The ESPN program E:60 recently reported on the dangers posed by improperly tuned ice resurfacing equipment and ventilation problems in indoor ice arenas. This 13-minute long report claims that in 28 rinks that they tested that used propane or natural gas ice resurfacers, "nearly one-third were found to have dangerous levels of carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide or ultrafine particles."

These are serious claims and the matter deserves further investigation. Over the years that I've been involved in the sport of ice hockey, I have heard about a number of serious outcomes and close calls as a result of indoor air quality problems at hockey rinks. One example is a game that occurred in September 2002 at Lehigh Valley Ice Arena that sent 25 college hockey players and coaches to the hospital complaining of "shortness of breath and a burning sensation in their throats and chests." [ Note: Sorry for the link to an article excerpt. This was the only way I could find to cite a published story referring to this event. ]

In my opinion, the questions that should be asked after watching this ESPN report are:

• How widespread is this problem in 2009?
  
• How often do indoor air quality problems that could cause a medical issue go uncorrected for a significant period of time?
  
• How many hockey players, figure skaters, and speed skaters that have asthma experience exacerbations as a result of air quality inside the facilities where they perform?

Reached at the Oregon Health & Science University's Center for Research on Occupational and Environmental Toxicology, Fred Berman - the director of the Toxicology Information Center - labeled that result of 59 {parts per million of carbon monoxide} more interesting than concerning. He said further study, preferably over a broader window of time, would be needed before the air was determined a hazard.

The article goes on to point out that Berman considered average overall exposure to indoor air pollution to be more important than a "snapshot in time" which is what the ESPN figures for this arena might be.

Regardless of what you think after seeing the ESPN report and reading the article from the Binghamton newspaper, this is a fascinating investigation that anyone involved in ice sports should keep watching.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Back in April, I wrote How to Create iPhone Ringtones from TV Show Soundtracks Using Audio Hijack Pro and GarageBand '08 and created a The Hockey Night in Canada Theme ringtone for my iPhone as an example.

For those U.S.-based hockey junkies in our readership who haven't heard, several Canadian news outlets are reporting that the license agreement between the CBC and the licensor of the song has expired and may not be renewed.

The song was written by Dolores Claman in 1968 and has been the theme song for Hockey Night in Canada for 40 years. Wayne Gretzky once said that this song is the second Canadian national anthem.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 2:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Many of you know that I officiate college ice hockey, so you probably won't be surprised at my interest in a few video clips taken from interviews with four NHL Officials selected to officiate the Stanley Cup Finals:

These interviews were made available by ESPN on a website called ESPN Video.

I've never seen NHL referees and linesmen interviewed in this manner before. I think it's great because it shows the officials are human beings, just like the players.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 12:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

If you follow me on Twitter, you know that I attended my first Princeton Mac User Group meeting on Tuesday night rather than stay home and watch Game 3 of the Flyers - Penguins series.

This is undoubtedly considered a sacrilege in my community, particularly because I am so involved in hockey at lower levels.

I point this out not to take myself to task, but to plug the Philadelphia sports website called the700level.com. I am really impressed with their article Outplayed, which analyzes the Flyers' performance in that game.

I spent 20 to 30 minutes listening to the Flyers Postgame Show on 610 WIP on the way home from Princeton, and I had little idea after that why the Flyers lost. Yes, the host and a number of callers said that the Flyers were outplayed, but they didn't give specific enough examples for me to understand why it happened.

Contrast perception of the WIP presentation with this excerpt from the "Outplayed" article:

The biggest problem in this game was again the turnovers. The Penguins ran an efficient trap that slowed the play down and confounded the Flyers' attempts to gain the zone and maintain it.... There were very few sustained attacks in the Penguins' zone; if the Flyers gained the line and were lucky enough to get a shot off, the Pens collapsed on it and cleared the rebound.... The neutral zone woes have been a major problem all series, and we have to begrudgingly give credit to the Penguins and coach Michel Therrien for that efficiency.

It's damn near impossible to win a playoff game in which you only take 18 shots (and about 3 of them were just hard dump-ins that went on goal). Sure, it was frustrating to see how many calls the refs made early in last night's game. The whistles slowed the play down far worse than some light hooking would, and I increasingly feel like a dinosaur who wants just a little of that old NHL back, so players on both sides could play without worrying about every little stick contact.

It's abundantly clear to an experienced hockey person why the author feels the Flyers lost, what role he feels the referees played in the game, and why he is not laying the blame for the loss at the feet of the officials. Excellent.

Another thing I really like about this blog is it's tendency to illustrate key plays with video clips from the game. They are using the service called RedLasso to embed the broadcast video directly into their analysis. I have never seen this done in a sports blog before to the extent that the700Level is doing it.

From what I can tell RedLasso itself is in private beta. I seriously want to know more about how they work and why they haven't been taken down by a major media company. I think that RedLasso's concept is excellent, and the way their service is used on the700Level is the epitome of fair use.

In short, I feel like I understand the Flyers - Penguins game far better after reading "Outplayed" than I did after watching the game highlights on NHL.com. That's a big reason why I will keep looking at the the700Level when I am looking for analysis of Flyers games.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Wall Street Journal published an article today called The Return of a Great Game which celebrates the coming of age of stars Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Alexander Ovechkin. One of the key indicators of hockey's renewed popularity is the elevation of hockey in the mix of highlights and analysis that is ESPN's SportsCenter.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The other day I was looking forward to watching NHL playoff games, and started thinking about how much fun it would be to watch Hockey Night in Canada on the CBC instead of Versus.

I went over to CBC.ca and watched the HNIC Playoff Preview Show on the CBC Sports Video Player. The player is a Flash-based application that sits in your browser of choice. After a brief video introduction, the Hockey Night in Canada Opening was shown. This is a series of highlights playing over the Hockey Night in Canada Theme Song. The opening sequence lasted about 45 seconds.

Occasionally I hear people talking about trying to buy the Hockey Night in Canada theme as their ringtone for their mobile phone. Nobody I know has it as their ringtone on their iPhone. I decided to try to use Mac software to create an iPhone ringtone of the actual Hockey Night in Canada Theme as broadcast by the CBC. I had no idea how easy this would turn out to be.

Before I describe this technique, I want to warn you that distributing copyrighted material such as the Hockey Night in Canada Theme Song is probably illegal where you live. However, no one can stop you from making an iPhone ringtone for your own personal use using the following technique.

The software I used to make this ringtone was Audio Hijack Pro from Rogue Amoeba Software ($32 direct from the developer) and GarageBand '08 which is part of the iLife '08 software suite from Apple.

Audio Hijack Pro allows you to intercept (or hijack) the audio output of any application running on your Mac, and save it as an MP3 file. I hijacked the audio output of Safari and captured the Hockey Night in Canada Theme Song in about as much time as it took to locate the Opening in the program and then watch and listen to that opening.

Once I had the MP3 file, I brought it into GarageBand '08 and did the following:

1. I positioned the MP3 on the timeline so that the beginning of the song was at time 0:00.
2. I clicked the button called "Cycle Region" in the second set of controls below the timelines. That button needs to be clicked to "on" before a ringtone can be created.
3. I clicked and dragged the region of the time bar representing the music I wanted as part of my ringtone. I learned from Googling around that the sound had to be 40 seconds or less in duration, so I made sure that I only selected that amount of time in the time bar.
4. I chose "Send Ringtone to iTunes" from the "Share" menu.

This last step automatically exported the music clip as a ringtone and caused iTunes to import it. The next time I synced my iPhone, the custom ringtone was automatically transferred to it.

Once that was done, I could designate my Hockey Night in Canada ringtone as my default ringtone. Better yet, I decided to make it a ringtone unique to some of my friends from hockey and hockey officiating.

The true power of this technique is that you can capture and convert into a ringtone any sound that your Mac can play for you. This means the entire repertoire of YouTube is at your disposal, as well as things like Hulu, current programming from all of the major networks, and things like CBS Classic TV episodes.

I'm thinking of making a ringtone of the Hawaii Five-O Theme Song or the Love that Good n' Plenty Jingle from the 1960s next. [ Hat tip to The Mac Observer for their article Making Custom Ringtones with GarageBand ]

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In Episode 45 of Tekzilla Daily, Patrick Norton pointed out a website called System Requirements Lab that can help you determine if your PC has the minimum or recommended hardware and software necessary to run dozens of popular PC games.

I tried this myself and the way it works is to download either a signed Java or Active X component which collects information about your PC and compares it to System Requirements Lab's database of minimum game requirements. If you pass those requirements, it also tells you if your PC meets the recommended requirements for the game you chose. If your machine comes in above the minimum and below the recommended requirements, then certain features of the game will appear degraded or won't operate at all.

I asked System Requirements Lab if my Dell Latitude C810 can run UEFA Champions League 2006-2007. The site told me that my machine failed the CPU minimum requirement, CPU minimum speed, and video card minimum requirement test. It recommended that I buy a new machine, and referred me to a customized list at CNET.com. I guess it's a good thing that one is already on order.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I expected to be wowed by Steve Jobs' 2008 MacWorld Expo Keynote a lot more than I actually was. However, I was doing other things while the event was going on (real work), and the products that I was most interested in (mainstream Mac laptops) didn't get addressed in this keynote at all.

