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Is Masters Online Coverage Feeling the Pressure?

April 7, 2012 by 1 Comment

Tiger in the creek at #13

Don’t know if this is a widespread thing or if it’s only affecting me but I would have to say that through 2 and a half rounds the online coverage of the Masters this year is playing about as well as Tiger Woods. Meaning that when it’s on, the online coverage is world class. But so far this year like el Tigre there’s been a lot of bad to go with the good.

The problem I am seeing most is just stuttering load times — for no reason the screen will just stop and you get the feared white line circling around the logo, the Masters online equivalent of the old Windows hourglass or the Mac spinning rainbow. And when the live coverage does come on there seems to be a long wait for the pixelation to go away. I have also seen on several occasions a Matrix-like instant repeat, a replay of the scene shown just seconds before. Once it got so bad (5-6 times in a row) I had to shut down the app and start over.

(Just for reference I have been watching mainly the Masters.com service online. Went to the CBSSports.com window a few times but saw some similar problems there. Also think the Masters.com design is a better feel.)

Before you tell me this is just my setup, rest assured I have done all the home-fix things I can, closing and clearing the browser cache, resetting the router and the cable modem, and the problems are persisting. And I am on a Comcast Internet connection that just tested out at 35 Mbps download so it ain’t the ISP. We’ve asked the folks at IBM if they are having any problems but my guess is that we’re not going to hear anything from them so if you are having similar issues let us know in the comments below.

I also tested out the Android app, which is new this year, during a trip to the doctor’s office yesterday. While I was generally pleased with the service (I mean it’s pretty damn amazing to be sitting there watching live golf on your phone, right?) I did notice that the app kept telling me (every few minutes) that the “this video not optimized for mobile.” Exsqueeze me? If it’s not optimized for mobile what’s it doing on my phone?

So… watching Tiger trying to get back into the tourney it looks like he is playing solidly but not amazing anyone. I’d have to give a similar grade to the online coverage this year, though with a note that the Masters online is by far the most ambitious digital coverage of any major sporting event, hands down. Like the Masters, this stuff ain’t easy.

Filed Under: Android, Apple, Apps, CBS Sports, iPad, iPhone, PGA, The Masters, Tiger Woods Tagged With: , ,

Masters Viewer Numbers Up on ESPN, CBS

April 6, 2012 by 1 Comment

The early returns are in and yes, more of you are watching the Masters this year. According to both ESPN (which is carrying the CBS broadcast live Thursday and Friday) and CBSSports.com, there were more of both regular broadcast viewers and online watchers this year than last. Is it Tiger fever? Who knows, but el Tigre opened Friday with a birdie which is good news for the weekend.

According to CBSSports.com, unique viewers of Masters Live traffic on CBSSports.com was up 40 percent compared to Thursday traffic for 2011; no discrete numbers yet (those should come Monday) and no totals yet from the Masters.com site. Yours truly spent about an hour Friday on the Android version of the Masters app and Verizon 4GLTE. Kept getting messages saying “this video not optimized for mobile” which makes me think the folks at IBM need to bake that app a little more. Otherwise, though, impressive to watch live video while waiting in the doctor’s office.

For ESPN, here is the press release info:

ESPN’s live telecast of the first round of the 2012 Masters Tournament on Thursday, April 5, averaged 2,661,000 viewers with a 2.3 household coverage rating based on fast nationals, according to the Nielsen Company.

The rating was an increase of 10 percent from last year’s first round, which earned a 2.1 rating. Viewership was up four percent over last year’s 2,550,000 average.

Across ESPN digital platforms – including ESPN.com, the ESPN mobile Web and ScoreCenter – the first round of the Masters generated an average of 50,600 people using one of those properties at any given minute of the day, up 35 percent compared to the previous year (source: Adobe/Omniture). Daily unique visitors to the Golf index page on ESPN.com were up 10 percent, while total minutes to the page were up 53 percent. Additionally, daily unique visitors to Golf content on the mobile Web were up 67 percent.

Whoops! Hope we didn’t jinx the coverage. Here’s what I’m seeing now:

Anyone else having troubles watching?

Filed Under: CBS Sports, ESPN, ESPN3, PGA, The Masters Tagged With: , , , ,

New Jim Rome Show on CBS: Perfect for Embedding

April 6, 2012 by Leave a Comment

David Letterman has Jim Rome on as a guest earlier this week.

After watching the debut of Jim Rome’s new TV show on CBSSports.net I made the comment that the structure of the show seemed perfect for Internet viewing — it was several short-form segments that seemed tailor made for sharing and embedding. And since Rome is already a king of social media it was my further guess that CBS would quickly make Rome’s stuff available to any Internet site that wanted to share it.

