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wordwhackerThe other day there were THREE baseball games on - one in the afternoon, one in the early evening, and one at night. But because the NFL apparently pays Rogers more money than does the MLB, they weren't broadcasting the first two games on the basic Rogers cable that you can get around here. They were trumped by the football games. This was a royal piss-off for my dad, who LOVES baseball and was really looking forward to watching them. We're not really huge TV people - sports are the #1 reason we even HAVE cable, and are the ONLY reason why we have that one tiny "expanded" package that gives you the 52 channels or whatever.
So TBS is carrying all of the games. And we HAVE TBS. We are technically PAYING for TBS. But whatever feed we get through Rogers wasn't covering it.
This is where the whole "WE ARE THE AUDIENCE, RESISTANCE IS FUTILE" thing comes in, and I get inventive with internet... stuff.
I think I've talked about this before - I'm a relatively timid internet user these days. I visit my few websites. I comment on a few peoples' LiveJournals and Facebook pages and whatnot. But I'm not a forum-goer (well, not until, like, today - more on this later), I don't go out and download a lot of movies or music or anything. I'm kind of conservative these days, I guess. It was really making me mad that dad couldn't watch his games, though, so I decided to see if I could find a live feed online somewhere.
My first thought was that TBS might even PROVIDE a feed on its official website, but they didn't. They had a few shows that could be downloaded, though, so it's nice to see that they're moving in that direction. But this could have been a great opportunity for them: my FIRST THOUGHT (and this would probably hold for lots of other people) was go to the OFFICIAL SOURCE. I would have happily given them my direct viewership, filled out a little form so that they could get demographics on who's watching, whatever. I think there's a lot of opportunity there, and these bigtime media folks had better start cashing in on it.
Anyway, since I couldn't find it that way I did a bit of Googling. Found someone on Yahoo Answers who had voted, kind of suspiciously, that the Yahoo Sports MLB page was the best source. How conveeenient. Of course, this isn't VIDEO streaming, it's just a continually updated play-by-play. Not bad - even a bit better than the service offered on MLB.com. (Speaking of MLB.com, some folks in that same Yahoo Answer thread suggested that they have a video streaming package that you can purchase in order to watch the games, but I don't see anything on the main page - just something about LISTENING to every game. Even if they do, this wouldn't have been very useful for us, since we normally DO get all the games, and definitely will later in the post season. I just wanted to find a way to get that ONE game.)
I was eventually directed to My Peer-to-Peer, where I was able to download a player and look through a variety of streaming sources for the game. Most of them were versions of ESPN in China, and I wasn't able to actually get the game - just a commercial which continually froze and started again. But I found one from the "Brewcrew" that, lo and behold, worked! It was a little slow at first, it had annoying banner ads above and below, and it couldn't be enlarged or made "full-screen" or anthing. But it streamed quite well and had decent video and audio quality. We tuned in JUST in time to catch the most interesting part of the game. The stream even included the commercials, which we basically muted like we always do.
Was this illegal? Probably. But I don't think it should be. The main reason for TV to exist is to sell viewers to advertisers, and this part of it remained just as intact as it ever is with a mute button close at hand. And we pay for cable every month which directly supports the network that was broadcasting the game.
There's also a strong argument here for the old system of broadcasting being pretty significantly out of date. Anything short of the "hundred million channels you don't really want" style of digital cable, this kind of programming conflict is going to happen sometimes. The fact that it was SO EASY for me to get a reliable, live (ish - it was about three minutes behind, by my guess) stream tells me that lots of people must be doing it, too. I am not the most savvy internet user BY FAR, but in about half an hour I had the game at my disposal. We, the empowered audience, obviously ARE doing it. The question is, what is TBS going to do about it? Hunt me and people like me down and start slapping wrists for *gasp* actually wanting to ACCESS their content? Or are they going to make it available on TBS.com so that they'll once again be the primary producer AND distributor?
I have to say, I'm still a little amazed sometimes at how easy it is becoming to get things online. I've downloaded enough movies and music for that experience to be relatively blazé these days. But I wasn't really sure that I'd be able to get live streaming sports - this was an entirely new experience. I was giddy with the enormity of the thing that I had done for the rest of the evening. Yeah, this is probably nothing new for lots of people. What can I say, it was fun to feel all daring and cutting-edge technological for a little while. And I was happy to be able to do something nice for my dad, who generally hates computers and avoids them fervently.
--
I might make a separate post to talk about this at some point, but for now I'll just note that I'm trying to become a bit more "forum-y" this year during National Novel Writing Month. I used to be more active in the past, but in the past few years I've drifted away from it (again with the "timid internet user" stuff.) I decided to go peruse the forums today and HOLY CRAP THERE ARE A LOT OF FORUMS ON THAT SITE. There are regional forums of course (the only place I've been AT ALL active in recent years), but also genre forums, procrastination forums, technical forums, age-specific forums, "you can do it!" forums... Let me go count them real quick.
43 forums. FOURTY THREE. (Not counting regional forums, of which there are hundreds, but most people only visit one or two.) And these are organized under seven broad categories. Want another scary stat? At 5pm ATL on October 8, there are 483 users and 1046 guests perusing these forums. THAT IS A LOT OF PEOPLE WHO ARE LOOKING AT THESE FORUMS RIGHT NOW. I can hardly IMAGINE how many posts are made in a day. No wonder I've gotten all overwhelmed in the past few years.
Of course, short of spending hours upon hours online, I'm guessing (and tapping into my years-old past experience, as well) that most people tend to hone in on a FEW of these forums, maybe even a few threads WITHIN each forum. This is likely what I'm going to do. Since I'm doing the whole media journal and "Media Living" business I figure it's about time to find out how much forums have changed in the past few years. I'm perusing some of them today and starting to make a few posts. Likely I'll have another update in a few days that will sum up how things are going so far. (There are some modules later in the semester that probably will go hand-in-hand with some hardcore discussion of this stuff, so I'll try to keep it light until then.)
