Re: t-and-f: Jabbour is the future: was Letter...NYC mara...coverage
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Sun, 03 Nov 2002 19:53:09 -0800 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: t-and-f: Jabbour is the future: was Letter...NYC mara... coverage The answer is BOTH- put it on the net. And allow any station who wants to provide over-the-air coverage to do so as well. Relegate the exclusive contracts to the dustbin of history. Who wrote that business plan, Homer Simpson? Let's see if I've got this right: first, USTAF should spend income it probably doesn¹t have to fund a web setup for the country's few thousand hardcore fans. Then it should go to GM and try to sell a sponsorship package, while noting oh, by the way, we've already cut out the heart of your audience because we're giving away a more complete product elsewhere. Yeah, that oughta fly. Gh
Re: t-and-f: Jabbour is the future: was Letter...NYC mara... coverage
Let me first thank Tom for his vote of confidence, and clarify some facts: 1- The Internet has the ability to carry TV-quality video. Last weekend we webcast high-school soccer in TV-quality (1.5Mbps) in addition to DSL-speed (384Kbps). Fully one fifth of our viewers enjoyed the TV-quality stream. I would never webcast a track meet at dial-up speeds. 2- Today's Internet has the capacity to reach 1 million simultaneous viewers at near-TV quality video. It costs money, though: $1/viewer/hour. Advertising alone will not cover that cost. 3- Ninety percent of US households can get broadband Internet access. Still expensive, but worth it once there is content to justify it. 4- TrackMeets.com has successfully webcast over 300 LIVE events from 13 US States and 3 Canadian provinces, ranging from high-school meets to the Drake and Penn Relays, and the Canadian Olympic Trials. Last summer's USATF Junior Olympics webcast of 70 hours of live track and field over 6 days attracted 56,640 hits on the live video stream. We routinely get tens of thousands of viewers on our big events. I hereby extend a standing offer to every meet director: cover my crew's travel expenses and I will webcast your meet. I'd much rather webcast track meets than field hockey and volleyball... Kamal. DR KAMAL JABBOUR - Engineer, Educator, Runner, WriterO o 2-222 Center for Science and Technology /|\/ |\ Syracuse University, Syracuse NY 13244-4100 | | Phone 315-443-3000, Fax 315-443-4745 __/ \ \/ \ http://running.syr.edu/jabbour.html\ \
Re: t-and-f: Jabbour is the future: was Letter...NYC mara...coverage
I'd much rather webcast track meets than field hockey and volleyball... It's really a shame to be running down other low-profile sports; you know, there are most certainly plenty of people who feel the same way about tf. Speaking as a big volleyball fan, I'd love to see more volleyball games. I love going to watch them live at the University of Texas. What kills me is when the networks or ESPN are showing non-sports or made-up fad sports -- like cheerleading championships or X-games. I've been told X-games actually get decent ratings, as hard as that is to believe. But does anyone besides parents and a few dirty old men watch cheerleading contests? -- Lee Nichols Assistant News Editor The Austin Chronicle 512/454-5766, ext. 138 fax 512/458-6910 http://austinchronicle.com
Re: t-and-f: Jabbour is the future: was Letter...NYC mara...coverage
My apologies if I misinterpreted what someone posted. Lee Lee, You misunderstood. Kamal only said what he, personally, would rather webcast. Kamal is a track guy so interested in his favorite sport not so much the others. He wouldn't mind if other people webcast their own favorite sports. So Kamal was not running down other low-profile sports. I agree wholeheartedly with your second paragraph. Tom - Original Message - From: Lee Nichols [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, November 04, 2002 3:57 PM Subject: Re: t-and-f: Jabbour is the future: was Letter...NYC mara... coverage I'd much rather webcast track meets than field hockey and volleyball... It's really a shame to be running down other low-profile sports; you know, there are most certainly plenty of people who feel the same way about tf. Speaking as a big volleyball fan, I'd love to see more volleyball games. I love going to watch them live at the University of Texas. What kills me is when the networks or ESPN are showing non-sports or made-up fad sports -- like cheerleading championships or X-games. I've been told X-games actually get decent ratings, as hard as that is to believe. But does anyone besides parents and a few dirty old men watch cheerleading contests? -- Lee Nichols Assistant News Editor The Austin Chronicle 512/454-5766, ext. 138 fax 512/458-6910 http://austinchronicle.com -- Lee Nichols Assistant News Editor The Austin Chronicle 512/454-5766, ext. 138 fax 512/458-6910 http://austinchronicle.com
Re: t-and-f: Jabbour is the future: was Letter...NYC mara... coverage
GM cares about a few thousand hard core fans? I doubt it. IF they did, they'd already fund nationwide coverage. Ultimately (75 years from now? 100?) all television will be delivered via broadband, but at a heck of a lot higher bandwidth than today, given the needs of HDTV. Companies like Connexion are already demonstrating that it can be done (via satellite, and with a finite number of users). I don't expect USATF to fund ANYTHING. If a web enterprise wants to webcast a meet, the door is open. (Dr. K- have at it!) At the Olympics, cameras from many nations are allowed side by side, why not webcast and broadcast side by side? Do Political Party Conventions grant broadcast coverage rights to a single network? Of course not. It's in their interest to broaden the coverage as much as possible. (these days, of course, networks are not as interested as they used to be). There's not enough overlap to worry about 'stealing anybody's audience'. The whole coverage model is wrong right now. USATF should stop trying to follow the lead of the IOC. RT On Mon, 04 Nov 2002 05:54:49 -0800 ghill [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Sun, 03 Nov 2002 19:53:09 -0800 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: t-and-f: Jabbour is the future: was Letter...NYC mara... coverage The answer is BOTH- put it on the net. And allow any station who wants to provide over-the-air coverage to do so as well. Relegate the exclusive contracts to the dustbin of history. Who wrote that business plan, Homer Simpson? Let's see if I've got this right: first, USTAF should spend income it probably doesn¹t have to fund a web setup for the country's few thousand hardcore fans. Then it should go to GM and try to sell a sponsorship package, while noting oh, by the way, we've already cut out the heart of your audience because we're giving away a more complete product elsewhere. Yeah, that oughta fly. Gh