Like, say, this one.

The show is only three days old but CBSSports.net already has the show-ending “burns” under the title “Rome Wants” available for embedding and sharing. And why not, since they are forcing you to watch a 30-second pre-roll commercial. Small price to pay, we say. Here’s Thursday’s clip:

Of course us clones who follow Rome know that his radio interviews and shticks are often longer than what he can do in the short space that a half-hour TV show allows, so for radio show fans there is always the Rome Jungle Insider option that gets you podcast downloads and other goodies for $6.95 a month. But with an appearance on Dave’s show to help promo the new show and probably some cameo spots at big CBS events later this year it’s clear Rome’s star is on the rise. And his social media savvy will help him on the climb.

Filed Under: CBS Sports, Sharing Sports Media Tagged With: , ,

Watching Golf This Week: The Masters

April 4, 2012 by 3 Comments

OK golf fans, time to get interactive and help us out. We know there is no way in hell that we are going to find every outlet covering the Masters this week, but we’ll try. And with your help we can do that sharing thing that everyone loves about the Internet. So here is our “first draft” attempt, going out on Wednesday since there is going to be coverage of the par 3 event Wednesday and who doesn’t want to watch that? But instead of typing it in this post we are going to simply say:

HERE IS THE MAIN MASTERS COVERAGE LINK.

HERE IS THE MAIN CBS MASTERS PAGE.

HERE IS THE CBSSPORTS LIVE ONLINE COVERAGE PAGE.

OK, that takes care of 99 percent of your questions. Now. Unless you’ve been under a rock you know all the story angles — Tiger vs. Rory, Tiger vs. Phil, Rory vs. Keegan, who the heck is Charl Schwartzel — so we don’t need to repeat those here. The only big question left is how to watch — on broadcast or cable, where there are so few commercials you might want to keep an empty jug handy next to the couch if you know what I mean; online, where Masters.com and CBSSports.com will have seven different live streams of video; or at any one of the many live-blogging outlets. If you know of one that we don’t have listed, add it to the comments; we’ll update this post throughout the week.

Here’s where to follow the action:

THE MASTERS

(all times Eastern)
TV COVERAGE
Wednesday, April 4 (par 3 Contest, live) — ESPN, 3 p.m. — 5 p.m.
Thursday, April 5 — ESPN, 3 p.m. — 7:30 p.m.
Friday, April 6 — ESPN, 3 p.m. — 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, April 7 — CBS, 3:30 p.m. — 7 p.m.
Sunday, April 8 — CBS, 2 p.m. — 7 p.m.

RADIO
SIRIUS XM (Satellite)
2 p.m. — 6 p.m., Thursday-Sunday
Sirius will also have several feature shows. Check this schedule for more.

Masters.com
There will be a live streaming radio report on the Masters.com site.

ONLINE
Full live video coverage at Masters.com and CBSSports.com. Different cameras start at different times each day, so… check the schedule to see when they go live. Right now tentative start times for Thursday are: Amen Corner camera, 10:45 a.m.; Holes 15 & 16, 11:45 a.m.; Featured Groups 1 & 2, 12:00 p.m.

ESPN’s live ESPN3 coverage of the Par 3 contest

ESPN: The Worldwide Leader will be at the Masters in force, with its live coverage Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, and more online coverage goodies. Here is ESPN’s Tournament Central link. This is also a good place to check for live ESPN online coverage, via ESPN3 or the WatchESPN app for mobile devices. Remember, the WatchESPN app only available for cable subscribers of Bright House Networks, Time Warner Cable, and Verizon FiOS TV. Comcast customers are still out of luck.

ESPN also has the Putting at Amen Corner game online, as well as the popular Best Ball Majors fantasy game, which plays just like the NCAA hoops brackets. We’ll have an MSR group to join, stay tuned or follow me on Twitter @PaulKaps for more info.

Golf.com is going Masters overboard, with more content than you could possibly read. But the Sports Illustrated group of writers hanging out there may be the best covering the game right now.

PGA SHOT TRACKER
There will be NO Shot Tracker at the Masters. Too bad.

TOP TWITTER FEEDS TO FOLLOW
Dan Jenkins — golf’s Shakespeare. From Texas. Hope he is on form for the Masters. If you don’t know who he is, hit Google. And buy a few books.
Geoff Shackelford — well known golf writer is slinging Masters lore and great links.
Golf Channel — official Golf Channel feed
@PGATOUR — official PGA Twitter feed
@StephanieWei — great golf writer who is a Twitter fiend

LOCAL FLAVOR
The Augusta Chronicle knows how to play the biggest event of the year. A good bookmark.