Bummer for me. I could have bought my MacBook Pro two weeks ago if I had known that the Penryn upgrade wasn't immediately forthcoming.

Here are my comments on the other aspects of the keynote:

• iTunes Movie Rentals / AppleTV Take 2: Clearly the announcement with the most business disruption potential. I agree with one of the commentators on MacBreak Weekly who suggested that Apple is making a play to be the digital media hub in the house, usurping services like Netflix, as well as Television services providers such as Comcast and Verizon FiOS.
• MacBook Air: This is a machine aimed at people who travel a lot or who want a portable machine that is a shadow of their desktop Mac. I could see some very well off Mac users owning the big iMac and a MacBook Air. The MacBook Air is incredibly thin. It's hard to believe a machine with a laptop-like display and keyboard could be any thinner than this and still be usable.

• Time Capsule: This is an interesting extension to the AirPort wireless base station line. Time Capsule is an AirPort Extreme with a 500G or 1T hard disk in it, functioning as Network Attached Storage (NAS).

  My first reaction was, "Bummer. Kathleen just bought me the AirPort Extreme." But then I realized that I would prefer NAS that used RAID 1 or RAID 5 storage anyway. It also costs more than we want to spend on network appliances at this point.



• iPhone 1.1.3 Update: There's some good stuff here. I loaded it on my iPhone already. The cell tower triangulation in the Maps application works pretty well. That feature makes the iPhone version of RinkAtlas viable. Expect an announcement from me on that front soon.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (1)

• Apple Releases a New "Get a Mac" Ad Co-starring a Football Referee on Apple.com: Pretty good attention to detail. The referee is wearing a white hat and a uniform that is very close to that worn in many college football leagues. What I would add to this is the referee turning on his microphone and speaking over the public address system. [ Seen on TV over the weekend. ]

• Andrea Jung Joins Apple Board of Directors on MacRumors.com: "Apple has announced that Andrea Jung has been elected to Apple's board. Andrea also serves as Chairman and CEO of Avon Products, board member of General Electric, and member of the New York Presbyterian Hospital board of trustees and the Catalyst board of directors."

  Why the CEO of Avon and why now? Speculation is that her board seat at GE will make her helpful in brokering an agreement with NBC Universal to bring them back into the iTunes fold.



• Break a Soda Habit with Better Water on Lifehacker: "Have a serious soda habit? Part of the lure of the stuff is the convenience and fizzy texture, not just the sugar content you can get from lots of other places. How-to blog TipNut details one writer's cheap, simple fix—giving water more appeal." My habit is Caffeine Free Diet Coke, so I don't have the caffeine or the sugar but I still have the soda fix. I just drink way too much of it.


• Chalet Doll House on BabyGadget.com: "...this Chalet Doll House from Plan Toys is like a breath of fresh air with its openness and lack of minuscule plastic parts. With movable staircases and skylights, this doll house comes completely furnished - sans family...." Nice looking, substantial, and modern.


• Philips Blu-ray Player BDP7200 on Ubergizmo: "The BDP7200 is Philips’ first Full Profile 1 compliant BD player that features Dolby® TrueHD and DTS® HD High Resolution Audio, multi-channel audio decoding and digital audio optical outputs. The BDP7200 supports 1080p at native 24 frames per second...." On display at CES.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I saw some ads for Dick's Sporting Goods that star Lance Armstrong on New Year's Day when I watched the NHL Winter Classic on NBC. The two 30-second ads both emphasized the fact that the Livestrong clothing collection is on sale at Dick's Sporting Goods.

I thought the ads had a hard edge to them that's uncharacteristic of how Lance has been portrayed in previous TV advertising. In spite of that I thought they were memorable.

When I visited Dick's Sporting Goods E-commerce Site, I expected to find the Livestrong clothing on sale there. I didn't see much at all, although the TV ads are available on that site.

I guess we are expected to visit a Dick's Sporting Goods store to buy these products, or buy them on-line at http://www.store-laf.org/.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 5:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Kathleen, Jimmy, and I watched the 2008 NHL Winter Classic, an outdoor hockey game between the Buffalo Sabres and the Pittsburgh Penguins that took place at Ralph Wilson Stadium in Orchard Park, NY. I have to officiate tomorrow afternoon in New Jersey, so we watched the game on NBC from our living room instead of driving to Buffalo to see it in person.

I thought the game was a huge success for The National Hockey League. The game drew over 71,000 fans. Reuters reported that the game was a "stunning success" and generated "unprecedented media coverage". I think the NHL could put on two or three of these games next season in the week between Christmas and New Year's Day as an alternative to College Football on television. I wouldn't be surprised to see games happen in places like Yankee Stadium or Gillette Stadium in Foxboro.

I thought the visuals were excellent. Orchard Park got an unexpected lake-effect storm that caused a fairly constant snow to fall. It was windy at times. The players had to deal with imperfect conditions. It went to a shootout with the NHL poster boy Sidney Crosby winning the game for the Penguins on the last shot.

The NHL reportedly used 24 cameras, one more than they would normally use during a game in the Stanley Cup finals. The extra camera was located in an airplane. They used the shot from the airplane a few times, it only emphasized the snowy conditions.

The most interesting technical information that I heard during the game was that the rink had to be designed to accommodate the nine-inch crown of the football field at Ralph Wilson Stadium. This meant that the rink had to be built on a platform that leveled the ice surface. Inside that platform were the pipes for the cooling system with styrofoam surrounding the pipes and sand poured over the top.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

• Bills return to Buffalo by bus after loss in Cleveland, The Associated Press on ESPN.com: "Mother Nature sure had it in for the Buffalo Bills this weekend."

  "Bad enough that a blizzard contributed to Buffalo's loss at Cleveland on Sunday, ending the team's playoff chances. Then, following an unscheduled overnight stay because of bad weather, the Bills were forced to bus home Monday after their charter plane got stuck in mud off a runway in Cleveland...." [ Thanks Julie Howson ]



• Who's #1? on ESPN.com: ESPN Classic's "Who's Number One" show will be running down the most important technological advances in sports on ESPN Classic, 10:00pm ET, Dec. 19, 2007. This is definitely something I'll have to TiVo if I can't watch it live.


• Why Wireless Isn't Wide Open on BusinessWeek.com: "Even as the wireless industry chants a new gospel about opening mobile-phone networks to outside devices and applications, some of the biggest U.S. carriers are quietly blocking new services that would compete with their own...." [ via Andy Abramson on VoIP Watch ]


• Canadian surprised by $85,000 cell bill on SeattleTimes.NWsource.com: "Piotr Staniaszek normally pays $147 a month for his cell phone. So he was more than a little surprised to learn his November bill had ballooned to $59,000. And then it got worse. When he called to inquire about the high figure, he was told that his bill this month was $83,000." [ Thanks Martin O'Donnell ]



• Verizon FiOS with only a Apple Airport Extreme {sic} on Elecktronkind.org: Excellent article on the things you need to do to replace the ActionTec router that Verizon provides to most FiOS users with an Apple AirPort Extreme Base Station. Something we hope to do in The Home Office in Newtown sometime after Christmas.

  One key fact to note from this article: You do need to keep the ActionTec router on the network if you have Verizon's digital cable service that's delivered over FiOS. Hopefully we can turn off the wireless capability of the ActionTec and put the AirPort Extreme Base Station behind it.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 12:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Stanley Cup playoffs are in full swing. I can't see every minute of each game because I'm busy at work, and when I get home I need to spend some time with my family. This means watching at least part of some of the appointment shows that are recorded on the TiVo.

One thing that's helped me keep up is a program from The NHL Network called NHL On The Fly: Final. This is a 30-minute program that's devoted to highlights and analysis of the playoff games that took place that day.

The NHL Network doesn't air in the United States, but Versus has picked up the show for the duration of the playoffs and is airing it at 1:00am Eastern Time. This is not a good time for me to watch the program live, but it's ideal for my TiVo.

NHL On The Fly: Final was vital during the first round of the playoffs. With half as many games to cover in the conference semi-finals, the hosts can devote more time to each game.

If I don't have time to sit in front of the TiVo, I can watch NHL On The Fly: Final on demand at http://onthefly.nhl.com/. The worst aspect of this is that the on-line version has 15-second interstitial ads that can't be fast forwarded.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday, the NHL and NBC announced that they were extending their national broadcast contract for an additional season. This means that the NHL on NBC will air again during the 2007-08 season.

According to the announcement, the NHL and NBC have agreed to introduce schedule flexibility for next season: "The NHL and NBC will pick from three slotted games each week and one will be the featured "Game of the Week," while the other two will air on their local carrier."

I guess this means that there will be no repeat of the situation that occurred this past Sunday. NBC was covering two games that began at 12:30 Eastern Time:

• Boston Bruins at Pittsburgh Penguins
• New York Rangers at New York Islanders

The Bruins-Penguins game was designated the "Game of the Week" and aired on every NBC affiliate outside of the State of New York. It was an utterly forgettable 5-0 victory for Pittsburgh, that didn't really mean anything in the standings. The Bruins had lost three in a row and six out of their last eight coming into the game.

