• by Steve Smith  @popeyesm, February 14, 2012

A robust investment in digital companion content and a social media program that began late last year helped CBS Interactive claim success with its Grammy Live multi-screen complement to Sunday’s on-air awards show. “For our three-day Grammy Live experience we got over 1 million viewers of content over 72 hours,” says Marc DeBevoise, SVP and GM, Entertainment Division, CBS Interactive.

Starting late last week, CBS Interactive -- in partnership with the Recording Academy -- ran extensive video, news and image content from pre-show events to Grammy.com and CBS.com as well as into iOS apps. The majority of traffic to Grammy Live went to the Web, but DeBevoise adds that the iOS apps proved extremely popular -- remaining near the top of the free app charts in the iTunes App Store late last week. The peak viewership of the second-screen experience occurred on Sunday during the pre-show red carpet arrivals.  

According to DeBevoise, the success of Grammy Live demonstrates the special power networks have to create the kind of enhanced content to their own shows that drive users across displays. “There are a lot of guys touting second screens as their thing,” he says. “They aren’t necessarily second screen; they don’t have a lot to offer."

Competition may be heating up between the networks crafting their own cross-screen experiences and third parties claiming to do the same. In the last year, many companies like IntoNow, Umami, ConnecTV and Shazam have poured into the mobile space with apps that detect and complement TV content. In fact, CBS and The Recording Academy partnered with Shazam this year for the Grammys. The audio ID app detected that the show was on and pushed out links to download the iTunes track for the on-air performance.

DeBevoise says this Shazam partnership was a “promotional deal” to drive tune-ins, and distinguishes it from the exclusive material the original content provider can offer. “As a network we do it hand-in-hand with our broadcasters and you see what can happen. This is truly second-screen that can build on what is going on on-air. It is not just a light experience.”

On the other hand, he admits that the cost and effort involved in a constant stream of parallel programming efforts can be prohibitive. “You can’t program a full second-screen experience for every episode of every show. But on events like these in big areas, there are ways to develop programming experiences that are viable.”

One of the key learnings from this second-screen outing was the force of social TV. BlueFin Labs reports that the Grammy Awards set a record 13 million comments in social media during the event -- up 1,280% since last year and beating even the Super Bowl’s 12.2 million mentions.

DeBevoise says Grammy Live started riding that wave back in November when it started a “Garage to the Grammys” contest on Facebook. Music fans were enlisted to elect a band to perform on the Grammy Live feed.  Nearly 1,000 bands were involved, and the winner garnered over 750,000 votes, he says. “We got the social conversation going early and we fulfilled it on Grammy Live. We learned that the integration of social early on and during the event was key.”