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Daytona 500 History: First In-Race Tweeted Photo!

February 27, 2012 by 7 Comments

If you are watching the Daytona 500 live on Fox you may have seen the spectacular crash-and-explosion when Juan Pablo Montoya’s car skidded into a safety vehicle, blowing up a whole bunch of airplane fuel. When something like that happens the race is red-flagged, meaning the drivers stop on the course — and of course since it is 2012 driver Brad Keselowski took out his iPhone, snapped a picture and tweeted it:

Now kids — don’t tweet and drive, especially when you are going 200 mph. But when you’re stopped for a red flag? Go ahead, make social media sports history.

UPDATE: Jalopnik had a great breakdown of the moment in NASCAR and Twitter time.

Filed Under: Daytona 500, Fox Sports, NASCAR, Twitter

Daytona 500 Delayed — Could Pressure Next NASCAR Race

February 26, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Sunday's 200,000 fans not this dry

Sunday’s heavy rains forced a delay for the Daytona 500 race, the first time in the iconic race’s 54-year history that it has been delayed. Track officials waited over four hours before deciding that was not going to be a window of clear weather that was long enough to allow the track to dry off sufficiently to allow for racing.

The race has been tentatively moved to Monday but weather reports are not promising as the forecast currently calls for rain. It is likely that the track will wait much longer since any additional delays will make it difficult to reach Phoenix in a timely manner for next week’s NASCAR race.

For the office bound-look online for info

For racing fans there is still news to be had online. We listed a number of services that are being provided by the Daytona International Speedway last week but there are other online and social media sources for fans that might be trapped in an office during the race.

With the race being broadcast on Fox there is of course http://www.foxnews.com/sports/nascar/index.htmls web site that focuses specifically on NASCAR. With a lot at stake they will very likely have their finger on the pulse to see if the race does start at noon EST, or what time it is likely to start. ESPN of course also has a strong NASCAR presence at can be viewed at its site as well.

If you are looking to have a bit of input and possibly chat with other fans while at work, you can head over to Speedtv.com and join in the Twitter conversations that are ongoing or follow any one of a number of drivers Twitter feeds as they talk about the race and the rain issue.

Filed Under: Daytona 500, ESPN, Fox Sports, NASCAR Tagged With: ,

CEA Working to Smoothly Combine Apps, Content and Devices

February 21, 2012 by Leave a Comment

The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) has formed a new working group called the Device, Apps and Content working group (DAC) that will serve as a form of open air forum for members interested in working together and solving joint issues.

The move is a first by the organization in this area, it has seen a tremendous upsurge in interest in how apps are developed, distributed, collected and viewed among its member companies. To be clear this will not be a standards setting body, although the CEA does have a technology and standards groups.

The development of the DAC is a natural outgrowth of what is happening in the industry exemplified by the recent Consumer Electronics Show last month in Las Vegas where the more than 20,000 new product introductions were designed to unite CE and content.

The CEA sees this convergence, where consumer electronics devices are increasingly moving from stand alone products to ones that fill multiple roles including receiving and displaying digital technology as a growing opportunity for its members.

Jason Oxman, CEA’s senior vice president, industry affairs said. “Our aim is to transform content convergence so that consumers have better access to what they want directly from their electronic devices.”

There is no limit to the amount of members that are permitted in a workgroup and a number of prominent companies are already signing up, sowing the broad appeal this approach has to its membership.

Among those involved are Fox, IBM, Netflix, Tivo, Sharp, Kenwood, Pandora and Nintendo. by Bryan Burns, ESPN’s vice president of strategic business planning, will chair the DAC and its focus will be toward companies an interest in content distribution and app development.

Filed Under: Apps, Consumer Electronics Association, ESPN, Fox Sports Tagged With: , ,

Pac-12 Looks to Build ‘Digital Network’ for Social-Media Centric Sports Future

January 31, 2012 by 2 Comments

The Pac-12 conference, one year into its new broadcasting deal is now looking to expand its presence in other areas aside from broadcast television, a move that will encompass streaming media and other technologies broadcast to smartphones, tablets and other devices, mobile and immobile.

To spearhead the program the conference‘s wholly owned subsidiary Pac-12 Enterprises has hired David Aufhauser as vice president and general manager of digital media. He has been in various positions in the sports and social media market for almost two decades with his most recent position being Vice President, Media at Say Media where he managed the global ad network. Prior to that he led business development at Yahoo Sports and has a variety of positions at Citizen Sports, Evite and Netscape.

The job will entail all aspects of the digital media properties of the Pac-12 as well as the creation and management of the Pac-12 Digital Network. The Digital Network will be a unified web site that will provide world wide access to mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets as well as computers and even television for a wide range of sports activities that the Pac-12 is involved in.

The group will handle hundreds of sporting events and provide original programming at all 12 major campuses. This will include live streaming, mobile technology and social TV capabilities, the world. The network is expected to be launched in late summer 2012.

Last year the conference entered into a major upgrade on its broadcasting presence by working with major cable companies to create six regional cable networks as well as signing new national deals with FOX Sports and ESPN. The Digital Network is expected to work with the television networks to provide a more unified presence for the league. The new effort will also handle all sponsorship, licensing and event management for the Pac-12.

His hiring is just the latest in a string of newly enlisted personnel, all seemingly with wide experience in both sports and an array of various media. Last August the conference hired Gary Stevenson as the head of the Enterprise group. Stevenson has more than 30 years in a variety of sports and broadcasting experience including working with the NBA, the PGA Tour and owning his own sports consulting firm OnSports.

