Category: Sports

Community Pools – Minnesota

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Tim Post:

For years the old neighborhood pool was the best place to cool off on hot summer days. But across the region, cities have had to close those old pools because of expensive repairs and declining attendance. In a day of air conditioners and cable TV, pools don’t serve as community gathering places much anymore. But now city leaders are trying to attract a new generation of swimmers and splashers with more exciting pools.

NBC’s Olympic Armageddon

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I haven’t watched much of NBC’s Olympic coverage, but the few minutes I’ve seen have been awful:

  • Opening Ceremony sophmoric dialogue between Katie Couric and Bob Costas (this discussion, in a nutshell, tells us all what the old media types think about the general public). The BBC provides some useful photos of the ceremony here. Russell Beattie responds to Costas/Couric’s antics (very rough language, but some useful comments/links on this blog post)
  • Sunday morning, rather than broadcasting events (Wimbledon is broadcast live on weekend mornings), NBC is talking about feta on their Sunday Today show. Truly embarrasing.
  • Here are some useful sites: BBC | France2

I left a voice mail for NBC Chairman Bob Wright on Friday expressing my substantial disappointment in their Olympic coverage plans (including a complete devoid of thought internet strategy). NBC is owned by conglomerate GE.
Joshua Brauer offers up some suggestions for NBC…. (via scripting news)
UPDATE: Ann Harrison on the futility of NBC’s internet censorship (live internet video streams are available in other countries).

“Ultimately it will fail,” said Len Sassaman, a privacy-technology researcher. Once the American Internet viewing public realizes that U.K. Web surfers are watching better Olympic coverage than they are allowed to see after forking over their credit card, said Sassaman, they will look for better ways to access those images. “Bandwidth has gotten a lot cheaper over the years, so it is not so far-fetched to think that someone will set up proxy servers in Britain that would do this.”

Olympics Online – Just not in the US!

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How ironic, given that Madison’s All City Swim Meet is available via internet video stream, that Non US internet users will be able to watch the olympics online, via streaming video; while captive American sports fans are stuck with cable/broadcast TV…. Anick Jesdanun summarizes the money and politics behind this absurdity (I’d be happy to pay for a real time video stream).

After conducting trials involving about 100,000 homes during the past two games, the International Olympic Committee is permitting more than a dozen broadcasters to show video of the Aug. 13-29 Olympics online.
But the footage will be highly restricted to protect lucrative broadcast contracts, which are sold by territory — $793 million paid by NBC alone. Web sites must employ technology to block viewers from outside their home countries, so U.S. Web surfers won’t benefit from the BBC’s live coverage. They’ll have to settle for highlights posted after NBC broadcasts, which are already largely tape-delayed.
On top of that, U.S. viewers must verify their identity using a credit card from Visa — an NBC advertiser — though they will not be charged.
Not a Visa cardholder? You’re out of luck.