So TBS is carrying all of the games. And we HAVE TBS. We are technically PAYING for TBS. But whatever feed we get through Rogers wasn't covering it.
This is where the whole "WE ARE THE AUDIENCE, RESISTANCE IS FUTILE" thing comes in, and I get inventive with internet... stuff.
I think I've talked about this before - I'm a relatively timid internet user these days. I visit my few websites. I comment on a few peoples' LiveJournals and Facebook pages and whatnot. But I'm not a forum-goer (well, not until, like, today - more on this later), I don't go out and download a lot of movies or music or anything. I'm kind of conservative these days, I guess. It was really making me mad that dad couldn't watch his games, though, so I decided to see if I could find a live feed online somewhere.
My first thought was that TBS might even PROVIDE a feed on its official website, but they didn't. They had a few shows that could be downloaded, though, so it's nice to see that they're moving in that direction. But this could have been a great opportunity for them: my FIRST THOUGHT (and this would probably hold for lots of other people) was go to the OFFICIAL SOURCE. I would have happily given them my direct viewership, filled out a little form so that they could get demographics on who's watching, whatever. I think there's a lot of opportunity there, and these bigtime media folks had better start cashing in on it.
Anyway, since I couldn't find it that way I did a bit of Googling. Found someone on Yahoo Answers who had voted, kind of suspiciously, that the Yahoo Sports MLB page was the best source. How conveeenient. Of course, this isn't VIDEO streaming, it's just a continually updated play-by-play. Not bad - even a bit better than the service offered on MLB.com. (Speaking of MLB.com, some folks in that same Yahoo Answer thread suggested that they have a video streaming package that you can purchase in order to watch the games, but I don't see anything on the main page - just something about LISTENING to every game. Even if they do, this wouldn't have been very useful for us, since we normally DO get all the games, and definitely will later in the post season. I just wanted to find a way to get that ONE game.)
I was eventually directed to My Peer-to-Peer, where I was able to download a player and look through a variety of streaming sources for the game. Most of them were versions of ESPN in China, and I wasn't able to actually get the game - just a commercial which continually froze and started again. But I found one from the "Brewcrew" that, lo and behold, worked! It was a little slow at first, it had annoying banner ads above and below, and it couldn't be enlarged or made "full-screen" or anthing. But it streamed quite well and had decent video and audio quality. We tuned in JUST in time to catch the most interesting part of the game. The stream even included the commercials, which we basically muted like we always do.
Was this illegal? Probably. But I don't think it should be. The main reason for TV to exist is to sell viewers to advertisers, and this part of it remained just as intact as it ever is with a mute button close at hand. And we pay for cable every month which directly supports the network that was broadcasting the game.
There's also a strong argument here for the old system of broadcasting being pretty significantly out of date. Anything short of the "hundred million channels you don't really want" style of digital cable, this kind of programming conflict is going to happen sometimes. The fact that it was SO EASY for me to get a reliable, live (ish - it was about three minutes behind, by my guess) stream tells me that lots of people must be doing it, too. I am not the most savvy internet user BY FAR, but in about half an hour I had the game at my disposal. We, the empowered audience, obviously ARE doing it. The question is, what is TBS going to do about it? Hunt me and people like me down and start slapping wrists for *gasp* actually wanting to ACCESS their content? Or are they going to make it available on TBS.com so that they'll once again be the primary producer AND distributor?
I have to say, I'm still a little amazed sometimes at how easy it is becoming to get things online. I've downloaded enough movies and music for that experience to be relatively blazé these days. But I wasn't really sure that I'd be able to get live streaming sports - this was an entirely new experience. I was giddy with the enormity of the thing that I had done for the rest of the evening. Yeah, this is probably nothing new for lots of people. What can I say, it was fun to feel all daring and cutting-edge technological for a little while. And I was happy to be able to do something nice for my dad, who generally hates computers and avoids them fervently.
--
I might make a separate post to talk about this at some point, but for now I'll just note that I'm trying to become a bit more "forum-y" this year during National Novel Writing Month. I used to be more active in the past, but in the past few years I've drifted away from it (again with the "timid internet user" stuff.) I decided to go peruse the forums today and HOLY CRAP THERE ARE A LOT OF FORUMS ON THAT SITE. There are regional forums of course (the only place I've been AT ALL active in recent years), but also genre forums, procrastination forums, technical forums, age-specific forums, "you can do it!" forums... Let me go count them real quick.
43 forums. FOURTY THREE. (Not counting regional forums, of which there are hundreds, but most people only visit one or two.) And these are organized under seven broad categories. Want another scary stat? At 5pm ATL on October 8, there are 483 users and 1046 guests perusing these forums. THAT IS A LOT OF PEOPLE WHO ARE LOOKING AT THESE FORUMS RIGHT NOW. I can hardly IMAGINE how many posts are made in a day. No wonder I've gotten all overwhelmed in the past few years.
Of course, short of spending hours upon hours online, I'm guessing (and tapping into my years-old past experience, as well) that most people tend to hone in on a FEW of these forums, maybe even a few threads WITHIN each forum. This is likely what I'm going to do. Since I'm doing the whole media journal and "Media Living" business I figure it's about time to find out how much forums have changed in the past few years. I'm perusing some of them today and starting to make a few posts. Likely I'll have another update in a few days that will sum up how things are going so far. (There are some modules later in the semester that probably will go hand-in-hand with some hardcore discussion of this stuff, so I'll try to keep it light until then.)
