TELEVISION


UFL Online: Little League Gets Big On The Web

Posted by Jonathan in TELEVISION on 10-15-10    No Comments


VN:F [1.9.10_1130]
Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

Listen up NFL, the United Football League keeps on bringin’ it.

Tonight, Oct. 15, at 11 p.m. ET, the United Football League will stream live over the net The Las Vegas Locomotives vs. the Sacramento Mountain Lions. Now before you poo-poo this as something insignificant, like the XFL or Arena Football League, keep in mind that both teams feature some decent talent. The Las Vegas quarterback is Clement Chase, who set NCAA Division I passing records while at Rice. And the Sacramento team features Daunte Culpepper running the offense, who was a three-time Pro Bowl selection in the NFL.

The UFL does an excellent job of opening the league to the things the NFL does not. They’ve got excellent mobile support and high-quality game video ported over the Web.

For sure, the UFL is a step down from the NFL in terms of talent. But as far total entrainment factor, it’s not that bad. The league is cheaper, much more accessible and offers a reasonably entertaining football experience with a fraction of the hassle and attitude of the NFL.

Check the game out online tonight. You’ll see what I’m talking about.




ESPN Goal Line Moving To FiOS

Posted by Jonathan in TELEVISION on 10-13-10    No Comments


VN:F [1.9.10_1130]
Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

It looks like Verizon is continuing to lock up first-rate content deals and lay the groundwork for next-gen sports TV services.

The telecom giant and TV provider announced recently that it came to terms with The Walt Disney Company for rights to ESPN content, including new services like ESPN Goal Line and ESPN 3D.

What makes these deals important for emerging technology is that both have significant interactive potential. FiOS has essentially unlimited bandwidth, so these services should become interesting test beds for next-gen sports.

Already, ESPN Goal Line offers what college sports fans crave: Nothing but non-stop key moments from college football games every Saturday. Think NFL Red Zone, only for college football. Clearly, offering an on-demand version of that service that allows for two-way control is a logical next step.

And the extra bandwidth FiOS has at its disposal will come in handy with Verizon’s sure-to-come 3D sports channel, all of which will make that riff on ESPN probably the best-looking sports content on the market.

Either way, sports continues to lead the way in creating next-gen content. And the rest of the digital world? They are lucky to be there at all.




The UFL Drives To The House

Posted by Jonathan in TELEVISION on 10-07-10    No Comments


VN:F [1.9.10_1130]
Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

The United Football League is putting together a darn-respectable drive down the media field.

With the NFL season now entering its fifth week, it is time to take a moment and look at other professional football league. The UFL started last year with just four teams, a brief season, crappy advertisers and a small TV contract on Versus. This year? Check it out: Two more teams have been added, the schedule is growing, the talent on these rosters is not awful. Meanwhile, advertisers like Progressive Insurance are on the league website, and the use of the Web and new tools have really extended the reach of the brand.

Games are surprisingly entertaining. Video is plentiful. Overall, the UFL offers a low-cost alternative to the waaaaay too pricey NFL. I really liked the  excellent outreach program with fans, including a naming contest for one of the teams. For sure, the UFL faces issues. The New York franchise lost its stadium and is moving to Hartford. Certainly, it’s going to be a good 10 years before this league gets anywhere. And it will never be the NFL.

But just watch the Nighthawks vs. Locomotives this week on HDNet. You’ve watched worse games than that in the NFL, and you don’t have to $300 a year for NFL Sunday Ticket or hundreds of dollars for tickets to a game.

Ignore the UFL at your peril.




Now Telling You Which Game To Watch: Thuuz

Posted by Dan in INTERNET, TELEVISION on 10-07-10    No Comments


VN:F [1.9.10_1130]
Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

new thuuzI guess with the influx of all of the sports channels on U.S. cable television, it’s hard to pick just which one to watch. Well, once again the Internet is coming to your rescue with a service and website called Thuuz.

The service tells you what the most exciting games are at the moment and which archived games are the best to see.  They do this with a special algorithm

“We monitor each game, calculating an excitement score based on multiple factors,” Thuuz says. “We post the first rating after just 5 minutes of play, then we continuously update the rating as the excitement level waxes or wanes.”

Register for the service and check it out.  The best part is they don’t give you any spoilers about what the excitement might be.




The Star Of The Jets/Bills Game: FanVision

Posted by Dan in MOBILE, STADIUM, TELEVISION on 10-06-10    No Comments


VN:F [1.9.10_1130]
Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

fanvisionI went up to Buffalo, N.Y. last weekend to watch the Jets-Bills game, and as we all saw, it really wasn’t much of a contest.  Two things impressed me, though: LaDainian Tomlinson and FanVision – a sort of sports video PDA that worked at the stadium.