The Rangers-Islanders game had major playoff implications and went to overtime. The Rangers pulling out a 2-1 road victory.

NBC switched from the Bruins-Penguins to the Rangers-Islanders with five minutes remaining in regulation time. They should have made the switch after the first period, when the Penguins were already up 3-0.

Any professional sports league that expects to have viewership on a national TV package must provide schedule flexibility to the network that carries them. The NBC-NHL deal should have had this flexibility at the beginning. Good thing it's been written into the contract now.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 5:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I recently received a copy of Sesame Street - Old School, Volume 1 (1969-1974) for my birthday. Kathleen, Jimmy, and I are watching it together, and we're reliving some of Mommy and Daddy's childhoods while showing Jimmy some parts of Sesame Street that are consigned to history. I'm not sure how much a six month old can differentiate between Sesame Street, with and without Elmo's World, but...

I learned about this DVD set in October and wrote about the strange disclaimers that Sesame Workshop added before each episode is presented. Kathleen, Jimmy, and I saw this disclaimer before Episode 1. I laughed when I saw it because it seems half-hearted.

Here's a quick review for those readers who are intrigued by the concept of watching Sesame Street exactly as we remember it:

• Booklet:The 22-page booklet splits about 75/25 between information for adults and children. The material for adults includes letters from Joan Ganz Cooney, one of the founders of Sesame Workshop, Chuck Jones the animator to the television critic for the Los Angeles Times, a summary of historical events from 1969-1974, and rememberances from the actors who play long-running human roles on Sesame Street. The material for kids is a mini-activity book.
• Disc 1: This DVD includes Episode 1 from November 10, 1969 including an introduction to Sesame Street from the character Gordon, an appearance by Carol Burnett, meeting Oscar the Grouch, and segments about the numbers 2 and 3. The second episode on the DVD is actually the original sales pitch for the Sesame Street series. Extras include Kermit the Frog singing It's Not Easy Bein' Green, Ernie singing Rubber Duckie, and Oscar singing I Love Trash.
• Discs 2 and 3: I haven't watched them yet, look for updates to this story in the next week or so.

This DVD set is really worth owning. You'd have to be crazy to get upset about the disclaimers that appear around the Sesame Street episodes. The episodes themselves are priceless looks back at the childhood for people currently in their late 20s and 30s. The extras capture the classic moments of each season, and help you to figure out exactly how old some of the famous songs and classic animated segments are.

Technorati Tags: Sesame Street Old School, Sesame Street DVD, Christmas gifts, Hanukkah gifts

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Verne Gay of Newsday.com wrote a column called How iTunes saved 'The Office' that I've been meaning to point out. Kathleen has fallen in love with The Office in the past few months, but if there's truth to what Verne Gay is saying, the program wouldn't have lasted on NBC's schedule without strong sell-through on iTunes.

The column quotes Angela Bromstead, President of NBC Universal Television Studio as saying:

I'm not sure that we'd still have the show on the air. The network had only ordered so many episodes, but when it went on iTunes and really started taking off, that gave us another way to see the true potential other than just Nielsen. It just kind of happened at a great time.

The article goes on to point out that expected iTunes success is probably going to save 30 Rock for oblivion.

I guess this indicates that the most effective way to support a niche show that you love is to get an iPod and buy episodes, not to write letters to network management.

Technorati Tags: The Office, 30 Rock, NBC, iTunes

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

My sister Julie Howson pointed the latest installment of Rob Owen's Tuned In Journal from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette where Owen talks about the strange disclaimer that appears at the beginning of "Sesame Street - Old School Volume 1". The disclaimer is presented by an animated character, who says:

Welcome to 'Sesame Street Nostalgia.' I am Bob, your host, and I want you to know that these early 'Sesame Street' episodes are intended for grown-ups and may not meet the needs of today's pre-school child.

I've been watching more Sesame Street than NHL games on television lately, since my wife Kathleen suggested that we watch Sesame Street with our son Jimmy during his morning feedings. I started watching Sesame Street when I was a pre-schooler because it came on the air in 1969, so I was more than a bit intrigued by the need for a disclaimer at the beginning of a DVD showing archival footage of Sesame Street from when I was a child.

According to Owen's column, the early episodes of Sesame Street that are depicted in Sesame Street - Old School Volume 1 include a scene "showing kids scampering about a junkyard" and that scenes like this might not be "what's considered appropriate and safe for children today". Of course I think he's right.

My son Jimmy is only five months old, and I doubt that when he's a couple of years older he'll even recognize a junkyard for what it is. I have would have no problem with showing my son a scene like that because I doubt he's going to say, "Oh Daddy, let's go find a place that looks like that and see what we can find to play with."

But if that's the real reason for the disclaimer, I have a bigger question: Could you ever show a program to young children like Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids - The Original Animated Series, Volume 1? A lot of that program takes place in a junkyard. There are characters in that cartoon series who are obese and have speech impediments. Bill Cosby was heavily involved in Fat Albert from a creative perspective, and I'm sure it was considered good clean fun at the time it was produced. It's still OK with me.

Kudos to The Sesame Workshop for making a DVD that illustrates the best and worst of their creative legacy. The groundbreaking fantasy animations, the terrific music, the edgier segments with the Muppets that defined the Sesame Street of the late 1960's and early 1970s-- those were the innovations that made Sesame Street the children's television institution that it is today.

The program continues to succeed in spite of the political correctness that infiltrates the current Sesame Street. This manifests itself in the repetitious super-safety of Elmo's World, the inclusion of handicapped children in many production segments, and an institutional resistance to using classic Sesame Street segments that would still be interesting and instructive today, even if they don't meet the current standards for diversity or other sensitivities.

I'm not saying that you need to include segments with other actors playing Gordon or bringing back Mr. Hooper from the dead. Those segments must be presented in their historical context because they would confuse children if they were mixed in with current production. But, there is no need for a disclaimer on Sesame Street - Old School Volume 1. This production is as appropriate for pre-schoolers of today as it was 35 years ago.

Sesame Street - Old School Volume 1 is definitely going to be on my Amazon.com Wishlist for 2006.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 12:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The Wall Street Journal reports that ABC and ESPN are being criticized by some hard core soccer fans for "Americanizing" its coverage of The World Cup. This criticism comes amid mounting evidence that ABC and ESPN are succeeding in attracting more English-speaking American viewers to The World Cup than ever before. According to the article:

The World Cup is generating record television audiences for soccer in the U.S. But some die-hard fans think the coverage deserves a red card.... A major gripe: ESPN selected an announcer, Dave O'Brien, who had never called a soccer game before this year to serve as the tournament's lead play-by-play man.... U.S. soccer executives have complained to ESPN about the overuse of graphics and cut-away shots, which have interrupted the flow of matches....

Industry executives credit ESPN for providing the most extensive promotion and coverage of soccer ever in the U.S. Mr. Drake says the ratings back up ESPN's choices. Before the quarterfinals began last Thursday, ABC averaged 3.7 million viewers for 10 games. On cable, ESPN and ESPN2 averaged 1.8 million and 1.1 million viewers, respectively, for the other 46 matches.

I think that the criticisms of ABC and ESPN's coverage of The World Cup are pretty baseless. They are the only broadcaster in the United States who can put all 64 games of this tournament on sports-oriented channels that reach most of the potential viewers in the country. Compare their coverage of The World Cup to NBC's coverage of The 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin. I say there is no contest, ABC and ESPN have done a far better job.

People have criticized ABC and ESPN for not having "enough staffers with soccer experience directing the tournament's 64 games from the company's headquarters in Bristol". At least they are producers with sports experience.

The hard part of covering The World Cup for ABC and ESPN is that they have fewer production cycles in which to improve than OLN does in its coverage of The Tour de France. By the time the next World Cup rolls around for ABC in 2010, OLN will have produced three more Tours. OLN has a lot more opportunity to fine-tune its production as the audience evolves.

The main thing that ABC and ESPN have going for them is that the audience likely to watch soccer in the United States is bigger and its clearly growing. Who knows if we can say that about cycling in the post-Armstrong era?

Technorati Tags: Tour de France, World Cup, ESPN, ABC.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 2:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Last week The Washington Post published an article that talked about NBC's effort to start an action sports tour as a source of programming to intrigue a younger audience. The Dew Action Sports Tour is in its second year of existence. It's co-owned by NBC and Live Nation, Clear Channel Communication's event production subsidiary.

Believe it or not, the organizers have sunk an estimated $30 to 50 million into its success. I hope it works out for them.

This weekend, the tour stopped in Louisville, KY for The Panasonic Open, where Bob Burnquist won the skateboard vert competition and Simon Tabron took the BMX vert honors.

The tour will continue on to:

• Denver for The Right Guard Open on July 13-16.
• Portland, Oregon for Vans International from August 17-20.
• San Jose for the Toyota Challenge on September 7-10.
• Orlando for the Playstation Pro from October 12-15.

I can't really get into these sports myself. What interests me about these competitions is the fact that television networks are taking such a big stake in trying to get them off the ground.

One thing that's certain is they're trying to make these events spectator-friendly and not just made-for-TV spectacles. The tour drew an estimated 36,000 fans last year in Louisville over four days. The finale in Orlando five months later drew almost 60,000.

