The True Extent Of NASA's Reach During The Demo-2 Launch
Keith’s note: I just got some additional preliminary information from NASA PAO about their television, Internet and social media reach. Yesterday I asked (audio) Jim Bridenstine for some numbers to substantiate his glowing description of NASA’s reach. Bridenstine said “I think a lot of people saw it – I think the whole world saw it – and we’re very proud of that.” NASA Communications Director Bettina Inclán said “Our metrics are saying that peak viewership of the May 30th joint NASA/SpaceX Launch webcast across all NASA platforms was at least 10.3 million concurrent viewers – the most watched event we’ve ever had … those numbers are only for the NASA/Spacex (event). That does not count broadcast and other agencies and news outlets that were talking and promoting this incredible achievment for humanity.”
Here are the new metrics from NASA PAO: During the 4 hour period surrounding the launch NASA had 50 million total viewers. That is just YouTube. NASA also had the top 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Twitter trends during that period. For a brief moment a lot of people were watching that launch.
I look forward to receiving more detailed stats from NASA on the reach that this event had – nationally and globally.
Image: A young boy in Chile wearing a NASA t-shirt explains a computer game to Pete Worden from Breakthrough Initiatives. How did he get that t-shirt? Why is he wearing it? Story
– NASA Media teleconference: Riots and Rocketships, earlier post
– That Time National Geographic Claimed Copyright On NASA Videos
– America’s Excitement for #LaunchAmerica Is Not Equally Distributed, earlier post
Earlier posts on NASA’s global reach
– Bridenstine: “The NASA brand is the most valuable brand America has”
– NASA’s Global Branding Reach Is Often Under Appreciated, earlier post
– Understanding NASA’s Global Reach, earlier post
– NASA is Still A Potent (If Underutilized) Brand, earlier post
– Using NASA’s Logo: Expensive T-Shirts Or Global Soft Power?, earlier post
– NASA’s Pervasive Brand Recognition, earlier post
– One Major Road Block To Bridenstine’s Advertising Ideas, earlier post
I remember when Administrator Bolden was talking about President Obama’s budget proposal (it didn’t fly with republicans) and the number of 1st ‘s it was going to have. He ticked off a handful of them and explained why doing “firsts” were so important to NASA, it was because Americans, when it came to space, didn’t really care about the day to day grind they were interested in the firsts that NASA accomplished.
This flight really brings that home. Once SpaceX makes flying to LEO a more common event how much coverage will NASA get when a couple astronauts head to the ISS.
Not too much. But when they start flying capsulefuls of tourists to Bigelow orbiting hotels…
Does anyone know if the networks interrupted their programming on Saturday to cover the launch? I am not referring to their online channels but their broadcast stations. For the first launch attempt I found mentions that ABC and CBS were planning to have special live reports starting a few minutes before the launch, but I didn’t find any confirmation what they planned to do for the Saturday attempt.
Yes, they did, and it seemed to me ABC had the longest segment.
In other news…
NASA will allow SpaceX to use Flight Proven™ Falcon 9 and Crew Dragon vehicles for Commercial Crew, starting with Crew-2
https://twitter.com/nextspa…
It does say something however, that the SpaceX number of viewers always exceeded the NASA TV number of viewers on YouTube each time I looked. That is a tribute to SpaceX and the openness they’ve displayed for many years, and the quality of their coverage over time.