This wireless video player with a 4.6-inch screen gives you your own personal TV feed of the game right at your seat. I especially liked the multiple camera angles to choose from, and even some access to out-of-town games. If you are a fantasy football player the device will also track your players’ progress around the league that day.

For now, the device is only available in a limited number of NFL stadiums, but that’s changing. They also are adding other sports like golf.  If you act now you can get the device for $199, before the price jumps back up to the regular $259.




Hey NFL: Stop The Blackout Madness!

Posted by Seth in INTERNET, STADIUM, TELEVISION on 10-04-10    No Comments


VN:F [1.9.10_1130]
Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

Growing up in Pittsburgh in the wake of the Super Steelers of the 1970s, I never had to worry about the NFL’s pesky television blackout rules. But football fans in places like Tampa Bay and San Diego haven’t been so lucky, and now they’re using technology to fight back.

There’s a patchwork of websites that illegally deliver feeds of NFL games. Some work better than others. Some are here one week and gone the next. And the NFL has its panties in a bunch about the whole thing. According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, a bunch of bars and restaurants that displayed illegal feeds of a recent Tampa Bay Buccaneers game got cease and desist letters from the NFL — as if the league has nothing better to worry about, what with Braylon Edwards driving drunk in Manhattan.

For the record, the NFL requires that any game that isn’t sold out by 72 hours before kickoff is blacked out within a 75-mile radius of the stadium. Give the crotchety crew that runs this league credit for knowing their content is valuable, and for doing everything they can to milk every dime out of it. Perhaps the folks who run the media business might take note of that … but I digress.

For any number of reasons, this blackout rule is preposterous. First — and everyone is going to tell me I’m crazy about this, but I don’t care — the NFL is best experienced on TV, especially since the advent of HD. You go to the stadium and you’re sitting hundreds of feet away and probably at a bad angle. Why do you think Jerry Jones put in the mother of all scoreboard video screens at Cowboys Stadium? Think maybe it has something to do with the fact that in an 80,000-seat stadium you can’t really see the action? You watch on TV and you’ve got a seat on the line of scrimmage for every play, plus endless replays to see exactly what happened.

Beyond that, have you priced a ticket to an NFL game lately? In case you hadn’t noticed, the league has been making a big push for ticket sales through NFL.com, and they’ve set up a way for ticket holders to sell tickets they’re not going to use. Just for the hell of it, I went on there and picked a team at random — the St. Louis Rams — and went looking for seats. The best you can do for nose-bleed seats in the upper deck of the Edward Jones Dome is $33. Most of the seats ticket holders were selling were priced higher than that, and you’ll definitely pay more if you buy the seats directly from the team.

So here’s your choice: Pay too much money for nose-bleed seats and get the “thrill” of sitting too far away to see anything, or risk the NFL’s wrath and watch an illegal stream on the web. In the current economic climate, and with the money they charge for tickets, it’s a little unseemly for the NFL to continue enforcing the blackout rule.




NHL About To Try The In-Market Streaming Waters, But How Well Will It Work?

Posted by Seth in INTERNET, MOBILE, TELEVISION on 09-30-10    No Comments


VN:F [1.9.10_1130]
Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

The National Hockey League season is about to get under way, and we all know the boys of winter don’t reach out and grab the mass public’s attention the way the NFL, NBA and MLB do. But it looks like the NHL has decided to lead the way in something, and it’s going to be in-market streaming of live games.

The Sports Business Journal is reporting the NHL is working on agreement that would allow many teams to stream their games live via the Internet and mobile phones.

Blum and I love this idea, because a well-executed live streaming event, complete with on-screen stats and other ancillary content, can be really effective. Look at what CBS and the NCAA have done with March Madness on Demand. It’s become the gold standard for streaming a sports event. But there are a couple of issues here.

First, all the money people need to figure out how everyone can cash in on this. There’s a debate about whether the web/wireless feed would simply be a simulcast, carrying the same advertising as the TV broadcast, or whether the regional sports networks would sell separate advertising. It seems the instinct is to sell a separate ad stream in order to maximize revenue, but even if they don’t do that, it’s going to mean more ad dollars because they’d jack up the ad rates for anyone who buys a spot, since the ad will be pushed to more platforms. ESPN may have some answers about that, as they’re claiming that cross-platform advertising is the way to go. Not much of a surprise they’d say that, considering how many platforms they have to deliver content. But the idea is worth some thought.

