Online Media Cultist

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!

Ever since I switched over from Bloglines to Google Reader several months ago, I’ve been making more and more use of RSS as a part of my daily online information intake.

I did muse a little while back that Techmeme and Twitter/FriendFeed were eating into RSS’ usefulness for me, but I’m changing my mind on that point. And I’m not running for president, so I have much more leeway on such things! I’m starting to believe that a healthy combination of RSS consumption and Techmeme scanning along with social media participation on Twitter/FriendFeed is a pretty great way to interact with friends, colleagues, and those you think are rad/cool/admirable while gaining access to the stories and information that’s most useful to you.

That’s all prelude to saying that I was thinking about sports today. I’m watching a show called CostasNow right now on HBO – it’s a town hall special with some of baseball’s living legends, looking at the history and future of the game. And I’ve been thinking about sports in general lately, about how I used to be a pretty big sports fan but have let my attention slip as to the goings on in the sports world with the exception of football.

Part of it has to do with the fact that I’m a native New Yorker who is inching dangerously closer to being a longtime Californian with each passing year. And part of it has to do with all the shenanigans going on with social media obsessions and online media cultery mentioned above. There’s only so much time and attention in the day!

One way that I keep in touch with both my New York roots and with sports is to track the feed of Mike Lupica, columnist for the New York Daily News and flat out one of the best writers and sports journalists in the country.

But watching the Costas special and realizing with some dismay that at the baseball all star break I have no idea what’s been going on all season (aside from the vague knowledge that the Yankees are stinky), I decided to take some action.

I headed to ESPN.com, grabbed a few general sports headlines feeds, plugged them into Google Reader. Boom. Now I can have half a clue of what’s cooking in the sports world at large.

A small thing, a small way in which RSS can aid your life to be sure. But a pretty nice thing all the same.

Anyone have any sports blogs that they consider must reads (or must feeds)?