If it was all about local turnout for the event, however, NBC would do better to get behind something like the Commerce Bank Philadelphia International Cycling Championship or the Boston or New York Marathons, which draw hundreds of thousands of spectators to one-day events.

Technorati Tags: Dew Action Sports Tour, NBC.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The 2006 FIFA World Cup started in Germany yesterday. I watched my first game of the tournament this morning-- a surprisingly forgettable 1-0 victory by England over Paraguay.

There are a lot of World Cup-oriented websites to look at. One site I found useful already is the composite World Cup TV schedule compiled by SoccerTV.com that was mentioned in Matt Haughey's article World Cup and PVR's on PVR Blog. This schedule includes broadcasts in English and Spanish as well as explanations of how to receive games in German, Arabic, Portuguese, Farsi, and French by subscription.

This composite TV schedule will help me plan the games that I want to watch live. I'll leave the rest up to my TiVo.

Another cool thing about the PVRblog article is a comment that explains how to record all of the World Cup-related programs on a High Definition DirecTV TiVo PVR.

Technorati Tags: World Cup, TV schedule, TiVo.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 2:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Earlier this week I asked why the National Hockey League has not followed the NBA into Internet distribution of game-related video content? That same day OLN announced a deal with Yahoo! to distribute a fairly large selection of its major sporting events via the Yahoo! Sports website. I heard about this from an article on Frank Steele's Tour de France Weblog that mainly focused on the pro cycling aspects of the announcement.

I think this is a good deal for OLN because their channel is not available on every cable television system in America, and some of the subscribers to those systems are interested in OLN's unique programming. This is also a win for pro cycling, which is much better off with distribution through Yahoo! than if they are only available through pay sites catering to rabid cycling fans such as Cycling.tv.

This is a step forward for the NHL, but it's not the aggressive move that I hoped for. This deal was struck by its U.S. broadcast partner (OLN), not the NHL itself. What the NHL should have done, in my opinion, was made the deal with Yahoo! itself or launched its own Internet-oriented content service. Once they did that, the NHL could have given OLN and the CBC the right to brand certain programs within their Internet package. The NBA did this with TNT Overtime.

Technorati Tags: OLN, Yahoo Sports, NHL, pro cycling, NBA, TNT, CBC, streaming video.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

OLN the network that brings you The National Hockey League, professional cycling, The Arena Football League, and The Davis Cup, announced today that it will be renamed Versus in September 2006. The network will officially change its name just in time for the beginning of the 2006-07 NHL season, but will be start being marketed at the end of The Stanley Cup playoffs in June.

You can expect to see the name mentioned with increasing frequency during the Tour de France. [ via TDFblog ]

Posted by Dave Aiello at 5:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I read the complaints about TV coverage of the Tour of California that were published by VeloNews. The source of these complaints is VeloNews reader mailbag.

It seems like a lot of VeloNews' readers don't realize that the Amgen Tour of California purchased the time on ESPN2 and contracted the coverage out to a production company. This isn't too different from the way TV coverage was pieced together for the Tour de Georgia last year, but the organizers of that race didn't pay to get their nightly highlights on national television.

This is year one for the Tour of California and the organizer, AEG, has deep pockets. This event is bound to get better. Cycling fans will have to look at the current state of the highlight package as early growing pains.

Technorati Tags: Tour of California, professional cycling, ESPN2

Posted by Dave Aiello at 4:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

VeloNews reports that the Amgen Tour of California Pro Cycling Race will begin on Sunday, February 17, with a prologue in San Francisco. The Tour of California is the best funded pro cycling stage race in U.S. history, and I'm sorry that I won't be there.

ESPN2 will carry same-day highlights of the eight day event. A one hour program will air at 10:00pm Pacific Standard Time (1:00am Eastern). Highlights will also be available on Google Video. Set your TiVo now.

Technorati Tags: Tour of California, professional cycling, ESPN2

Posted by Dave Aiello at 3:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

... you can turn to the following resources for replays and critical analysis:

• AdFreak from AdWeek.com: They live blogged the ads and had some interesting stats and asides thrown in.
• AdJab the advertising blog from Weblogs, Inc.
• Google Video has the ads available for playback
• USA Today has posted the results of their 18th annual Ad Meter
• The Wall Street Journal has its Super Bowl ad analysis (probably for subscribers only)

[ some of these ideas via Josh Hallett at Hyku.com ]

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I just received an email from Paul Terry Walhus pointing out that "Chasing Lance: The Fan's Story" will debut on the Travel Channel on Thursday, December 22 at 8pm Eastern Time. This is a film that documented the trip that five Lance Armstrong fans took to the 2005 Tour de France. The Chasing Lance program description on the Travel Channel website says:

Join five Americans on an emotion packed thrill ride as they chase the Tour all around France supporting their hero in his seventh and final ride. These are true fanatics who do far more than vacation, they redefine what it means to be a true Fan.

I'm planning to TiVo it in case I'm not home.

"Chasing Lance" will be followed by a second Tour de France-related program: Lance's France: the Traveler's Guide. I haven't heard anything about this program, so it may contain content we've already seen in other forms, but it still may be worth checking out. Both programs repeat beginning at 11pm Eastern Time.

Technorati Tags: Lance Armstrong, Chasing Lance, Tour de France

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I4U.com reported yesterday that Vodaphone is offering a global mobile TV service including content from HBO and Eurosport. Vodaphone's press release specifies the following programming:

• "Sex and the City" and "Six Feet Under" from HBO
• Eurosport
• MTV
• Specially edited for mobile, Seasons 1-4 of "24", featuring Kiefer Sutherland, from Twentieth Century Fox Television
• UEFA Champions League (European soccer)
• Discovery

I recently received a Nokia N90 mobile phone for review purposes. It supports 3G mobile service, to which I don't have access because Cingular has not yet rolled out 3G in my area. If I had 3G service, I'd love to try what Vodaphone is offering and I think the N90 would be a great device on which to try it.

Technorati Tags: Vodaphone, Vodaphone Live!, 3G, Sex and The City, Six Feet Under, HBO, Eurosport, MTV, 24, UEFA Champions League, Discovery Channel

Posted by Dave Aiello at 12:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

USA Today ran a great story on the production of "A Charlie Brown Christmas" which will air tonight on ABC at 8:00pm Eastern Time. According to the article:

When CBS bigwigs saw a rough cut of "A Charlie Brown Christmas" in November 1965, they hated it.... There were concerns that the show was almost defiantly different: There was no laugh track, real children provided the voices, and there was a swinging score by jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi.

The article goes on to point out that the elephant in the room was really the overt religious references. Bill Mendelson, the show's animator is reported to have said, "We told Schulz, 'Look, you can't read from the Bible on network television.'" In the end, however, the character Linus Van Pelt read from The Gospel according to Luke.

This is one of my favorite half hours of television of the entire year. I've always found something new and interesting in A Charlie Brown Christmas whenever I've watched it. I never really considered the historical significance of Linus' soliliquy, but now that I think about it, that's another reason why I enjoy the program.

I think America is a religious nation at it's core, and all of our religious traditions should have a place in our culture. So, I'm a supporter of A Charlie Brown Christmas, Adam Sandler's Eight Crazy Nights, and everything in between. If not for A Charlie Brown Christmas, lots of these other holiday specials would never have been produced.

Technorati Tags: A Charlie Brown Christmas, Christmas DVDs, Hanukkah DVDs, Adam Sandler's Eight Crazy Nights

Posted by Dave Aiello at 6:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Marketwatch.com reports that NBC Universal will make 300 episodes of 16 TV programs available via iTunes. NBC Universal and Apple said that certain content from NBC, USA Network, and the Sci-Fi Channel will be available for $1.99 per episode. Shows that are involved in this deal include:

• Law & Order
• The Office
• Surface
• The Tonight Show with Jay Leno
• Late Night with Conan O'Brian
• Alfred Hitchcock Presents
• Dragnet
• Adam-12
• Knight Rider

It's interesting that NBC has included a vintage show from the 1950s, 60s, 70s, and 80s to its iTunes video distribution deal. Look for more appeals to vintage TV fans in the future.

Technorati Tags: Video iPod, NBC, Universal Television

Posted by Dave Aiello at 2:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Wall Street Journal reported in its Monday edition that Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network will make some of their shows available on-demand for $2.99 per episode. According to the article:

The episodes will be tailored to work exclusively on toy maker Hasbro Inc.'s VuGo portable media player, a kind of video iPod for kids that began appearing on store shelves in recent weeks and sells for about $100 at discount retailers.

In an earlier article, I said that I put an iPod with video playback on my Amazon.com Wish List because I concluded that "video playback is going to be a very hot feature of portable media players in 2006". This deal between Viacom, Time Warner, and Hasbro is another indicator of the willingness of media companies to offer content for use on portable media players.

I think some of these initiatives will prove that there's a market for inexpensive content delivered on-demand. This will result in the availability of a wider variety of content, which will be its own demand driver. Whether lots of parents will pay $2.99 per episode for the right to download SpongeBob SquarePants episodes to their child's VuGo Multimedia System remains to be seen. { Subscription required to read most articles in The Wall Street Journal. ]

Technorati Tags: VuGo, Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, SpongeBob SquarePants, Hanukkah gifts, Christmas gifts

Posted by Dave Aiello at 12:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

The Wall Street Journal reports in its Tuesday edition that NBC and CBS have struck video on demand deals with cable and satellite TV providers to allow the replay of some of the most popular prime time television shows for a fee of 99 cents. This will allow the subscribers to Comcast Digital Cable and DirecTV who do not own DVRs to time shift their television viewing to some extent.