WHAT’S THE COURSE LIKE?
Here’s an incredible service: The Masters course page has video flyovers of each hole. I think I will only spend about 80 hours on this page alone.

Want to check out the historic clubhouse? Sports Illustrated’s Golf.com has a video that takes you inside.

WHO WON THIS THING LAST YEAR?
Do you need a refresher? It was Mr. Four Birdies in a row to close, Charl Schwartzel.

FEDEX CUP LEADERS
1. Hunter Mahan, 1,314 points
2. Johnson Wagner, 1,056
3. Rory McIlroy, 1,015
4. Phil Mickelson, 988
5. Kyle Stanley, 954

See the full standings for the FedEx Cup points list.

WORLD GOLF RANKINGS
1. Luke Donald; 2. Rory McIlroy; 3. Lee Westwood; 4. Hunter Mahan; 5. Steve Stricker.
See the official World Golf Ranking list.

Filed Under: Apple, Apps, CBS Sports, ESPN, ESPN3, Golf, Golf Channel, iPad, PGA, The Masters, Tiger Woods, Twitter, WatchESPN Tagged With: , ,

Look to Mobile Apps to Stay Competitive in Fantasy Baseball

April 3, 2012 by 1 Comment

With the second start to this year’s MLB season, and I am still not sure what the league gained by starting last week in Japan followed by a long layoff, all fantasy teams should be in place for the long haul to October greatness.

However the fact that the draft is completed means that only the first step is finished, and then comes the monitoring of teams and players, keeping a hawk eye not only on the waiver wire and the injury report, but also how your own roster is performing so that gaps and shortcomings in a lineup can be repaired quickly and efficiently.

I still know one or two people that primarily use one source for all of their information, but with the growing number of sites that are available it makes sense to have multiple sources for data, and to have an app or two loaded in your smartphone or tablet so that you can react instantly.

Most of these are available on both Android and Apple’s iOS. One or two are available on a BlackBerry and I did not find any that specified Windows Phone, although I imagine that will change in a year.

These are in no particular order and with that we will start with Yahoo! Fantasy Baseball ’12. Many fans are familiar with this free app and a few new features have been added including Facebook and Google logins as well as features such as real time score updates and player stats.

Another I am sure most are very familiar with is ESPN’s free Fantasy Baseball app, although when you say free there is a pay option of sorts. The basic app gives you team management, the ability to accept or reject trades from other managers and a host of news, tweets and video from ESPN’s Fantasy Baseball analysts.

If you are an ESPN Insider, or want to join for the extra features you also get push notifications when players are benched or are send to the DL. It also has exclusive video and news from the ESPN team. For those looking towards next year it is good to remember that it also has Spring Training notes so get the app early. A user must have an ESPN Fantasy Baseball team.

Fox Sports is not about to be left out in the cold on this and has a new version of Fox Fantasy Baseball. It allows you to join an established Fox league or form a private one with customizable rules and offers a variety of scoring systems including rotisserie and head-to-head.

The app allows a great deal of league customization with leagues ranging from four to 20 teams and a variety of draft, trading, and score keeping options available.

CBSSports.Com has its Fantasy Baseball app that has three different main settings. For the casual fan or those new to a fantasy league there is a setting for you, and you can organize a league or enter into an established one.

At the second level, called Premium Games, a player can win up to $3,500. This has four levels of participation, in part determined by the fan’s experience and the entry fee that they wish to pay, with fee’s for a first team ranging from $29.99 for the $150 prize to $499.99 for the $3,500 prize. Cash prizes awarded to the winner of each ten team league.

For the experienced that want a customized experience there is the Commissioner- where you can set customized rules for the league, rosters draft format and a variety of other features. CBSSports offers a range of apps that will work with the league.

We have already covered Bloomberg Sports Front Office 2012 here so all I will say is that it is a very full featured app that covers a wide range of areas that fans would want or need information about players or teams.

For those that are late or waiting until the first week of the season to hold their draft there is GlassWareMobile’s Fantasy Baseball Draft Wizard for Android. While not specifically for stat heads it helps to understand simple terms such as VORP. It provides three years of stats for players and gives dynamic adjustments to players’ value in real time.

Roto Sports RotoWire Fantasy Draft Kit 2012 is another place to go for the draft information that you need. You enter your league parameters and it will generate a draft either based on player rankings or dollar vaue. It contains 2012 projectsions for over 1,000 players and continuously updates them

Interested in tracking minor league players in case you are in a league that allows September call-ups to count? Try MiLB.Com Triple-A 2012. No video on the $4.99 app but it has pitch by pitch tracking for the International and Pacific Coast League teams as well as standings schedules and other information.

