24

Jack is back! Well almost.

Watch the promotion mill amp up, across all media platforms, heading to the season preview, of '24', November 23rd.

November is sweeps month. Fox TV is looking to cash in, after cashing out, when Hollywood writers stopped scribbling, about this time last year.







Kieffer Sutherland aka Jack Bauer



Redemption, the prequel or preview, is set Africa.




Expect a pace that defies plot analysis. Anticipate lots of mayhem. See how many 3 second shots you can count, in the trailer. There aren't many!

Esks Als Live

Experiment continues, still not getting the automatic distribution from Blip.TV to Blogger. That means I have to double up with the editorial part of the blog, over here on blogger. In a live blog production that is too time consuming.

... Eskimos score a TD with a couple of minutes to go in the second quarter.Offensive line playing well. However, the Alouettes are using second string players in the secondary.

This is a practice game not one to measure performance.

Click To Play

Eskimos win 37-14 very sloppy game. Montreal played their backups for most of it. Nothing for Eskimos fans to be confident about, going into next week's playoff game

Eskimso Vs Alouettes Live

Working through a Live Blogging experiment. It's a process. Video goes to Blip.TV . The blog there is supposed to come over to Blogger. Well that didn't happen. One of the on going issues I have with all of this technology. It still is not simple or straight forward to use. There's a conflict between Blip.TV and Blogger. Then the system should solve the conflict.

... as for the game... well the Eskimos have been inconsistent when in position to score touchdowns. Clip below amplifies that.

Click To Play

Houdini Proud

The CRTC saved us some money, yesterday.Then, before we could blink took it back. Canada's private broadcasters, CTV and Can-West Global, wanted to charge the cable and satellite companies a fee, 50 cents, per subscriber, for their signal.  Well, really, they wanted to create a pay-tv service for themselves.

The CRTC said no! Then gave the broadcasters $60 million, from the distributors to finance local news broadcasts, a profitable lobbying day indeed!

The broadcasters say advertising revenues are diminishing. If true, fewer people are watching, not good!  How can this be? Between them, Can-West and CTV control private broadcasting, most of the specialty channels, and newspapers, in this country.  A nice tight family compact, just like the fur trading days of our historic past.

So with all of those 'media assets' why are Canadian broadcasters losing money?  Why aren't they moving to the internet? That's where their viewers are. Advertising is, and is going.

That's what US companies do.  Take a look.




via Beet.TV

CNN is monetizing an internal feed. Feeds are raw elements, packaged as news stories for broadcast and broadband newscasts.  CNN is  leveraging the internet to create a new revenue stream. Clever!

Both Canadian broadcasters could 'borrow'  the CNN  business model. Instead they go to the government to bail them out. In a convoluted way, the CRTC is nudging the broadcasters to innovate.

" When we consider the availability of streaming broadband content through broadcasters and third-party aggregators (and the level of interactivity offered), the availability of paid download content through iTunes and other services, American consumers are clearly much-better served on all levels by alternative distribution channels than their Canadian counterparts."

That's a  small indictment of Canadian broadcasters, from a recent CRTC study.

While ' they' study and moan, let's watch some live TV!

                           !
                                           Click the picture

Blogged with the Flock Browser

MidWeek Madness

Just one home game left for the Eskimos. Perhaps just two games left, in the season. Recent results make it hard for fan to believe other wise. What about future prospects?

Is there sufficient talent to compete, in the west? That includes coaching talent. There are 10 coaches, on the Eskimo staff. The old sporting bromide, 'this is results oriented business', comes to mind. Results are spotty. It's easy to focus on poor player execution, as the local media mob did, this week.

What about cause and effect? Preparation and execution, the offense is easy to defend. Swing pass from the back field, crossing pattern over the middle, corner route to the end zone flag. That's the Eskimos passing attack. What's new in the offense, since game nine ? Nothing, that's coaching.

Defensively, the coach, thinks his group played well for a half against the Saskatchewan Rough Riders.

"I was very proud of the way they played in the first half," he said. "In the second half it got away from us. But I thought we did some good things in the first half as far as getting a couple of interceptions."

That's Teflon coaching. It's in his genes. His group gave up 21points in a row, in the second half. He's been consistently out coached, all season. His analysis is disingenuous demeaning to fans and beat reporters.

Eskimos' coaching lacks innovation, is intransigent, and weak on talent identification. That's execution too. The talent level is still not good enough. It hasn't been for several years. Cause and effect, insufficient talent, inflexible planning, leaves players vulnerable to poor execution.

None of these elements can be ' fixed' in the short term, the next two weeks. The challenge is to determined if the current staff can fix them, long term. That's not far away either. As long as it takes for season ticket renewals. There is no ' spinning' that metric.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

HD for NYT

New Your Times has revamped it's video offering. High Definition is now the 'newspaper' broadcast standard!










Why are Canada's newspapers late video adopters? The Globe and Mail relies on syndicated feeds, from the wire services. Neither Sun Media or Can West Global has established a recognizable video presence.