According to the article:

The distribution deals will allow viewers to order episodes of some prime-time shows -- including hits like "Survivor" and "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" -- for 99 cents apiece. CBS, a unit of Viacom Inc., made its deal with cable company Comcast Corp., while General Electric Co.'s NBC Universal set its pact with News Corp.'s DirecTV, a satellite TV provider.

I think this is a pretty bold move on the part of network executives. They have done what they could to force their audiences to reserve time at night to watch popular programs on the networks' schedules. This policy continued through the beginning of the Digital Video Recorder era, but now they appear to have realized that they need to alter their strategy and maximize their revenue before the majority of digital TV subscribers convert to set top boxes that allow them to record programming for free.

It will be quite interesting to see if this move results in a change in the rate of adoption of DVRs. Will $0.99-per-episode video on demand of the most popular prime time programs be a good enough deal for some subscribers who haven't already brought a DVR into their homes?

Another interesting tidbit contained in the Wall Street Journal article is that Bob Wright, CEO of NBC Universal is reported to have said that his company is "very close" to working out a deal with Apple to provide content for the new video iPod as well. [ Subscription required to read many articles in The Wall Street Journal ]

Technorati Tags: NBC Universal, CBS, Comcast, DirecTV, DVR, PVR, Apple Computer, iPod

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A page one report in today's The Wall Street Journal indicates that Verizon is having difficulty launching FIOS-based television services in many parts of the country. Verizon plans to invest some $20 billion on a large-scale fiber-to-the-home deployment project, but is being asked for costly concessions on a town-by-town basis in exchange for a cable television franchise. According to the article:

Budget-strapped local officials, who have the final say over granting cable-TV-service franchises, are greeting the phone giant with expensive and detailed demands. In New York state, Verizon faces requests for seed money for wildflowers and a video hookup for Christmas celebrations. Arlington County, Va., wants fiber strung to all its traffic lights so it can remotely monitor traffic flow. Holliston, Mass., is seeking free television for every house of worship and a 10% video discount for all senior citizens. Others want high-speed Internet for sewage facilities and junk yards, flower baskets for light poles, cameras mounted on stop lights and Internet connections for poor elementary students.

FIOS is meant to compete with services like Comcast Digital Cable, Time Warner Digital Cable, and IO Digital Cable from Cablevision. These are premium, broadband-based television services with an emphasis on video on demand and bundled Internet access.

The providers have attached high monthly fees to these services in towns where they have monopolies. Beyond switching to DirecTV or The Dish Network, which can't provide broadband Internet service because of their satellite delivery method.

Walt Mossberg pointed out in September that FIOS has already changed the competitive landscape in high-speed Internet access in a limited number of areas of the Northeast. These are places where Verizon has decided to deploy FIOS in advance of permission to offer television services.

America needs a competitive digital television marketplace. More than one broadband solution in each town would be ideal. If the issues with the cable franchising process are that it's too political and too dependent on the whims of local franchise boards, maybe the solutions are to regionalize these boards and bring them into the 21st century by creating new rules that are designed for a competitive market rather than a monopoly. Deployment of a fiber-to-home network is very expensive, so regulatory barriers should be lowered to Verizon for a period of time.

If incumbent cable franchisees complain, they should be offered similar terms for similar capital investments. If upgrades have already been made, the requirements of their franchises should be temporarily relaxed in the same fashion offered to Verizon. [ Subscription required to view many articles from the Wall Street Journal ]

Technorati Tags: FIOS, Comcast Digital Cable, Time Warner Digital Cable, IO Digital Cable, DirecTV, Dish Network

Posted by Dave Aiello at 7:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

The National Hockey League announced a national media partnership with OLN that will include a minimum of 58 regular-season games broadcast on Monday and Tuesday nights, Video on Demand, HDTV, and on-line streaming. The first game to be telecast will be the New York Rangers versus the Philadelphia Flyers on Wednesday, October 5.

The NHL may have chosen OLN because it is owned by Comcast. Comcast is a media company that also owns cable television systems throughout the United States, regional sports networks that have the rights to broadcast some NHL teams, and majority ownership of the Philadelphia Flyers. Comcast has been deeply involved in the National Hockey League for a number of years.

OLN needed the NHL because it had nothing comparable to the Tour de France in terms of audience potential for the primary rating periods of the year. The NHL has been a major sport in this country and can be again, not withstanding the labor dispute that resulted in the cancellation of the 2004-2005 season.

This finally ends a long relationship between the NHL and ESPN. There are many reasons for me to like and support ESPN, but their coverage of the hockey took a backseat to basketball once ESPN established a relationship with the NBA.

On OLN, the NHL will be the big draw during the cold weather months. Some people say that OLN's distribution will be a bit of an impediment, because it is not available on every cable system in the country. OLN is available in the key NHL markets. I think that the product on the ice will determine how well the national television audience develops beyond its core markets.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Many financial news sites are reporting that Comcast is studying repositioning OLN as a competitor to ESPN. This was initially reported in a Page 1 article in the Wall Street Journal's "Media & Marketing" Section [ subscription required to read Wall Street Journal articles ]. According to the article:

People familiar with the company's plans say Comcast is interested in recasting its quirky and low-rated Outdoor Life Network. While best known for its coverage of Lance Armstrong's annual victory at the Tour de France, it is also the home of professional bull riding, bear hunting and competitive barbeque.

But transforming the network to an ESPN-style contender would require a major team sport, and people with knowledge of Comcast's plans say the company is in serious negotiations with the National Football League and National Hockey League, and also has its eye on Nascar auto racing.

In all likelihood, the name of OLN would change if such a plan were enacted.

I think there's room for a well-funded, widely distributed competitor to the ESPN networks. Fox has tried to create this with Fox Sports. I think their effort has been hindered by a focus on regional sports networks.

Comcast probably has a good opportunity simply because of its relationship with the National Hockey League. Comcast is the majority owner of the Philadelphia Flyers and owns the television network that broadcasts the Washington Capitals.

Beyond the ties to the NHL, Comcast has investments in a lot of other niche sports networks, including:

• The Golf Channel,
• a sports-oriented channel in Detroit,
• a channel dedicated to the New York Mets,
• Comcast SportsNet West in Northern California, and
• Comcast SportsNet Chicago

Several of these networks could either contribute content to a national sports channel operated by Comcast or make distribution of that channel easier in areas where Comcast does not own cable franchises.

Technorati Tags: OLN, ESPN, Fox Sports, NHL

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

OLN recorded its highest ratings in history Sunday as the Tour de France finished up with Lance Armstrong's seventh consecutive victory on the Champs-Elysees. About 1.7 million viewers were tuned in at any given moment of the program.

Ratings were up 17 percent for the entire Tour versus 2004 (2.26 HH vs 1.93 HH) and gross total viewers increased 19 percent (1.76 million versus 1.48 million).

Congratulations to OLN. They deserve the success they've achieved. They consistantly made their staff and hosts available to the media before and during the Tour de France. You can see the amount of information that OLN gave Operation Gadget in the following articles:

• How the Outdoor Life Network Brings the Tour de France to Viewers in North America
• Liggett and Sherwen Think that Lance Will Not Have a Second Act as a Triathlete
• Liggett on the Saint-Etienne Time Trial Course

I think everyone I talked with at OLN realized that this was their network's once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to connect with its audience, and they did everything they could to deliver a great viewing experience.

Technorati Tags: Tour de France, OLN, Lance Armstrong

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Lance Armstrong clinched a seventh victory in the Tour de France today by decisively winning the Stage 20 Time Trial. I was not surprised that Lance won or that Jan Ullrich finished a close second. What did surprise me, however, was the relatively poor performance of Ivan Basso and the incredibly bad luck and nervousness of Mickael Rasmussen.

When I talked with Phil Liggett a few days ago, he confirmed that Stage 20 was very hilly and technical. This is how it appeared when I looked at the course using Google Earth. If this was clear to me, you'd think it would be clear to the Director Sportifs and other personnel of the leading teams.

One of the things I noticed was that the Discovery Channel Pro Cycling Team chose spoked wheels during Stage 20. Most of the other leading teams opted for rear disk wheels. Rear disk wheels are better suited to less technical courses. They tend to reduce the maneuverability of a time trial bike rather significantly.

The race was pretty significantly affected by these choices. Mickael Rasmussen fell while trying to get around a traffic circle near the beginning of the stage. He had equipment problems, was unsteady on his bike for the rest of the race, and lost 7 minutes 47 seconds overall. Ivan Basso rode strongly at the very beginning of his time trial, but looked very tentative in the middle. OLN analysts later suggested he had gone out too quickly at the beginning of his ride, but that doesn't explain the way he handled his bike in the middle third of the course.