For those that do not bother tracking minor league players you do not know what you are missing. I love how some guy in a windswept PCL team will come to the majors with gaudy numbers that just do not translate well the MLB parks and pitching. This is a way to stay ahead, especially if your league requires a rookie each year.

There is just about something for everybody here, aside from operating system limitations. Most but not all are free, a positive price in my mind, and deliver and increasing array of information to fans. I would be interested to hear any pros or cons on these apps from any users out there.

Filed Under: Android, Apple, Apps, Baseball, Bloomberg Sports, CBS Sports, ESPN, Fantasy Baseball, Fox Sports, Google, iPhone, Live Sports Video Consumption, Major League Baseball, RotoWire, Smartphone, Tablets Tagged With: ,

MSR Tech Watch: The Masters is a ‘Major’ IT Challenge for IBM

April 3, 2012 by 4 Comments

Everything about the Masters, from Magnolia Lane to the blooming azaleas to the old-timey scoreboards, oozes tradition. But to make sure that you can see all that old-timey stuff on your iPad, it takes a lot of new technology and online-infrastructure smarts. That’s where IBM comes in, as the white-bibbed caddie who makes the Masters come alive online.

“The Masters is all about being more than a tournament, it’s about being a service to the game of golf,” said John Kent, sponsorship marketing technology manager for IBM, which provides much of the technical underpinnings for the Masters.com site and all the tournament’s scoring tabulations. “The challenge is to preserve all the history and tradition, and balance it with technology.”

Take those scoreboards — the iconic white signs that provide drama all their own, when names and scores are manually shifted in a pleasing delay after roars are heard from distant parts of the course. Though technology exists to create LED leaderboards that could update in real time, Kent said the tradition of the manual white boards isn’t going away from Augusta.

“There’s a lot of drama at the course with the manual scoreboards — you can be sitting at 18 and hear a roar somewhere else, and then you watch the scoreboard and wait for that tile to disappear,” Kent said. “The funny thing is, those are the most highly automated manual leaderboards out there, with wireless connections to the crew in back.”

Real-time video another Masters innovation

Since most golf fans aren’t lucky enough to have a Masters badge, the next best thing to being there is live video — and IBM helps the tournament provide a plethora of streaming images at the Masters.com website. During last year’s tournament Kent said the site served up 3 million video streams on Saturday and another 4 million on Sunday, an amazing online total when you consider that many golf fans are glued to the regular broadcast and its almost commercial-free serenity.

According to Kent, the explosion of handheld devices that can serve up video images is partly responsible for the growth in online viewing of the Masters — the Saturday and Sunday online video totals mentioned above were 40 and 80 percent higher respectively than the stats from the same days the year before, and he expects more growth in mobile viewing this year. “We’re seeing a trend of people using the Masters.com site at work on Thursday and Friday, and then using mobile devices on the weekend,” Kent said. “They’re just taking advantage of the best experience available.”

And to make sure that experience is Masters quality, the IBM tech team does its own “range work” in the offseason. This year that meant testing numerous Android-powered devices so that the release this year of the first Android Masters app would be green-jacket good.

“The complexity this year was in the number of devices we had to test,” Kent said. Apple’s iOS, he said, is easier to support since there are a finite amount of things to look at. But with Android devices, Kent said, there is a wide range of differences, not just in hardware form factors but in the different ways the manufacturers implement the Google OS.

At the golf course, IBM does bring in a truckload of servers to help gather, encode and send out to the Internet the video streams for the seven different channels on the Masters.com site. But you might never see any of this infrastructure on camera — just another part of how the tournament and the Augusta National club combine new technology with tradition.

One advantage the Masters has over other major tournaments is that it is played on the same course every year. To support quality images — Kent noted that the Masters was the first golf tournament to be broadcast in color, and the first to use HD — Augusta National has buried miles of fiber beneath its azaleas, to bring signals from cameras without cables lying around.

“The Masters uses plenty of technology, but you’ll never see it,” said Kent.

IBM customers benefit from Masters tests

While there are few businesses that have the kind of explosive one-weekend stress test traffic that the Masters does — Kent said the Masters.com site attracted 10 million unique users last year, who totaled 197 million page views — IBM does learn a lot about how to dynamically allocate resources during the event, which ultimately serves corporate customers better.

“We have a single cloud infrastructure that supports it all, the scores, and the live video,” Kent said about the Masters.com back end. “And our [corporate] clients struggle with the same things — how to build the right cloud and how to dynamically allocate resources as efficiently as possible.”

Filed Under: Android, Apple, Apps, CBS Sports, Golf, iPad, iPhone, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, PGA, The Masters, Tiger Woods Tagged With: , ,
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