ESPN to live stream baseball, and the Mad Dog moves to Sirius Satellite Radio
Technology is revolutionizing the ways in which content can be distributed and consumed. That’s a fancy-ish way of saying that more stuff can now be seen in more places than ever before. That turn has increased the desire for consumers to demand more of what they want when and where they want it. Therefore, the media companies and platforms that make good on delivering content that people highly desire are smart and will likely win out in the long run.
This stuff seems pretty obvious on the surface, but the reality is that many parts of the world are only just starting to align themselves under the new interwebs regime.
I’m reminded of this in reading a story in which ESPN and Major League Baseball have signed a deal to stream baseball games live during the season. With the number of sports nuts out there who would love to throw a game up on their monitor at work, this seems like it would be a no brainer. It seems silly to me that they will blackout games locally, but that plays more into the economics of sports than the web side of things, so I won’t get into it here.
I had sports and distribution deals on my mind already this week after learning that New York sports broadcaster Chris “Mad Dog” Russo has signed a deal with Sirius Satellite Radio to bring a new act, now solo, to a national audience. Russo and Mike Francesa have just ended a nearly twenty year run on WFAN radio’s Mike and the Mad Dog show.
As a New York native who has lived in California for nearly ten years now, I often longed to be able to stream, download, or somehow access WFAN in order to get a little slice of hometown sports talk action. Unfortunately to my knowledge this has never been available aside from a few thrown together and occasionally updated clips on WFAN’s website.
Again, this seems like no brainer territory to me: you have a nation full of displaced sports fans who would love to be able to access local sports content. With terrestrial radio facing enormous competition both from satellite and the Internet, shouldn’t it be in their interest to squeeze every potential penny from their offerings?
Maybe this is part of the reason why WFAN couldn’t hang onto Russo. In any event, I’m looking forward to hearing the Mad Dog on Sirius – which I can catch both in my car on the way to work or online anytime!