Santiago Botero of Phonak, who also rode a rear disk missed a turn and rode into the crowd early on in the OLN broadcast. The worst handling problem that befell Discovery was Paolo Salvodelli at the first traffic circle, but he was not riding a rear disk. He was able to keep the bike under control and didn't crash.

In spite of these issues, I thought that this was one of the most exciting time trials I'd seen in a long time. The course was really challenging. The television crews from OLN and France Television did a fantastic job in terms of getting the right pictures on the screen at the right times. About the only thing to complain about from a TV-watching standpoint was the chyron graphics that OLN made itself. In some cases, they were poorly timed or not up to date. This is not the only time this has happened to OLN during the 2005 Tour, but Liggett and Sherwen did a good job of correcting information that was put on-screen that wasn't correct.

Technorati Tags: Tour de France, OLN, Phil Liggett, Lance Armstrong, Jan Ullrich, Ivan Basso, Mickael Rasmussen, Santiago Botero, Paolo Salvodelli

Posted by Dave Aiello at 12:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The Science of
Lance Armstrong DVD
is available from the
Discovery Channel
On-line Store.
[ Photo: Discovery Channel ]

Martin O'Donnell watches TV Cinq from France Television on Comcast in order to practice his French and keep up with what's going on there. The other day he asked:

Discovery Channel is getting massive publicity on French TV thanks to Lance Armstrong's team. How many Discovery networks are available to people in Europe? How important is Europe to Discovery Channel's cycling sponsorship strategy?

I looked into this and talked to a few friends in the pro cycling community and here's what I found:

• Discovery Channel networks are available in at least 14 countries in Europe and the Middle East including:
  • Belgium
  • Czech Republic
  • Germany
  • France
  • Italy
  • Hungary
  • Netherlands
  • Norway
  • Poland
  • Sweden
  • United Kingdom

• The Science of Lance Armstrong was recently aired as a "Watch with the World" event. It was broadcast to 160 countries in 35 languages.

• The Discovery Channel Pro Cycling Team is the "most international" team on the Pro Tour circuit. They have riders from 15 different countries including the USA and Canada, several countries in western and eastern Europe, Russia, and the Ukraine.

• Discovery Communications was reportedly heavily involved in the signing of Fumi Beppu, a Team Discovery member from Japan. They probably feel that having a Japanese rider will be good for building public relations in Japan.
  

One of the points I made in Leblanc Made the Tour de France a Top International Television Event was that Discovery Communications wouldn't have chosen to sponsor a professional cycling team if the massive growth in international interest in the Tour de France hadn't happened over the past seven to 10 years. I think that Discovery and its co-sponsor AMD have benefitted a lot more from the media exposure that the team has generated this year than the team's previous sponsor, the U.S. Postal Service did during its sponsorship.

Technorati Tags: Tour de France, Lance Armstrong, Fumi Beppu, Discovery Channel, AMD

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A couple of weeks ago I interviewed Peter Sumpf, Vice President of Network Operations for the Outdoor Life Network, on how OLN brings the Tour de France to Viewers in North America. When the interview was over I thought to myself that it would be great if someone took some photos of OLN's broadcast facilities at the Tour de France, so that readers in search of behind the scenes info about OLN would be able to put all of the pieces together.

Earlier today I found a couple of articles by Alex Trautwig (son of OLN anchorman Al Trautwig) that provide a glimpse of OLN's facilities at the Tour de France Arrival Village. These articles are:

• The OLN Truck and
• The Tour de France Media Compound

"The OLN Truck" article is more enlightening than the article about the media compound. The photos in it that give those of us who are back in the U.S. some idea of how large the mobile studio is and how it's typically setup. Readers have asked Alex to post more photos, but he's the blogger that's done the best job of getting inside the OLN facilities so far.

Technorati Tags: Tour de France

Posted by Dave Aiello at 3:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Last Friday I had the unique opportunity to speak with Peter Sumpf, Vice President of Network Operations for the Outdoor Life Network. He's in charge of the infrastructure that will transmit 2005 Tour de France programming to satellite and cable systems throughout the United States and Canada. I interviewed Peter over the phone while he was in his office at OLN in Stamford, Connecticut.

Prior to working at OLN, Peter worked for 16 years at ESPN at their headquarters in Bristol, Connecticut. This included a time when he was Director of ESPN International. He left ESPN and joined the company that owned OLN and SpeedVision in 1996. (Since then, OLN and SpeedVision have been acquired by Comcast and SpeedVision has been sold to Fox Broadcasting Company.)

Sumpf's job at OLN is to manage all of the technical facilities with the exception of Information Technology. This includes the production facility in South Norwalk, Connecticut. He also manages the relationship with providers such as Intelsat, OLN's satellite provider, and Crawford Communications, an Atlanta-based production contractor that provides OLN's post-production uplink to North American satellite and cable TV systems.

June and July are different for Peter and his co-workers because they really focus on what will be required to put the Tour de France on the air. The preparation includes a review of the successes and difficulties that occurred last year, and what they know will be coming up between now and the beginning of the Tour on July 2.

Continue reading "How the Outdoor Life Network Brings the Tour de France to Viewers in North America" »

Posted by Dave Aiello at 12:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

Oprah got her fans to buy 1.2 million
LiveStrong Yellow Wristbands
last Friday and Saturday. Order yours now
from the Discovery Channel On-Line Store.

On February 11, Oprah Winfrey interviewed Lance Armstrong, touted the LiveStrong Program, and urged her viewers to buy a LiveStrong wristband. She openly stated that her goal was to break the one-day record for wristband sales.

The numbers are in and Oprah succeeded. Her viewers purchased 900,000 wristbands on Friday, and an additional 300,000 on Saturday. The sales on Friday broke the daily sales record by well over 200 percent.

My calculations indicate that Oprah was responsible for selling 3.75 percent of all LiveStrong wristbands sold to date. That's incredible. [ via TDFblog.com ]

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A quick reminder to all Operation Gadget readers who are also Lance Armstrong fans: Lance's 1970 Pontiac GTO will be renovated tonight on Overhaulin' on TLC at 9:00pm Eastern and Pacific Time. We will be watching here at the Home Office.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

One of the first things I received from my newly revised Amazon.com Wishlist is The Flintstones - The Complete First Season. Kathleen and I sat down and watched the extras and the first episode last night, and I can already see this is a great compilation.

The extras include the pilot, a 45-second-long film called The Flagstones. I thought this showed the potential of The Flintstones concept very well. Several ads for consumer products featuring The Flintstones are also part of the extras. Most of them are for Miles Products: One-a-Day Vitamins and Alka-Seltzer. You'll find that these products are now part of Bayer Health Care's Consumer Care Division, which coincidentally markets Flintstones' Vitamins. That means the relationship has lasted 44 years.

I got a kick out of the first episode, The Flintstone Flyer. It showed a lot of the comic elements that are woven throughout the series, but not all of them. Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble are at each other's throats from the get-go. Fred dismisses Barney's tinkering with a prehistoric helicopter, but claims credit for the device when Barney gets it in the air.

The rest of the episode deals with how Fred and Barney avoid going to The Opera with Wilma and Betty so that they can go bowling instead. Wilma and Betty believe the story that Fred and Barney concoct in order to cover-up their plans (Fred's sudden sickness), but the cover is blown when the women decide to call home to see how Fred is feeling.

So far, there's no Dino, no Pebbles and Bam-Bamm, no Mister Slate or the Quarry. They're all in the future of the series at this point. Dino comes along midway through the first season. Pebbles and Bam-Bamm don't appear in this season at all.

I can't wait to watch more, and I urge everyone who watched The Flintstones reruns every day after school like I did to give The Flintstones - The Complete First Season a serious look. Rent it next time you go to Blockbuster or put it on your Netflix list.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

My wife, Kathleen Aiello, just told me that the long awaited Lance Armstrong episode of TLC's series "Overhaulin'" will air on Tuesday, November 30, 2004 at 9:00pm Eastern and Pacific Time. In this episode, a 1970 Pontiac GTO that Sheryl Crow gave Lance in honor of his sixth Tour de France victory is apparently stolen. Of course, it's actually abducted by a team of vehicle customizers who return it to him a week later.

I'm going to go back downstairs right now and set the TiVo to record the show. Whoops, I forgot. TiVo's only got a two week future TV schedule.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Last night, Arnold Diaz presented a Shame on You report on WCBS, Channel 2 in New York, exposing distributors and retailers selling counterfeit LiveStrong Yellow Wristbands. Diaz reported that these wristbands are becoming widely available in the New York City metropolitan area.

He and a segment producer visited a Dollar Plus Store that he said was in Metuchen, NJ (apparently Dollar Plus on Amboy Avenue in Edison), a kiosk at the Staten Island Mall, and a wholesale importer at Broadway and 29th Street in Manhattan where they were able to purchase counterfeit LiveStrong wristbands. They captured the transactions each time with a hidden camera. They came back later with a regular TV camera and a large microphone, interviewed the people who sold the counterfeit wristbands, and challenged the wristbands' authenticity.

The Shame on You segment was on CBS 2 News at 6:00 and 11:00pm. I set my TiVo to record it. Subsequently, WCBS made the video available on their website [ Windows Media Player required ].

