In the sports pages of the DC area this morning, there is a lot of blowing up from Maryland’s victory over Duke in men’s hoops last night. In the excitement, the infamously rabid Terps fans rushed the court to celebrate the victory. Obviously, the hometowners are pretty happy, but there are still tons of Duke fans in the area, so I wasn’t surprised at all to see bunches of them posting yesterday’s conveniently-timed Rick Reilly column that lays the protocol for students should control their urges to rush the court.
I mean, telling excited college students at an athletic event their team just won to act in moderation is ridiculous in the first place. But that’s not what this post is about.
Reading through Reilly’s column this morning, I knew I’ve read that piece before. Maybe it’s because my alma mater once got accused of an unnecessary rush after beating a Top-10 Syracuse team ranked three spots below it in 2005, so I have a memory for it. Who wrote the rules from back then? A blogger? One of my friends in an e-mail?
Thank you Google: it was actually on ESPN.com and not some low-trafficked blog or reply all. In fact, it was written by Reilly’s own colleague, Pat Forde. Forde dedicated almost as many words to the “don’t rush” mantra in his weekly Forde Minutes in 2006.
OK, so Forde probably wasn’t the first writer to pen the “not every win is court-rush-worth,” either. But there are a ton of consistent themes in an article that also happens to be on the Web site where Reilly published his column.
Forde, 2006:
After watching all these giddy group gropes, it’s high time to publish the Forde Minutes Court-Storming Protocol Guide. Students are advised to read the following rules and to act accordingly the next time their team agitates them to the edge of hoops ecstasy:
Reilly, 2010:
This has got to stop. Therefore, here are the Ironclad and Unbreakable Rushing-the-Court Rules. From now on, you can NOT rush the court if …
Ok, so, it’s nothing earth shattering to try and become the authority on when college students can act with joy. But the reasons are where we get a ton of overlap. For example, there’s the “program superiority” clause:
Forde, 2006:
The Old Money Principle (2): Look up at the ceiling of your gym and count the banners. If your school has won three or more national titles in its history, you shall not rush the floor at any time. Schools affected: UCLA (11 titles), Kentucky (seven), Indiana (five), North Carolina (four), Duke (three).
Reilly, 2010:
- You’ve won an NCAA title in the past 20 years.
- You’ve been in the Final Four in the past five years.
While we’re on the topic of other prohibitions, here’s Forde’s list of storm worthy moments:
…court stormings should be reserved for: upsetting a top five team; knocking off an unbeaten league rival of particular dislike; ending a period of extreme and elongated futility against an arch rival; clinching a conference championship.
For the sake of contrast, here’s the list of no-go’s from Reilly:
- The team you just beat is not in the top three.
- Or is ranked within 15 rungs of you. (Somebody do the math for Wake.)
- Or is really a football school. This includes Florida, Texas and Ohio State. Get over it.
- You’ve beaten this same team in the past five years.
- You won the stupid game by more than 10 points. There is no such thing as a PRTC (Premeditated Rush The Court.)
Another staple to this type of column is the “exemption” clause. I.e., forget what I said about not rushing if you have a recent national championship banner:
First, the exemptions:
Forde, 2006
Condition B (5): Your august program defeats a top-five team on a suitably miraculous shot (25 feet or farther) at the buzzer, spurring spontaneous joy that overrides better impulses. (The Indiana-Illinois game went down to the wire, but it wasn’t won at the buzzer on a prayer.)
Reilly, 2010
You can rush the court if: [...] Something stupidly wonderful happens, like a 90-foot David Blaine Special goes in or an air ball bounces off the ref’s head to win your conference. Fine.
I just did a scan on Pat Forde’s Twitter, and I saw nothing referencing his old column in response to Reilly’s (but The Worldwide Leader has also come down pretty hard on anyone who mentions other ESPN talent in a vaguely negative light). I’m not calling theft or plagiarism on Reilly, I want that absolutely clear. Just a lack of originality.