The Pac-12 Enterprise has also hired Bill Cella as its chief revenue officer. Cella has experience in sales and marketing and will design and implement long term strategies and oversee the management of all revenue generation for Pac-12 Enterprises.

Expect this to be the tip of the iceberg and a move that is carefully watched by both rival conferences and the NCAA governing body. No school is going to let additional revenue slip through its fingers and we will probably see a number quickly emulate the Pac-12.

The NCAA on the other hand may want a bigger piece of the pie. When Major League Baseball teams started to move onto the Internet MLB itself was a bit slow to follow. When it did it moved everything under its own umbrella, and no doubt gets a larger cut for its effort.

Filed Under: ESPN, Fox Sports, Live sports via mobile, Major League Baseball, NCAA Football, NCAA Hoops, Pac-12, Smartphone, Social Media, Tablets Tagged With: ,

Sunday Sermon: Dialing Back on Negative Tweets

January 15, 2012 by 1 Comment

It took me all of two weeks to break my New Year’s resolution of “being less negative” and I didn’t even realize that I was doing it — all I was doing was sending out a Tweet, taking an easy pot-shot at the second-tier announcing team from Fox for Saturday’s Niners-Saints game, the crew of Kenny Albert, Tony Siragusa and Daryl Johnston. They were distracting at best, with Johnston in particular talking about some idiotic concussion-phone system while the game was going on and then blowing a replay prediction that was pretty obvious to anyone watching. So I hit send on this:

This announcing team for the Niners-Saints is so bad it makes me wish for Joe Buck and Tim McCarver. OK not really. But they are bad.

January 14, 2012 3:01 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite
@paulkaps

paulkaps

After I posted it we had a momentary glitch in the Internet stream here at MSR HQ and as such I had to take an involuntary social-media break. That allowed me to look at my impromptu slam and wonder: Where did all the bile come from for guys who were just doing their job? Do I have the right to smack publicly on Tony Siragusa and Daryl Johnston just because they rub me the wrong way? What does that make me, other than JAOJ (just another online jerk)?

I mean, it’s not like the Fox crew was factually incorrect, or slurring their speech, or saying something morally reprehensible. Like many people I just don’t like the ha-ha attitude they take, the whole Moose-and-Goose show tenor of the announcing this crew puts out. But it must test positive for some percentage of viewership, otherwise (you hope) that Fox would find some other talent to replace them. From watching all the commercials during the playoff broadcasts this weekend, there’s apparently a lot on TV that I would never spend a minute watching, like “Glee,” “Two and a Half Men,” and “Alcatraz.” So I am probably not in the mainstream when it comes to offering programming commentary.

And then even if I was, look at that Tweet — if you are going to be critical, you should follow the Jim Rome rule of “have a take, don’t suck.” And that tweet has about a half a take or less. It just says the Fox crew is bad, not saying how or why — and then takes a sideways poke at Joe Buck and Tim McCarver, which is out of context since baseball season ended roughly 26 months ago and if I wanted to make a Joe Buck call it should have somehow involved Troy Aikman, his NFL broadcast partner. And I actually don’t mind Buck as much on NFL as on baseball.

So I would say looking back that my Tweet was the opposite of the Rome rule: It had no take, and it sucked. A good lesson in that negativity is usually the worst choice when it comes to commentary, one I will try to remember when engaged at the keyboard next time. That Twitter makes it easy to slam someone every second isn’t Twitter’s fault. It’s called operator error. And with any luck I’ll be doing it less as the year progresses.

Filed Under: Awful Announcing, Fox Sports, Twitter Tagged With: ,

ESPN Practices Less Than Aboveboard Journalism? Say it Ain’t So!

December 12, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Awful Announcing last week was the latest to take ESPN to task for its well known practice of piggybacking on someone else’s’ news stories and either portraying them as being broken by the WWL or as revealed by “anonymous sources.”

It is becoming an increasingly common complaint among non-ESPN sports reporters that after they break a story ESPN will run with a similar story and attribute it to sources. ESPN then might later credit the proper source, but not always.

The article notes two recent cases where this has happened. Tim Brown of Yahoo broke the Albert Pujols to the Angels and quickly afterward ESPN’s Buster Olney has “sources” that confirm the trade. The second was Brett McMurphy at CBS broke the Big East expansion story and again ESPN missed the boat crediting sources for its version.

In the past it has been noted that reporters such as Fox’s Jay Glazer often break big football stories that are then shown on ESPN’s Mort Report unattributed. But now it seems that more and more people are speaking out against the practice, including a number of ex-ESPN people who certainly must have some insider information on the topic.

The article goes on to provide some pretty funny comments from rivals that show what they think of the practice. One from Greg Doyle notes that “Someday I hope to break a story so big that ESPN credits me, even if it does misspell “Doyel” as “sources”

While this might just seem to be petty sniping, breaking news is hard, and someone that is out in front of the pack on news stories deserves to be credited for their work. I am sure many people have been incensed when someone at their work gets or takes credit for something that you did, ESPN just plays on a bigger stage.

In the rush to get news out quickly it is always possible to forget to properly credit the original source, and no doubt everybody that has done any amount of reporting has probably been guilty of this at least once, but it does seem that it is a fairly common occurrence in Bristol.

Filed Under: Awful Announcing, ESPN, Fox Sports, Jay Glazer, SportsCenter Tagged With: ,
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