Did you enjoy the Games of the XXXIII Olympiad in France as much as I did?
The excellence of the athletes across 32 sports was surpassed only by the choice of stunning venues, then magnified by the endorphins of wall-to-wall coverage on NBC and Peacock network’s Gold Zone. I checked in with mountain biking and road race events over morning coffee. Lunchtime viewing featured anything from water polo or the pommel horse to the insane event of kayak cross. Evenings found me taking in the speed of swimmers from that incredible overhead camera or the height of a tumbling leap in gymnastics.
How was I supposed to get anything done?
I read that Peacock’s service was “over the top.” That sounded a bit hypercritical to me. Then I was reminded it was an industry term for custom streaming of content directly to viewers, going over the top of traditional content distribution channels.
The publication you’re reading now is a traditional content distribution channel. A print run of Site Selection ships out from Liberty, Missouri, after using about 500 pounds of ink, our printer’s rep tells me. It’s humbling to think of the work we take such care to assemble being distributed across the nation, pressing out a 55-gallon drum’s worth of ink like pizza dough until it’s fed our tens of thousands of subscribers the business intelligence they crave.
Most of us went over the top a long time ago, supplementing print with a different type of scroll. Site Selection is preparing to unfurl a newly redesigned website and continuing to discover new ways to deliver stories to you by newsletter, social media and other channels. But in the scrum of content distribution and audience metrics (hey, how about that thrilling women’s rugby bronze medal?!), it’s important to remember: The story is not consumption of content. The story is the athletes.
In our sport — and in this annual infrastructure issue — the athletes are people like the ironworkers shaking hands on completing the $6 billion Gordie Howe International Bridge. They’re the utility linemen and women restoring power. They’re the engineers, heavy equipment operators and construction workers repaving the highway interchange, driving a heavy load cross country or tilting up a new factory wall. And they’re the corporate site selectors, economic developers and service providers delivering victory in the form of projects that win jobs and prosperity, not medals.
The stories in this issue (and every issue, come to think of it) show these professionals, like Olympians, doing their best work when they play as a team. We hope you, like us, enjoy the process of discovering what they can achieve. — Adam Bruns, Editor in Chief
Corrections
Due to a faulty hectares-to-acres conversion, the size of the separate ABO and World Energy GH2 wind energy projects in Newfoundland and Labrador described in the Atlantic Canada article in the July 2024 issue was inaccurately reported as 264 acres each. The correct size is approximately 266,000 acres each.
The TexasEDConnection Intelligence Report published in the July 2024 print issue contained a continuity error that caused some of the copy to be obscured behind the member directory. The error was immediately corrected in the issue’s Digital Edition and in the web version of the report, both of which can be found at siteselection.com.