[Round 2] Viacom v. Video Sharing Sites
Corner 1: Viacom
Viacom, the media conglomerate behind numerous cable properties (including MTV, VH1 and Comedy Central), has certainly enjoyed tons of success in the last few years. Its cable programming can often generate more buzz (positive or negative *cough* Jersey Shore *cough*) that keeps it very competitive in a crowded space.
The media group has done very well over the air, but it’s had a slight history with the online video world. In 2007, it memorably sued Google for $1b related to copyright claims on video clips that it owns posted to the site by its users. It started a landslide of the “takedown” variety and kicked off a small broadcast giant vs. little video site battle ever since. Remember, this was early in the days of YouTube (within it’s first 18 months) and right after Google picked it up, and Viacom’s shot was among the first on the copyright questions around it. Court battle to come, and the bigger question (i.e., is it YouTube’s responsiblity to monitor and act to censor its users instead of waiting for a company to request removal) still has yet to be answered.
Since then, Viacom has developed online video technology that allows clips to easily be watched on its own properties, including dedicated micropages for The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. That way, video content was still available, but in an “owned” way and against which the company was able to self-serve display and interstitial ads. However, there were limitations on the full dispersion of clips and it kept all of its shows pretty far away from YouTube.
Corner 2: Hulu
Since launching in 2007, Hulu has had an incredible amount of exposure thanks to housing hundreds of episodes and full movies that are owned by major media groups. It has been very corporation friendly as it builds in ad-structures, limitations on the duration content is available and a single, central point for measuring viewiership. Even though it was initially a joint venture between NBCU and Fox, it has grown to include other partners, including Viacom. Most notable among Viacom’s contributing properties is Comedy Central, building a very popular fan base (at the time of this, The Daily Show is the third highest-watched program on Hulu).
The Situation
Yesterday, in a post to Hulu’s blog from its SVP, Content & Distribution, Andy Forssell, the facts were laid out that Viacom would be pulling its Comedy Central content from the service. The network’s content, which had been on the service for nearly two full years, was incredibly popular among the fan-base, as previously noted, but they weren’t seeing the revenue come in from the venture that it was hoping. As Forssell commented in his post:
In the past 21 months, we’ve had very strong results for both Hulu and Comedy Central, in terms of the views and revenue we’ve generated, thanks to a couple of key trends. First, more and more of our viewers have voted with their time by making these shows a regular part of their day. And second, we’ve driven steadily increasing revenue per view as advertisers voted with their budgets to take advantage of innovative ad formats and very strong advertising effectiveness. After a series of discussions with the team at Comedy Central, though, we ultimately were unable to secure the rights to extend these shows for a much longer period of time.
This isn’t to say that the shows will not be available online – the video player at The Daily Show’s site is one I actually use quite often myself. However, they will be leaving a site that has become the second highest place for video watchers online – with a shade over 1 billion views in the month of December.
The Judge’s Ruling
Just to carry that last point through into my verdict: Viacom has prevented its content from appearing on the number one video sharing site and now has pulled its content from the number two video sharing site. In the era of “go where the eyeballs are,” this is a backwards walk. The microsites that support its programming will continue to get views from fans like me (I’ve been a loyal Jon Stewart guy for what feels like forever – I even own the Indecision 2004 DVD). I will continue to watch, promise, online and broadcast.
But the audience they may be missing is the other millions who traverse these sites who maybe *aren’t* overly plugged into the mockery of cable news. Walls are great for keeping content in and owned – but they also have the function that they prevent anyone new from getting in. This method will help Viacom efficiently capitalize on the audience it has – but they may have just put a pair of blinders on when it comes to the people they need to get that audience to grow.
Peter Parker, aka, Spiderman, is looking for a new day job. The news, via Nerdvana:
In a sad case of art imitating life, Peter Parker, the photojournalist alter-ego of Marvel Comics superhero Spider-Man, has a new nemesis: Unemployment.
Marvel said this week that Parker will lose his day job shooting City Hall photos for the Daily Bugle and have to juggle real-world problems like mounting debt and job-hunting with his responsibility to keep the residents of New York City safe from his many villainous foes, like the Vulture.
