Tag Archives: ESPN

Now it can be told

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Bill Simmons – of Grantland and ESPN fame – once worked for someone – who worked for someone who – worked for someone who worked for someone who worked for me at Aol. 

I was one of the co-founders of Aol’s Digital City – Bob Smith and Paul DeBenedictus helped to create it – we opened a city operation in Boston – and Bill Simmons wrote a clever little column about Boston sports. He was a talent; very ambitious and quite a good writer. 

He got his start as did many other bloggers at Aol; back in the day. 

That is the history – Bill was discovered by Aol. 

Bet you didn’t know that?

 

Specialists Seem to Win

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Sports programming has emerged as key content for networks. It is real time – drives big audiences and great viewer passion.

ESPN is king. All sports. All the time on television and the web. They own rights to broadcast NFL, NBA and MLB games! They have video galore. They have scale.

Comcast SportsNet is focused. Drives lots of attention locally because they own the rights to broadcast the Capitals and Wizards games. They leverage our programming and viewer habits to then cover all sports deeply and locally. They are good at what they do. Comcast now owns NBC and the local DC NBC affiliate. I don’t understand why they don’t give the Caps and Wizards extra ordinary attention and drive creatively as a way to create a deeper sports networking operation. They own our rights.

The blogosphere specializes in passionate coverage. All the time in real time. It is booming.

Our teams themselves have become content factories. Pumping out stories and videos and using our own means of distribution.

Twitter users update scores and talk about what is happening- live and in real time.

Local television news gives short shrift to local sports. 2 minutes per broadcast. A super market approach to info shopping. It is appointment oriented- at 6PM, 6:30PM or 11PM. But we live in a real time world. That is all taking its toll on local news and their business model.

See this set of articles. It fore shadows even more changes in the info and content industries in local markets.

NBC is changing, WUSA channel 9 is changing.

What is next?

ESPN, Nationally Again

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In partial thanks to Michael Wilbon, ESPN has a high level of interest in our series against the New York Rangers with his focus on Alex Ovechkin in this article.

As I noted here, I and we are beholden to Alex Ovechkin and we are grateful for his level of professional and leadership as our Captain. He is a star but he is a great teammate and is in it together with us all.

Our team and our leaders are under a lot of scrutiny these days. It all comes with the territory in the playoffs. I believe we shall all show grace under pressure. Time to drop the puck. Enjoy the series and tonight’s game. Go Caps!

Tough and Fair

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A good article all about our pending playoff series with the New York Rangers.

We respect the New York Rangers and every team that has qualified for the playoffs.

No bulletin board fodder from us. We want to be all about business and respect the game and the opponent.

I appreciate ESPN nationally for covering our series and for Scott being here in DC to meet and talk to our players and coaches and come to the games. That is very nice of him and them.

Healthy

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I think it is healthy to get called out like this.

I call out SI all of the time for NOT getting new media and losing its preeminence in sports journalism to EPSN.

I understand both sides of the equation. Communicate and be transparent vs. be solitary and in the background and never seen and never heard.

There is no right answer here. To thine own self be true.

I grew up in the new media world.

I like to blog.

I enjoy it. It is self expression. It is like oxygen. We had all better get used to it.

I will keep doing it but I understand this point of view.

Thank you.

Some link love to SI. They need the traffic. Check it out.