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