Image (cc) Flickr user rpeschetz
[Weekend Treat] Olympic Hockey, Michael J. Fox and Goodnight, Canada
Finally – the moment has come when my month-long rant on Olympic coverage (slash obscure sports) is about to come to end with tonight’s closing ceremonies. As much as I’ve become a convert of the Stones-and-Sweepers events, my love of hockey has certainly grown stronger through a thoroughly entertaining Olympic tournament.
The gold medal game takes place this afternoon in Vancouver pitting our U.S. underdog squad against the Canadian favorites who also would like to rectify what happened last Sunday during the prelims. It’s going to be fantastic – and live on both coasts on NBC.
In the meantime, I’m hoping that we can make some tingling, patriotic moments for American Hockey to answer this pretty epic video shot for Canada and starring Michael J. Fox:
[Quote of the Day] Curling = Fine Wine
“It is like drinking merlot.”
~Douglas A. Kass, the president of Seabreeze Partners, on Curling
When the closing bell has rung in the past few weeks, CNBC has been switching its coverage from the stock exchange to the sheets of ice up in the Vancouver Olympic Centre. According to the New York Times this morning, it’s making the financial analysts on Wall Street into all kinds of fans of curling.
“CNBC, whose market chatter is the background music on trading floors, switches to curling from Vancouver shortly after the closing bell.
“And so, after a day of braying for money in the markets, traders are winding down with curling. It is, fans say, a bit of after-market therapy. Curling is so slow and drawn out that it becomes mesmerizing.”
H/t Gawker
[Geekmetrics] Who Needs Sleep?
Schott’s Vocab has been in my “Do Not Mark All Read” feed for some time, and over the past few months, he’s published a handful of very cool visuals to the NY Times Opinion section. This morning? A visual representation of proverbs, stats and quips related to sleep:
[Line in the Sand] Social is No Magic Bullet To Broadcast
I’m very supportive of the theory that the rise in simultaneous media usage has an impact on the manner in which either online or broadcast is consumed. Brian Stelter’s NY Times piece takes that notion the distance by implying that online-to-traditional media conversion is truly evident in recent media events, including the Olympics.
My issue isn’t with that point – I think the first time I truly saw this phenomenon happen was during the Sunday morning Wimbeldon final last summer – because I believe that an active social media discussion can cause a slight behavioral shift towards broadcast media (although, whether that is incremental or a legit force is a debate that is worth having). There’s plenty of evidence to support the high activity on digital media channels during live events like last month’s Super Bowl, and Stelter cited those numbers in his case.
Up and to these points, I decently agree with him that Twitter/Facebook acted as a complement to the broadcast, and if someone wasn’t already watching things like the Grammy’s or Golden Globes already, there could have been a measurable, but mild, bump. However, assuming that there is anything beyond a non-immediate behavioral shift is a massive leap that the author uses very few cases to support.
My biggest gripe is that Stelter took the time to go find some sources (two in fact!) who said that they knew what happened but watched anyway:
But sometimes the effect works even when the program is not live. Rachel Velonza, a 23-year-old from Seattle, knew that Johnny Weir failed to win a medal in figure skating long before she ever turned on a television last Thursday, but she stayed up until almost midnight, enduring NBC’s much-ridiculed tape delay because she wanted to see for herself why he wound up in sixth place. She knew all her friends were watching because they were talking about it on Twitter (which says it counts 50 million posts every day) and Facebook (which says it surpassed 400 million members this month).
[...]
Brad Peterson, a lighting designer in New York, heard about the skier Lindsey Vonn’s crash before Thursday’s replay of it on NBC, but watched regardless. After all, he said, “I didn’t know when, how and who won.”
Also, just an excellent use of statistics that have little direct application in the first example. But I don’t feel like dwelling on that. The point is that there just isn’t enough evidence to make the overall impact claim.
That’s right, your friendly neighborhood prophet of digital media’s value for traditional channels is drawing a line in the sand. There may be an immediate, slight impact on live broadcast events that are universal in draw and interest. However, arguing the existence long-term benefits based on an untested correlation between a well-watched media event and Web media is a jump. The Olympics may be doing better this year than 2006, but it is still well below the Nagano games:
…primetime coverage of those 1998 Games, through 11 Olympic nights, was averaging 16.4% of U.S. households.