The other question here is this: What are the limits of fan interest in online streaming of live games? To my way of thinking, March Madness on Demand works so well because it’s a once-a-year event. It goes on for a few weeks, and with games being played during daytime hours, it benefits from a captive audience of office drones who watch it while they’re supposed to be working. With hockey, you’re talking about 80 games over a span of six months, primarily played at night when all the office drones are at home. How many people will watch? And how many will hang with it for more than a few minutes when they probably have access to the game on TV? Clearly, the office drones would rather watch sports than work. To wit, ESPN’s online numbers for the World Cup were pretty incredible.

But again, the World Cup lasts for a month and then it’s over. Whether season-long streaming will be as effective remains to be seen.




The Great Sunday Ticket Ripoff

Posted by Dan in TELEVISION on 09-30-10    No Comments


VN:F [1.9.10_1130]
Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

tmq_sunday_ticket_300With hockey and basketball season almost upon us I started to do some research on prices for the Direct TV packages for both sports.  The NHL Center Ice package gives you around 40 games a week, both home and road team feeds, and most of the games are in HD for a respectable price of $171.80.

The basketball package on Direct TV (NBA League Pass)  is also pretty good.  You also get around 40 live games a week plus NBA TV and an NBA stats channel, and they throw in NBA League Pass Broadband, which allows you to watch games on your PC or mobile device.  All of this only costs you $179.94, again a perfectly reasonable price for the hundreds of basketball games you will watch this year.

This brings us to the NFL Sunday Ticket, which as we all know only has games on Sunday for 17 weeks.  For this finite number of games, Direct TV changes you five payments of $59.99. So for significantly less product they charge significantly more money. Unbelievable.

In Sunday Ticket’s defense, at least the package now includes HD feeds and the NFL Red Zone channel, which bounces from game to game all day on Sunday so you can see anytime a team scores or gets close. Until this year, you had to pay an add-on fee if you wanted Red Zone and the HD feeds. But the bottom line is that Sunday Ticket  costs more money for fewer games than the other out-of-market packages.




Rangers Say ‘What Recession?’ After $3 Billion TV Deal

Posted by Seth in TELEVISION on 09-27-10    No Comments


VN:F [1.9.10_1130]
Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

OK, I admit it: I’m a whining Pittsburgh Pirates fan. My team has had 18 losing seasons in a row, and it’s looking an awful lot like it’s going to be 19 next year. As we’ve detailed before, they have no money, and pretty much no hope. So you can imagine my helpless, hopeless disgust at today’s news that Fox Sports Southwest and the Texas Rangers are about to sign a 20-year TV deal worth $3 billion. As USA Today’s Bob Nightengale succinctly describes it, that’s “$150 million a year before even playing a game.”

So after years of their under-achieving play, the American League won’t have the Texas Rangers to kick around anymore. Now, of course, they still have to spend all those riches wisely. But with no-nonsense Nolan Ryan at the helm of the baseball operation, something tells me the Rangers will be fine.

But I don’t get how this happened. Maybe Blum and his infinite knowledge of economics can help enlighten all of us. How is it that a regional sports network is willing to cough up that much dough? Are we to believe Fox Sports Southwest outbid other potential carriers? Who else is out there lining up waiting to televise 162 Rangers games? The local TV stations? Somehow I doubt it. It’s not just the games, it’s shoulder programming both before and after the games. Nobody but a regional sports network is able to pull off something like that.

So, to my way of thinking, there’s very little competition for these rights fees, and the teams need the regional sports networks the same way the networks need the teams. It’s a symbiotic relationship. Without competition, how does the rights fee get this high?

I’ll leave Blum to explain it to us all. Meanwhile, I’ll be drowning my sorrows as I prepare for Year 19 of the Pirates Era of Woe.




3D Blu-ray: The Answer To The Blurry 3D Game?

Posted by Jonathan in TELEVISION, VIDEO on 09-26-10    No Comments


VN:F [1.9.10_1130]
Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

If there is one thing Seth and I agree on,  it’s the overall grim image quality of most 3D sports events, when compared to their  pristine HD cousins.

The reason for the difference, of course, is that in order to stuff the right- and left-eye signals into a single frame, most of the time sports producers need to compress the the images quite a bit.

Getting Comcast and ESPN and DirecTV to actually fess up as to how much processing goes on in a 3D feed is not something we have the suction to do quite yet. But spend any time sitting in a Best Buy looking at the 3D displays, and by and large you’re going to see a noticeable loss in image quality as compared to a top-quality HD feed.

But that might be changing. A new riff of Blu-ray disc called 3D Blu-ray is gaining traction in  the high-end AV market. Recently at the CEDIA Expo, Panasonic showed  it is supporting the 3D Blu-ray standard with several 3D-enabled Blu-ray players. Overall, 3D Blu-ray is a darn impressive way to consume 3D content. Of course, this won’t solve the problem of making live sports events look better. But this technology is a step in the right direction for 3D content.