In contrast, NYT has extended it's brand to become a video distributor !



via Beet.TV

Live Blogging

During Saturday's game, the Oilers shut down a live blog. Why? Live blogging is a unique sports marketing opportunity. Edmonton Journal Reporter, Dave Staples, has insightful piece on 'live bogging', today. Here's my take.

Why are sports organizations and mainstream media reluctant adopters of emerging technologies? They want to make money. They don't understand how. They are unwilling to invest, in new business models to learn how. They fear cannibalizing their product. They lock it up.

Instead they could be monetizing it. Generate revenue from segments. "Live Blogging" is highlights, on the fly! There's revenue to be made. There is a rights issue. Rights to the Oilers 'live event broadcast' belongs to SportsNet, TSN, or HNIC, as the case maybe. The Oilers are bound to those broadcast agreements. That doesn't preclude adapting them to mutually, benefit, from emerging technologies.

There's always been exemptions for 'news' inside 'live' broadcasts. Live events are news! For the willing, there's a way. Business model, think music Apple, iTunes and play-lists. I suspect sponsors would consider it. The Oilers have production capability, in house to do a masterful video component.

Control is an issue. Take it. License the bloggers. Create a blogger list. Bloggers apply to be on it. Some will. Some won't. A lottery could be held, before every game, for a specific number of press box positions. It's preferable to be in the press box. It isn't necessary. Lottery winners go to the game. The rest blog, or not, from, well, where ever. Oilers set up a "Live Blog", complete with advertising and sponsor ship. Bloggers link to their blogs, too. In that scenario, every 'mainstream' reporter is likely to blog.

First step, drop the labels. There is a 'mainstream' sports media arrogance, in Edmonton. It coalesces around credentials, or a perceived lack of them. Over simplified, 'mainstream' reporters have it, bloggers don't. That's silly. There's a vast vault of insight and hockey knowledge, in this berg. It's logical to tap it. Ego sometimes trumps logic though.

It's Coaching

The Eskimos were out coached, again. Strategic pre-game roster changes were disastrous. Defensive End, Fred Perry, was a non factor. Running back, A. J. Harris, made no impact, offensively. Equally disappointing for Eskimos fans were in game coaching decisions. The Eskimos do not adapt well to game dynamics.

By re-activating Harris, Head Coach Danny Maciocia traded team chemistry for veteran prerogative . He devalued Calvin McCarty, again. Maciocia doesn't trust McCarty, yet. Sure McCarty fumbled, last game. He also carried the ball 19 times. Harris carried, 7 times for less than 40 yards, Friday night.

With no ground game, Friday night, the offense was very predictable. This is a Maciocia coaching trait. He freezes, in key games. Bring Harris back, sure. Start him no. Spot him. When he proves, in spot duty, he's capable. Play him more. This is not a criticism of Harris' talent level. Starting him and leaving him in the game, when he was not performing, was a grave coaching error.

Eskimos Run Defense is 7th in the League

On defense, the Eskimos were out coached twice. Starting Fred Perry was another roster shuffle mistake. He has not played for 3 months. Good on him, he recovered, quickly, from a broken ankle. Why break up team chemistry to get him back, on the field? He was ineffective, missed several tackles, provided no pass rush, from his end of the defensive line.


Tactically on defense, Rick Campbell lost his poker hand, "safety blitz". The Lions adapted, when it mattered, late in the third quarter and throughout the fourth, when they moved the ball, at will.

Safety Blitz=Open Secondary

Like Maciocia, Campbell is stubborn. He does not adapt, well, during a game. He's easy to out coach. The 'safety blitz tactic' failed. BC quarterback, Buck Pierce, was not hurried into mistakes. Instead, the Eskimos made them.

Traditionally, in professional sports, veteran players don't lose their roster position because of an injury. They should not get a free ticket back to the roster, when they recover from injury, either. Play the best players. At this time of year, in the CFL that is healthy players. Coaches make those decisions. In the last month, tactical and strategic coaching decisions have cost the Eskimos two of the four games they lost.

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API's blah blah ...

This is a test of Scribe Fire. I have no idea why it does not include Blogger, in its' list of blogs. The directions to link to blogger are not clear.

I have no idea why I am unable to up load a photo from Scribe Fire. The API does not work. FTP doesn't either. Why? Why do I need to know how to do that?

The image, above, got here because I came to Blogger to finish this post. Not much point to Scribe Fire, is there? This is the type of geek tech that detracts from mass adoption. The geeks think it is simple. It is not. If facilitation is the notion to Scribe Fire, then it fails for me.

The technical part of API's is beyond my technical expertise. I have no interest in it. Why do I need to have an interest? Why does the user need to fill the gap between this app and blogger? Why doesn't this app just have blogger in its' list. Why isn't image upload easy?

Why isn't the gap between here and blogger simply automated? This tool is supposed to be about monetization. How do you do that, when the app won't link to the blog?

So this little ditty would not publish. At least, I don't know that it published, from Scribe Fire. For help, I am referred to the Scribe FireSscribe support group. I clicked on the Scribe Fire link. Scribe Fire support is hard to fine, there. It is not listed, at the bottom of the page. So now I am completely wasting time.

Best to forget Scribe Fire and simply go directly to Blogger.

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