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PGA’s ShotTracker: A Pretty Good Live TV Substitute

February 19, 2012 by 6 Comments

Once again, golf fans are faced with a half-hour gap in live TV coverage Sunday, this time from the Northern Trust Open at Riviera in Los Angeles. We tweeted the Northern Trust’s Twitter feed and got back the suggestion to check out the PGA Tour’s ShotTracker page, which we did. It’s pretty cool. It’s not live TV, but you can “follow” the action shot by shot.

@ We’ll be doing our best. But to get the most complete coverage #NTOpen2012 visit @ ShotTracker: http://t.co/Yp3hhBR1

February 19, 2012 11:25 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite
@NTrustOpen

Northern Trust Open

If you look at the screen grab it takes a few seconds to figure out — but then you realize how the thing works. It basically follows each player shot by shot on any given hole and reports the length of each shot. It also has color-codes to show where shots landed, rough, fairway, etc. It updates pretty quickly with a good Internet connection; not sure if there is a mobile option or not (didn’t see one on the page and couldn’t find one in the Android store) but without live TV it’s as good as say, ESPN’s GameCenter service.

We’d still like wall to wall live coverage online. But until that day happens, I guess ShotTracker is our only hope.

Filed Under: Apps, CBS Sports, Golf, Golf Channel, Live Sports Video Consumption, PGA Tagged With: ,

TaylorMade has Twitter-based Contest — Also on Saturday and Sunday

February 16, 2012 by 9 Comments

Editor’s note: TaylorMade extended its contest to Saturday and Sunday, via text not Twitter. Rules are here. Good Luck!

If you are watching the Golf Channel at this moment you could easily enter the TaylorMade Driver Love Contest but you will have to hurry- it runs from Thursday, Feb 16th starting at 12 AM Pacific Time and ends the following day at 11:59:59 PM.

The contest, touted as a ‘first to tweet’ effort, could not be simpler to enter, that is if you have a personal Twitter account and a television. Simply watch the Golf Channel’s broadcast of the Northern Trust Open golf tournament and watch for a “Driver Love” Heart Feature image on the screen during the broadcast.

Then leap to your trusty Twitter account and send a tweet using both the hashtag “#R11SLove” and the Sponsor’s Twitter.com user name (@taylormadegolf). The first eleven entrants on each day that fill this tough first step will win a prize.

There will be one “Driver Lover” heart shown on screen each day and the prize that each winner will receive is one TaylorMade R11S driver. The approximate retail value of each prize is $399. For more info head over to this site.

Filed Under: Golf, Golf Channel, TaylorMade, Twitter Tagged With: ,

More AT&T Golf Failure: Sunday’s Half-Hour TV Blackout

February 12, 2012 by 8 Comments

In this day and age of always-on coverage it seems incredulous that the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am has such a backwards coverage plan. In addition to our already-noted lack of any online streaming coverage, the TV broadcast on Sunday started with live coverage on the Golf Channel — and then just as things started heating up, there was a half-hour blackout. Unbelieveable.

Though I understand that programming schedules need to be set well in advance of the actual tournament, Sunday’s by-chance heavyweight pairing of Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson — simply two of the best golfers, ever — should have prompted either the Golf Channel (owned by NBC) or CBS to pre-empt whatever was going on between 11:30 a.m. Pacific Time and Noon to show Phil and Tiger trying for eagles on No. 6.

It’s a minor blip that will be forgotten but perhaps a good lesson for other events down the line — don’t leave yourself the victim of your own schedules or planning. A good online streaming strategy would go a long way to keeping the number of fans who are going to be lost for a half-hour today.

Filed Under: AT&T, CBS Sports, Golf Channel, NBC Sports Tagged With: , ,

AT&T, Golf Channel Missing the ‘Tiger’ Opp With No Online Video for Pebble Beach

February 10, 2012 by 15 Comments

For the second day in a row, we are incredibly frustrated at the lack of any online video opportunity to watch Tiger Woods in his PGA season debut at the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am. Though the Golf Channel has live coverage today and yesterday, the unique three-course setup for the Pebble Beach Pro-Am means no Tiger TV Thursday or Friday since there are apparently only camera crews at the Pebble Beach course and nothing from the other two courses being used, Spyglass and Monterey Peninsula.

So the reason Tiger isn’t on TV is that he played Spyglass Thursday, and is playing Monterey Peninsula today. We get it, because that means that Tiger will be on TV Saturday and Sunday, playing both days in front of the CBS cameras. But it’s an oversight not to have the game’s biggest draws on some kind of live media for the first two days.

This is a huge missed opportunity for the tournament and for Golf Channel, since there are probably millions of fans like me who would tune in online to catch some Tiger action even while at work. It’s hard to believe that with AT&T adding Wi-Fi clouds to the greater Monterey Peninsula to give fans at the tourney better wireless coverage that we couldn’t at least get someone with a GoPro camera on their head to follow Tiger around and stream that video? Hello sponsor opportunity!

Seriously, not having an online component is really a big error especially for events like golf tournaments where there may be an outsized interest in a single player instead of the traditional multi-camera, multi-announcer setup. I mean, online I have been able to follow what Tiger is doing in words; meanwhile on the Golf Channel they are showing some celebrity comedian eating a plate of ribs. I couldn’t hit the off switch quicker. So tell me how that strategy makes sense either to the event or the sponsors.

Note: the best places to follow El Tigre online today are the Golf Channel home page, where writer Jason Sobel is doing a hole-by-hole Tiger recap in real time. You can also follow Stephanie Wie, who is Tweeting Tiger’s round live. But really, AT&T and Golf Channel, you shoulda done better.

Filed Under: AT&T, CBS Sports, Golf, Golf Channel, PGA, Twitter Tagged With: , ,
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