Life as a Game, Part II

... in which our intrepid heroine is trying to find the schedule listing for 30 Rock on her computer and is sucked into NBC's Fan It site:

Q: What is Fan It?
A: Fan It is NBC.com's affinity program where members are awarded points for participation and interaction. Members can choose to redeem these points for a variety of rewards and/or experiences....

Q: How do I earn points?
A: There are two different ways to earn points: events and challenges. Events are the activities you do on the site and on the social networks you've linked to every day, such as leaving comments, watching videos, playing games, posting links or updating your status. Challenges require you to perform specific events within a specific amount of time and are typically worth more points...

Q: What can I do with the points that I've earned?
A: You can use your points to determine your rank on the leaderboard(s) and you can redeem points for a variety of different rewards. (links to leaderboard page and rewards page)

A tip of the hat to games whiz Raph Koster, on whose blog I learned about this development.

Fan It appears to be a clever way to engage TV fangroups, and to encourage fans to watch the shows, as you can elect to answer challenges related to specific programs. You can also accrue points by posting information about the challenge or the shows (not entirely clear) on social networking hubs like Twitter and Facebook.

What do you win? It appears they're selling prestige ("your spot on the leaderboard") and awards in the forms of links to (hopefully exclusive) videos.

I revise my original assessment: this is very, VERY clever. They're enlisting fans to circulate information and to watch the shows more diligently, and the awards they distribute is existing content or comes at minimal cost to them. One suggestion, though: offer an award that's a limited livechat with a show's stars. Also low-cost, and perhaps more appealing than status on a closed network and watching more TV.