C-SPAN partners with Facebook Live to stream evening proceedings at RNC, DNC; FB also partners with 21 news organizations for the conventions, including CNN
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Context & Ripple Effects
Facebook is moving on live political video within days of its closest rival: Twitter had just locked in a convention livestream deal with CBS and CBSN for the same RNC and DNC weeks, and now Facebook counters with C-SPAN carrying evening proceedings on Facebook Live plus 21 news organizations, CNN among them, producing convention coverage for the platform.
The deal is an escalation of a strategy Facebook had already confirmed in April, when it was reported to be paying media companies directly to use Live Video — outlets like the New York Times and BuzzFeed. Conventions are the highest-stakes test yet of whether paid-for live news can hold audiences against Twitter's broadcast-style play.
First-order effects
- C-SPAN's evening convention gavel-to-gavel feed reaches Facebook's audience without a cable subscription, while CNN and the other 20 partner news organizations get guaranteed distribution and promotion inside Facebook during the two biggest political events of 2016.
- Twitter's CBSN arrangement no longer owns the social-livestreaming lane for the conventions; the two platforms are now running parallel, competing broadcasts of the same proceedings.
Second-order effects
- The competition for live event rights pushes Facebook further down the paid-content path it started in April, making platform payouts a line item news organizations begin planning around rather than windfall experiments.
- Broadcast networks and cable channels lose their position as sole gatekeepers of convention footage, forcing them to treat social platforms as co-distribution partners — CNN's participation here prefigures its later move onto Facebook's own news-show slate.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, US election infrastructure steadily migrates onto social platforms: the convention deals of 2016 lead into Facebook's 2018 news-show partnerships and then its Reuters partnership to surface live election results in 2020, making platforms the default venue for civic broadcasting — with all the editorial-authority questions that implies.
- Live political video also builds the audience habits that later pull political commentary itself onto the platform, as seen when conservative personalities shifted from talk radio to Facebook Live broadcasts drawing millions of viewers.
The trend: Social platforms are competing to become the default live venue for American political events, using direct payments to news organizations as the acquisition tool.