While I was out last evening, I went into a Krauszer's Convenience Store on Georges Road in North Brunswick to buy a Diet Coke. I unexpectedly found and purchased a counterfeit LiveStrong wristband for $3.00. It looks exactly like the counterfeit depicted in the Shame on You report. When I get a chance, I will post a photo of the counterfeit next to a real LiveStrong wristband, so Operation Gadget readers can see the difference.

WCBS deserves praise for an extremely informative report. I think they collected enough evidence to warrant some sort of investigation by the Attorneys General of New Jersey and New York. Since I bought a counterfeit wristband in a convenience store last night, I am going to call the New Jersey Attorney General's Office to ask how I can file a complaint.

Update: I filed a complaint with the Division of Consumer Affairs, alleging misconduct related to a legitimate charity.

Continue reading "LiveStrong Counterfeiters Exposed on CBS' Local News in New York City" »

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday afternoon, I was sitting in the living room at my house, working on style sheet changes for one of my clients' websites. I had turned off the radio a little while earler in order to better concentrate. The sliding glass door out to the backyard was open and a slight breeze was blowing through the screen.

Suddenly, my concentration was disturbed by the words "You're Fired!"

The first time it happened, I didn't realize what it was. I thought it might be a sound coming from my laptop because occasionally someone embeds a sound in a web page that plays automatically. I was concentrating, so I didn't really hear the words either. I went back to what I was doing.

A couple of minutes later, it happened again: "You're Fired!"

This time, I knew what the voice said. I quickly went through the list of Mozilla window titles on my Gnome Panel. I didn't see anything related to The Apprentice. I took a quick look around the room.

I saw the "dust jacket" of The Apprentice - The Complete First Season lying on the floor in front of the TV. Apparently, the cover of it had been disturbed by the breeze.

Anyone who's seen this DVD package knows that the dust jacket contains an audio chip like those found in greeting cards. Opening the cover triggers a recording of Donald Trump's voice. The recording says "You're Fired!"

Some customer reviews posted on Amazon.com and other on-line shopping websites have said that this gimmick gets annoying quickly. I hadn't noticed that because you can avoid opening the cover by removing the dust jacket and setting it aside. That's what I did. I'm pretty sure that the package designers didn't anticipate the "problem" I experienced as a result.

I reassembled the DVD package and put it on a shelf, so it won't spontaneously talk to me again.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Earlier today, The BBC reported that Cornelius Horan received a one-year suspended sentence for tackling Brazilian runner Vanderlei de Lima and disrupting the men's Olympic marathon. Horan previously disrupted the British Grand Prix and at least attempted to disrupt the Wimbledon Tennis Championships.

For some reason, the Greek court that tried Horan gave him a one-year suspended sentence. Reuters quotes a spokesman who said that the sentence was handed down because Horan had no prior criminal record. Presumably, they only researched his criminal record within Greece.

If you read Operation Gadget during the 2004 Tour de France, you know that I feel that major sporting events like road cycling and running are in constant danger of disruption. The mountain time trial at l'Alpe d'Huez was particularly dangerous, with many spectators making potentially threatening gestures at the riders.

I think Greek police did what they thought was necessary to protect the marathoners on Sunday. Nevertheless, an attack happened. When I watched the attack replayed, I thought, one bike-riding policeman is insufficient to protect the race leader if he is running alone. I have no idea whether any police on bicycles or in vehicles preceded de Lima, but the policeman following 30 to 50 feet behind him was unable to intercept the attacker.

It would be extemely difficult for fans to profile the spectators around them and say, this slightly inebriated person in a gaudy costume is a risk to disrupt the event, while this other one is just a big fan. (Think back to l'Alpe d'Huez if you don't realize what I mean.) Yet, the spectators who see a fan attempting to disrupt an event and interfere with a contestant should do everything they can to stop the disruptor. Failing that, they should mete out a little street justice in a spontaneous manner.

Horan should have received a bit of a beating from his fellow spectators on Sunday. Perhaps that would have reached his distorted mind in a way that a judicial slap-on-the-wrist will not.

Cornelius Horan had already served notice on society that he was intent on disrupting televised sports events. He should be jailed for long periods every time he enters the playing field.

The Greek court system has done the world of sports a disjustice. Their ruling gives the impression that interrupting a major sporting event and potentially affecting the outcome is somehow acceptable. They should have ruled in terms of what Cornelius Horan could have done to injure or kill Vanderlei de Lima. Only severe fines and jail time will stop this sort of disruption from occuring in the future.

Update: I closed off comments on this article and removed several of them that I felt were in poor taste. I don't have time to moderate comments to the extent that I normally would.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

On Monday, Universal Studios released The Apprentice - The Complete First Season. From the looks of the display at my local BJ's Wholesale Club, the distributors expect this to be a very hot release.

My wife and I got into watching The Apprentice after two or three episodes had aleady aired last winter. I think I originally recorded it on my TiVo because I had heard Laura Ingraham talking about it on her radio program. I am not a regular listener to her show because it airs at an odd time in the New York market, but, she praised The Apprentice so highly that I decided to watch an episode. We were immediately struck by the intensity of the projects, the chemistry (or lack thereof) between the contestants, and the pacing of the program. We setup a TiVo Season Pass immediately.

I don't think NBC expected this series to be such a phenomenon. But, when it was clear that the potential existed for The Apprentice to become a blockbuster, they used all of their television properties to promote it. The morning after each episode aired, Donald Trump or the latest contestant to be fired appeared on The Today Show and Imus in the Morning. This quickly resulted in crossover traffic to other radio and TV programs.

The questions I ask, whenever I consider buying a TV program season series are:

1. Did I enjoy the program enough to watch most of the series a second or third time?
2. Has the series got the staying power to still be interesting in a couple of years?

I think The Apprentice - The Complete First Season is a great buy from that perspective. It has a lot of extras, including the auditions of the contestants, a preview of the second season, and career tips from Trump's advisiors.

I think that a good time to watch this series again will be the period between the end of the 2004 Summer Olympics and the debut of the second season on NBC which will air on September 9. It would be a challenge to watch all of the episodes on the DVDs in that period, unless you have lots of time on your hands. But, watching some of them would be an excellent way to get back into The Apprentice mindset.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

VeloNews sat down with Gavin Harvey, President of the Outdoor Life Network to discuss the decision to eliminate live coverage of the Vuelta a Espana in 2004. As many of us guessed, it comes down to a lack of ratings. Harvey said:

As I sit here thinking about getting on my bike this weekend, it's a very disappointing scenario. Cycling is more than just another bit of programming; it's a passion for us.... But the Vuelta is one of the worst performing franchises that we have. That is the cold, hard reality. We can't afford to have it perform as it has in years past. We just don't have the resources at our network right now.

I don't doubt that this is the case. We as U.S.-based cycling fans need to think about what the logical next steps really are in helping OLN and other networks figure out how to build an audience for cycling on television.

Based on the highlights I saw of the Dodge Tour of Georgia in The Lance Chronicles, I want that stage race covered in its entirety next year. If I had to choose between it and The Vuelta, with all due respect, I want Georgia.

I also want to see same-day TV coverage of the major Pro Cycling Tour events next year. That means the Wachovia USPro Championship in Philadelphia, the BMC Software New York City Cycling Championship, and the T-Mobile International in San Francisco. I'd like to think that the races in Lancaster, PA, and Trenton, NJ, that take place in the week leading up to the USPro Championship could also be covered in some fashion, but they are very small races.

Pro cycling in the United States is primitive compared to what takes place in Europe. But, the Tour of Georgia proves how much room the sport has to grow here. Television can serve as a catalyst for this growth. It would be a shame if we ended the Lance Armstrong Era without signature races of our own.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (76) | TrackBacks (0)

Kudos to NBC for employing Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwin to anchor cycling coverage in the 2004 Summer Olympics. I laughed when I heard them come on the air, initially thinking to myself didn't they have any broadcasters on their permanent staff who new anything about cycling?

The more I thought about it, the more I came to think that this was actually a very respectful move on the part of NBC. They had probably arranged for Liggett and Sherwin to call the road cycling races back when Lance Armstrong was still on the U.S. Olympic Team. Imagine if Lance had ridden in this race, millions had tuned in, and they hadn't had a knowledgeable team of announcers.

As it was with Paolo Bettini, Sergio Paulinho, and Axel Merckx on the medal stand, NBC needed the A-Team to provide details to viewers. Neither of them knew much about Paulinho anyway.

I didn't get to watch all of the NBC coverage of the men's road race, but the parts that I did see were quite professionally done.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

This morning, I watched an interesting new documentary called Doping to Win on the Discovery Times Channel. The documentary debuted on August 10 and I recorded it on my TiVo.

This was an interesting program, explaining who the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) is and how they operate. It tells the story of how USADA reverse-engineered tetrahydrogestrinone (THG) from the remnants of an injection provided by a track coach. It also has segments where an anonymous body builder explained how and why he uses anabolic steroids in dosing cycles, and about the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (BALCO) scandal.

Of greatest interest to pro cycling fans is the interview with Jesus Manzano, a Spanish cyclist who had ridden for the Kelme team. This interview occurs at about the half-way point of the one hour documentary. He has given evidence about his own use of banned substances to investigators in Spain and Italy. Manzano's whereabouts were unknown for part of July, but he was reportedly hiding from the press at that time.