NBC’s Vancouver primetime coverage, through 11 nights of a mother lode of U.S. medals, is averaging 14.3 —down 13% from Nagano.
The notion that a more-than-immediate shift in consumption habits can be attributed to social media is dangerous. To put it in context of the conversion rates of the channel, think of it this way: I can barely get two percent clickthrough on links I send out to my Twitter followers, and I haven’t done the necessary research to support the following, but my guess is that I’m on the high end of conversion within the digital channel. Do you really think this audience is going to have an impact beyond a percentage point on already high-performing broadcasts?
H/t TV by the Numbers, image (cc) via flickr user Big D2112
Hockey on MSNBC Was the Right Call [Now on Mediaite]
Ryan Kesler (L) celebrates with Zach Parise after his empty net goal ices the game for Team USA in the last minute. Image via AP
Watch the game last night? Better believe I did, but there’s been a pretty interesting conversation about NBC’s call to throw it on the cable news net MSNBC as opposed to showing it on network broadcast. Well, I think it’s the right call, and my argument is up over at Mediaite:
As exciting as this game was – and trust me, as an American college and pro hockey fan, I could not have asked for more in the upset – from a media planning standpoint, it always belonged on the cable channel. While some joked of conspiracy theories related to carrier coverage of MSNBC’s new HD channel, more level-headed minds note that there was a very good strategy behind the placement of it.
[Going Local] News, City Blogs and Dailies
I’ve gotten a little bit of an inside look at the workings of a metropolitan city blog in the past few days, thanks to a newly earned contributor status with the District’s We Love DC. The assist for the experience goes to friend and the site’s editor Tom Bridge, and his insights on the way his site tells the story of local news have been invaluable. Specifically, we recently got to talking about the different role each type of local online media could and should play when it comes to spreading the word of news.
In a month of more bad nicknames for blizzards than the Potomac region could imagine, there was a lion’s share of breaking news ranging from school closings, road statuses, coping citizens and power outages that needed to go around. For example, over the six business days with partial or complete federal government closings between February 5 and February 12, someone had to get the word out so OPM’s site could function. On those six days, both DCist (the other top DC online-only outlet and part of the Gothamist network) and We Love DC were reporting the news as soon as they got word. And, as Tom relayed to me, all that snow and breaking news helped his site to one of its most impressive traffic months ever; I’m sure the same can be safely assumed for DCist’s traffic as well.
So, if those of us in the metro region are trusting these sources to break news, what’s the role of the Washington Post in telling the same story? Given leaner operations and fewer editorial levels, the story rolls a lot quicker to the blog roll than the presses of the lumbering traditional power. While some may have ventured to the newspaper’s site, the story was likely far behind compared to the city blogs or even microbloggers throughout the city on Twitter. The knowledge that these sites would break the news is likely what brought as many to the sites as it did, even if it was only by a few minutes, but also the layout and stream of the blogging engine is a natural way to get the user the top-most information.
The counter argument here is going to be blogger/citizen journalism responsibility – but how much more fact checking do the bloggers need to do? A local news blog that bills itself as that has much to lose for being called out on factual errors, and thinking they fire at will with stories is a surface level argument. Their reputation is based on reliability, so they absolutely act with care; however, when it comes to breaking news, that early source, with the right photo or evidence, may not need corroboration. Why hold?
Breaking news is cheap; investigative journalism and understanding the situation around those stories is the expensive part and the one that is worthy of investment. The smartest partnership would be treating the local blog community (here in D.C., there’s a substantial one, going well beyond those top two) as an editorial board. Let those authors get the stories up; value the large, commenting audience to see what locals plug into the most; and then build out the investigative operation in a true, local way.
(cc) via flickr user ‘Ghost_Bear’
[Weekend Treat] You’ll Use Buzz Because Google Says So
A little bit of some colorful language that’s bleeped out in this one, but it’s completely true.
“How many of you have Google Wave accounts? We don’t even understand that one, but you signed up anyway, because we said you needed it.”