Re: t-and-f: Jabbour is the future: was Letter...NYC mara... coverage
Tom Derderian wrote: TV is dead. Webcast is the future. Most webcasts have mediocre picture quality although I have seen a few with pretty good pictures, assuming that you have a high speed connection. The poor quality ones are a chore to watch and the low quality really shows through when the subjects are in fast motion. For example, I tried to watch some of the European Championships on the BBC web site and it was frustrating. The technology is there if it gets applied correctly, though. Hopefully, more people will acquire high speed connections so that they can make the most of the medium. Maybe USATF should try doing something along these lines with domestic meets. It would be nice to even employ multiple streams, so that you could go to a web page and select which event that you wished to follow. bob
Re: t-and-f: Jabbour is the future: was Letter...NYC mara... coverage
No offense to Mr. Jabbour, but I'm amazed anyone thinks the time is remotely near for webcasts to take the place of televised events. The present technology is borderline bearable, and that's with a [presumably] relatively miniscule number of people trying to watch. Who really believes servers are prepared to handle millions of simultaneous high bandwidth streaming audio/video requests? And of those who believe it can be done, who believes the modest budget of running events can afford the technology??? Unless someone figures out a good subscription model of internet revenue and makes it affordable to the small to medium sized sites, I just don't see it becoming much more than a niche market that is unlikely to become profitable. Dan --- Bob Duncan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Tom Derderian wrote: TV is dead. Webcast is the future. Most webcasts have mediocre picture quality although I have seen a few with pretty good pictures, assuming that you have a high speed connection. The poor quality ones are a chore to watch and the low quality really shows through when the subjects are in fast motion. For example, I tried to watch some of the European Championships on the BBC web site and it was frustrating. The technology is there if it gets applied correctly, though. Hopefully, more people will acquire high speed connections so that they can make the most of the medium. Maybe USATF should try doing something along these lines with domestic meets. It would be nice to even employ multiple streams, so that you could go to a web page and select which event that you wished to follow. bob = http://AccountBiller.com - MyCalendar, D-Man, ReSearch, etc. http://Run-Down.com - 10,000 Running Links, Fantasy TF @o Dan Kaplan - [EMAIL PROTECTED] |\/ ^- ( [EMAIL PROTECTED] or [EMAIL PROTECTED] ) _/ \ \/\ (503)370-9969 phone/fax / / __ Do you Yahoo!? HotJobs - Search new jobs daily now http://hotjobs.yahoo.com/
Re: t-and-f: Jabbour is the future: was Letter...NYC mara...coverage
From: Tom Derderian [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: Tom Derderian [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Sun, 3 Nov 2002 19:39:05 - To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: t-and-f: Jabbour is the future: was Letter...NYC mara... coverage The internet is the only hope for our sport. Jabbour is the future. There is no reason to persuade the public to be interested in our sport or to dumb it down for everyone and put it on TV. There are a thousand sports that none of us are interested in no matter what anyone says. Let's care about those who care. TV is dead. Webcast is the future. Sorry, couldn't disagree more. Can't think of a faster way to consign track to insignificant-to-the-masses status. All the bad network coverage in the world is worth a thousand times more than all the great web coverage, in terms of the overall health of the sport. You guys would have a sport that a coupla thousand hardcore people would follow and the general masses would never be exposed to. Within a generation, all the track fans would be dead. It would be the same as saying that because they don't give good coverage of the sport all the newspapers and magazines in the country (other than specialty rags like TFN) should quit covering the sport. The key to the sport's health is mass exposure, not contraction into a tinier niche than that which we occupy already. gh
Re: t-and-f: Jabbour is the future: was Letter...NYC mara... coverage
The answer is BOTH- put it on the net. And allow any station who wants to provide over-the-air coverage to do so as well. Relegate the exclusive contracts to the dustbin of history. RT On Sun, 03 Nov 2002 19:05:34 -0800, you wrote: From: Tom Derderian [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: Tom Derderian [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Sun, 3 Nov 2002 19:39:05 - To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: t-and-f: Jabbour is the future: was Letter...NYC mara... coverage The internet is the only hope for our sport. Jabbour is the future. There is no reason to persuade the public to be interested in our sport or to dumb it down for everyone and put it on TV. There are a thousand sports that none of us are interested in no matter what anyone says. Let's care about those who care. TV is dead. Webcast is the future. Sorry, couldn't disagree more. Can't think of a faster way to consign track to insignificant-to-the-masses status. All the bad network coverage in the world is worth a thousand times more than all the great web coverage, in terms of the overall health of the sport. You guys would have a sport that a coupla thousand hardcore people would follow and the general masses would never be exposed to. Within a generation, all the track fans would be dead. It would be the same as saying that because they don't give good coverage of the sport all the newspapers and magazines in the country (other than specialty rags like TFN) should quit covering the sport. The key to the sport's health is mass exposure, not contraction into a tinier niche than that which we occupy already. gh