The documentary says nothing of the controversy surrounding Manzano's statements to investigators, but TDFblog has pointed to a number of articles that question Manzano's truthfulness and motives for testifying as he has.

Another cycling-related person interviewed in the documentary is Antoine Vayer, an exercise physiologist. Several websites describe Vayer as a trainer of the Festina Pro Cycling Team from 1995 to 1998. Vayer compares the performance of Tour riders from year-to-year, apparently looking for dramatic performance improvements that he finds difficult to believe are achieved naturally. The narrator says:

In the 2003 Tour de France, 15 riders generated more than 400 watts each. The year before, only the winner, Lance Armstrong, was in that league. While some have raised questions, Armstrong denies using drugs and has never been sanctioned.

Antoine Vayer thinks the cyclists gaining on Armstrong couldn't be doing so without using drugs, and he believes that more riders will die from doping.

Toward the end of the documentary, it talks about technologies on the horizon such as gene doping where athletes would presumably use bio-engineering on their own bodies. Such techniques would be very difficult to detect, because they would result in changes at the sub-cellular level.

Near the end, the program discusses USADA's attempt to create a so-called non-analytical positive standard. USADA attempted to get Marion Jones and Tim Montgomery to confess to use of banned substances on the basis of circumstantial evidence obtained in the BALCO investigation. Lawers for these athletes are interviewed to provide some balance to these charges. Montgomery subsequently failed to make the U.S. Olympic Team. Jones qualified in the long jump and has not been charged with any violations by USADA.

"Doping to Win" doesn't treat illegal performance enhancement in Olympic-level and professional athletics as an open question. It presumes that the practice is wide spread. It provides little balance in that only two people who appear on camera (both lawyers for athletes under investigation) raise questions about the tactics that regulators are using in their investigations. If this was your only exposure to Olympic-level or professional sports, you could easily conclude that the people achieving victory today are quite likely to be taking illegal performance-enhancing drugs.

In the end, everyone who cares about this issue has to look at the information that's available to them and make their own judgement. This program would have me believe that performance-enhancing drugs are making substantial changes in the results that we could otherwise expect in many high level athletic competitions. I'm not prepared to jump to that conclusion.

However, I don't doubt that some athletes are engaging in doping and that USADA's testing techniques have uncovered some abuses. The information that "Doping to Win" provides about modern doping techniques and testing protocols is valuable and interesting.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I tuned into the two hour finale of The Lance Chronicles last night on the Outdoor Life Network and I have to admit that I was disappointed. This was a very good condensation of the entire series for people who had not followed it from the beginning, but a problematic way for it to finish if you had seen every episode that had been aired previously. They really should have called it "The Best of The Lance Chronicles."

My wife watched the first 20 minutes with me, but said after five minutes, "I've seen all of this already." I stuck around, thinking that at some point something new would be added. If there was a new wrinkle introduced, I missed it.

I guess my only complaint is that the last episode was not promoted as a two hour summary of the series. In this case, that would have been the most respectful way to communicate with regular viewers. Aside from that, it was a terrific series that I hope is released on DVD in time for the holidays.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

One of the big differences between Outdoor Life Network's coverage of the Tour de France this year and last is the complete absence of any on-screen graphics in the French language. The momentary appearence of graphics saying things like "Tete de Course", "etape", and "l'arrivee a 10km" didn't take anything away from broadcasts in previous years. If anything, it made watching the race slightly more interesting.

The fact that all of the on-screen graphics appear in English is another indication of increased production effort on the part of OLN. Their graphics are very informative, alternating between miles and kilometers to go, and showing riders names in breakaways.

One thing that I didn't realize until today was the fact that OLN is showing the gap between the stage leader and Lance Armstrong. When he was in yellow (on Stage 5), the graphic showed a yellow jersey icon, which made sense because everyone wants to know how far the overall leader is behind the stage leader. Today on Stage 6, however, the graphic changed to a small blue jersey icon, symbolizing the U.S. Postal Service team.

Phil Liggett made reference to its appearance on the screen, saying that it represented the gap between Armstrong and the riders out in front. It's helpful, but I'm not sure that I want to be reminded constantly that some people feel this is the Tour de Lance, not the Tour de France.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I had a chance to sit down yesterday and watch all of the Outdoor Life Network's coverage of the Tour de France. I found it somewhat different from the coverage they put forth last year. Here's a summary:

• AOL for Broadband Pre-race Show: This program is anchored by Al Trautwig and Bob Roll with analysis and commentary by Chris Carmichael, Phil Liggett, and Paul Sherwin, and a travel segment hosted by Kirsten Gum. This show is aired at 8:30am EDT, before the live stage coverage begins, and again at 7:30pm. The difference between the two airings is that they allow some discussion of the stage results in the later airing. This is a good thing, since many of the viewers have seen the results on-line before watching the show.
• Live Coverage: Airing from 9:00 to 11:30am EDT, this program is primarily the play-by-play of Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwin. This is the program to watch or record if you want to hear as much of them as possible. I would say that this program is most like the daily race coverage that OLN put on last year.
• The Roadside Tour: The most unusual program OLN is producing about the Tour de France. It airs from 5:00 to 7:00pm EDT. This program is anchored by Kirsten Gum with contribution from professional mountain biker Hans Rey and a group of fans called The Cutters, presumably named after an amateur bike racing team in the movie Breaking Away. The program is a combination of humorous vignettes from around the tour, including interactions with non-English speaking fans, and long segments of play-by-play with Liggett and Sherwin.
• Expanded Coverage: This program airs from 8:00 to 10:30pm EDT. It is a combination of analysis and play-by-play from Trautwig and Roll with play-by-play from Liggett and Sherwin. This is an attempt to make the Tour a bit easier-to-understand for the new American fan. They are using a telestrator when applicable. The program also includes historical, cultural, and competitive features as well as interviews.

As I was riding my bike this morning, I came to the conclusion that OLN's wall-to-wall coverage of the Tour de France could best be described as a song with a series of verses sung by the on-air personalities, punctuated by refrains from Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwin. The programming is clearly more diverse than it was last year, and offers something for a number of different audiences.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Even if you think that watching cycling on television is boring, I urge you to turn on the Outdoor Life Network sometime this month and watch some of the coverage of the Tour de France. The coverage of the race on the road is particularly interesting when you think about how it's assembled.

Every day for three weeks, the Tour de France conducts a race known as a stage. The stages are up to 150 miles in length. In order to show the race on television, many production elements have to be mobile for up to 8 hours at a time. The cameras that capture the images of the Tour are held by cameramen who ride as the second person on a touring motorcycle. The typical motorcycle used is a Kawasaki 1000 GTR.

France Television produces the live video coverage, which it syndicates to international partners like the Outdoor Life Network in North America. Syndicators add commentary and graphics in their home country's language.

France Television typically operate five moto cameras on the road with the cyclists. Two additional motos carry France Television commentators that perform the same role that "sideline" commentators do at NFL games.

The moto units transmit their video and audio to one of two low-flying helicopters above the peleton. The helicopters, reportedly Eurocopter Ecureuil AS355N's with Wescam units, relay the signals to the mobile production facilities co-located near the finish line of the stage. The production facilities operated by France Television and their partners are quite similar to the production trucks seen outside stadiums during sporting events throughout the world. The difference is the number of producers and directors assembling their own unique feed for transmission back to their home networks.

The main announcers for each syndicated broadcast are located in mobile booths with a strategic view of the finish line. They do most of their commentary by watching the race on television.

People who watch cycling on TV all the time have become accustomed to seeing smoothly produced programs where the cameras always catch the stage winner, the look of joy, pain, or despair on the leader's face, and the surprising crash of multiple riders on the open road. But, the technology and the skill necessary to bring it all into our homes is amazing. [ images courtesy of Kawasaki and Eurocopter ]

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I just watched the first episode of The Lance Chronicles on the Outdoor Life Network. This is a weekly 30-minute look into Lance Armstrong's preparation for the Tour de France. I was mesmorized by a long segment on Lance's work in the Kirsten Wind Tunnel in Seattle where he tested an improved version his time trial bike (presumably similar to the Trek Team Time Trial), a Nike skin suit, and a new helmet that meets UCI specs.

The documentary also shows how he prepared for the Nike "What If?" Ad where he participated in a boxing match.

The glimpse of the wind tunnel testing alone is enough of a draw for any fitness geek. I am going to watch the first episode multiple times. On the basis of seeing it once, I recommend the entire series.

I just found an article by Steve Johnson in the Chicago Tribune reviewing The Lance Chronicles based on viewing the first two episodes. Johnson said:

The filming started in January, for Thursday's engrossing first episode (7:30 p.m., OLN) featuring Armstrong training, testing a new bike and other gear in a Seattle wind tunnel and lamenting the hard time he had last year, taking his fifth Tour win.

To try to rediscover the good kind of pain this year, Armstrong is promising to "refocus and rededicate," but the cameras make it clear that the distractions and the drags on a steady training schedule are many.... If all of this gets covered -- and there's no reason to believe it won't -- viewers are in for a fascinating journey and a more open window on big-time contemporary sport than any NBC Olympic video will show.

Just watch it.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 3:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)