Online Media Cultist

Something I think about a lot and mention here fairly often is that people want what they want when they want it. And technology is making that possible more often and in more ways than ever before.

To quote myself from a recent piece:

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.

Sports – live events that draw intense interest at broadcast but which are much less valuable as soon as the game ends in most cases – are a great example. Some games are broadcast locally, while normally a few select games can be seen nationally, though often on cable television.

So there’s a fundamental demand that’s not being met in many cases. And particularly with pro football – where a short season amplifies the importance of each game – this is an area that technology providers have begun to exploit over the last decade or so… with an emphasis on exploit. That is, you can purchase a full season’s worth of NFL games on satellite cable, but just like your regular cable TV bill, you end up vastly overpaying for a bunch of stuff you don’t want or don’t have time to watch.

Enter the Internet. While the NFL is all about raking in cold hard cash, they clearly recognize the dynamics at work. If they don’t aggressively pursue new fans – particularly the young and upscale folk who tend to be online – they won’t have a business one day.

All this is to say that I’m impressed with what the NFL is doing with live streaming games this season, both in terms of distribution and the product itself. As the new season kicked off last night, the game between the New York Giants and Washington Redskins was live streamed for free at NFL.com and NBCSports.com.

And throughout the season, Sunday night games will also be live streamed in the same way. While this doesn’t breakdown any huge barriers, things are clearly moving in the right direction. Here’s what I’m getting at: there’s a market for people who want to see specific games that they don’t currently have access to. These are people who don’t want to shell out a ton of money, but may be willing to pay a reasonable fee to get targeted niche content, or will gladly put up with advertising to get the goods.

As a native New Yorker who has lived in California for many years, for example, I’m not willing to shell out hundreds of dollars to get a full satellite TV package for NFL games. However, would I pay $20 or $30 to see a season’s worth of New York Giants football online? I’d be pretty tempted. Make it $3.99 or so per game with easy one-click purchasing, and I’d be rolling up to the laptop with nachos in hand more Sundays than not.

The bonus for football super fans too is that the online product offers quick and easy ways to tap into multiple camera angles. It’s a nifty feature to check out, and makes great use of the Internet to display content that’s being filmed live (such as the “star cam”) that only gets exposed on traditional television in short snippets.

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)?

I’m fascinated by how the web is being utilized to transform peoples’ lives and in many real ways is accelerating the pace of change.

Cultural change fostered by web-based communication and interaction is something we’re going to be hearing a lot about, particularly outside of the United States and Europe. In India, for example, a country where divorce was a big no-no until very recently, SecondShaadi.com is a site devoted to helping divorcees find new love.

For more news, opinions, and reviews about India and South Asia, check out Desicritics, a site that I was involved in founding and a member of Blogcritics’ network of sites. A fascinating part of the world to be sure, and one that is right in the center of helping to shape and transform this new webby age!

Meanwhile, ESPN announced that it is purchasing Scrum.com, a leading rugby site, on the heels of acquiring Cricinfo.com, a cricket site, and launching soccer sites in multiple languages to target European “football” devotees.

Rugby, not very well known in the US, is a sport close to my own heart (I played for my university for a few years, the old BURFC – Binghamton University Rugby Football Club – as it was known). Very cool to see its growth online.