their smaller user groups and distributors for free. Therefore, the complications when building came down not to what we could build but what the systems we were building for would allow us to achieve.

This project summarised Covid in a nutshell. The team was based in 6 different time zones truly being a global entity that showed how teams can succeed under the worst of conditions. During this period I explored ways to help the team fully understand design flows and design decisions through a small company called Loom. A simple Chrome plugin that helped the team hugely. So much so that NBCU introduced the platform into their main suite of products.

Tokyo was such a success that I was asked to come back to amplify the platform to the next level for The Beijing Winter Olympics. Working with the same team but this time on a much shorter deadline. This wasn’t an issue as we had created a platform that could easily be adjusted and amended quickly to the scenario it was asked to achieve.

The big difference was that now the platform was also being built out for Android TV. Which was a brand new framework with its own demands and scales to work with.We adjusted and solved all problems that came to the forefront with flying colours and released a product that achieved the second highest viewer ship of all VOD platforms dedicated to the Olympics for NBCU.