Fans across the nation (especially Red Sox Nation), many whom had just sat through Turner Broadcasting System’s (TBS) pregame for Game 6 of Major League Baseball’s (MLB) American League Championship Series (ALCS), prepared for the fist pitch between the Tampa Bay Rays and Boston Red Sox at 8 p.m. ET on Saturday night – only to be greeted by a sitcom, which stopped airing new shows more than six years ago.
The Time Warner (TWX) company abruptly cut to the “Steve Harvey Show” just before the first pitch - without warning - when a technical difficulty knocked out the live feed from Tampa’s Tropicana Field. At the time, viewers in bars and living rooms across the country frantically flipped to other channels trying to find the game. Most viewers at home had to surf the Web (Great graph here from Google Trends which shows people searching on-line for "Red Sox and TBS" (at 5 p.m. PT / 8 p.m. ET) or log onto Twitter to find out what was going on. There was no original information on TBS explaining why they were showing the former WB sitcom.
For those in bars it was slightly harder to find out exactly what was going on. Information slowly started to come out on-line that TBS was experiencing a technical difficulty, which was followed by a scrolling message on TBS. Finally, after 20 minutes, viewers were switched over to the game, albeit an inning later with Tampa Bay leading 1-0. TBS would later issue this statement:
"Two circuit breakers in our Atlanta transmission operations tripped causing the master router and its backup -- which are necessary to transmit any incoming feed outbound -- to shut down. This impacted our live feed from being distributed to any of the other networks in the Turner portfolio and caused the delay in our coverage. Both our primary and backup routers were impacted by this problem. We apologize to baseball fans for this mishap that caused a delay in our coverage."
After the statement was issued, the network made Turner Sports director of public relations Jeff Pomeroy available for questions. Pomeroy noted in several media outlets that failure of the routers was unprecedented and it also made scrolling a live message on the channel impossible. The cause seems justified, but it certainly didn’t curb anger with the Network from viewers, especially those in the Tampa or Boston area.
It got me thinking. Although they couldn't use the television station to update viewers, could TBS have put itself in a better position in advance of the technical difficulty to update viewers on the situation via other platforms? The answer is probably yes. Here are a few things they could have put in place.
Promote Mobile Alerts and Mobile Following: TBS offers program updates on mobile phones for its regular shows, but didn't promote the mobile feature on its TBS Sports Website for the MLB playoffs. If it had promoted and utilized the feature for the playoffs it could have provided a real-time mobile alert on the situation; at least to those die-hard baseball fans following the playoffs on TBS. MLB.TV, Major League Baseball's online video service, promotes this mobile alert feature to baseball fans that use its service.
Create an Easy to find online Destination for Updates: TBS Sports' Web-page is hard to find on the TBS site. In fact, TBS does not even include the sports vertical on the top of its homepage. The only way that I could find the link to the sports' page was by scanning down to the bottom of the Web-page where it is listed in fine print. When the blackout occurred and people scrambled on-line to Google "TBS," they likely clicked on TBS.com. However, without an update on the homepage, these viewers were left still wondering, and unable to find TBS Sports.
Create a Twitter Account for updates to the Twittersphere: Many broadcast media outlets, including CNN (another Time Warner Co.) and Fox News are utilizing Twitter to provide updates and take feedback from viewers in real-time (On the Web & on mobile devices). In looking through Twitter, I couldn't find any TBS or TBS Sports' presence in the Twittersphere. If they had created this presence, along with followers, it could have gotten out the word to those most interested in finding out the status of the telecast. Some may argue that this is a bleeding edge technology, which doesn't have that many followers. However, when I struggled to find an answer on my TV or on the Web, I was amazed to see how many people had tweet'd on the status of the telecast on Twitter. While we may have figured it out as a group, TBS could have been a part of that conversation to reassure us, while updating the status of the situation in real-time.
John McCain’s “invisible friend,” as Keith Olbermann of MSNBC dubbed him after the debate, was the run away winner last night. I’m talking, of course, about “Joe the Plumber” (AKA Joe Wurzelbacher, an Ohio plumber). John McCain and even Barack Obama mentioned “Joe” 21 times according to the rough estimate of political pundits after the debate. Reuters counted 13 times in the first few minutes of the debate alone. Even legendary NBC anchor Tom Brokaw broke precedent to declare Joe the winner last night:
I’m always reluctant, as you know, to declare a winner in all of these. Tonight I’m going to break with that precedent. And Joe, you’re the winner. Joe plumber.
He went on to add that he hopes Joe can can take his “15 minutes” and turn it into a business. Joe also impressed CBS and Katie Couric, who he joined for a live interview after the debate. Of course Joe’s “15 minutes” weren’t confined to the television.
People were buzzing about Joe across the Internet and within the Twittersphere. In fact, at one point last night, Joe the plumber was getting tweet’d more than Barack Obama. Joe may even be on Twitter himself, although I’m inclined to think it’s “Fake Joe the Plumber.” He was the 9th hottest search term in Google Trends this morning, and roughly counting he was in over 5,000 online stories.
Getting back to Brokaw’s point on Joe making the most of his fifteen minutes - he could probably start by making a deal to purchase joetheplumber.com. I’m sure Joe from Texas, would sell it for the right price. He should definitely start getting a percentage of the royalties from those “Joe the plumber” T-shirts, which Google is selling nicely for Cafe Press when you search for our friend Joe. As for who Joe is voting for? Well, he’s undecided. I, for one, am considering a write-in for Joe.
My Name is Kyle Austin and I'm an expert blogger for FastCompany.com (as of today). I can promise there won't be any ten step programs in our ensuing conversations. Unless, it is ten steps on how to survive the market meltdown and ad budget cuts, which surrounds us.
I'm happy to be joining a group of expert bloggers with the likes of Dr. Alex Pattakos (he's brilliant) and Allyson Kapin (she's rad). With "Channeling Media," I plan to look at the media corporations, entrepreneurs and technology that are changing the way we view, read and interact with media on all three-screens (TV, computer and mobile device.)
Of course, with the market tumult, taking a look at how the "crash" (we can call it this now - Maria Bartiromo told me) is affecting the media landscape (even close to home) will become part of the daily beat.
However, as mainstream media becomes more open to tapping into the blogosphere and even the Twittersphere during this collapse; news and analysis is finally becoming a 2-way conversation. This as my Fortune-friend David Kirkpatrick posted on Facebook recently, makes me wonder if "Our new communications media, could help us emerge faster and stronger from this disaster?" Need an example of this? Well there are thousands of entrepreneurs and start-ups out there that are worrying that we could be headed toward the Web 2.0 bubble bursting. If it were 2000, a lot of these entrepreneurs would depend on the council of those closest to them. There first reaction was not, "well I need to go online and see what people are saying." Yes, the Internet was there, but it wasn't the communications tool that it is today.
So earlier this week when uber-connected blogger Om Malik broke news on a secret meeting that top venture firm Sequoia Capital was having with its portfolio companies, I took notice. The news quickly spread and we started to learn more about the advice that some of the brightest minds in the Valley were giving their top portfolio companies. Yes, the part of the story that everyone wanted to cover was how fearful the valley is (queue up illustration:"RIP Good Times" slide). But what people failed to really jump on, was that as the meeting became more-and-more transparent, entrepreneurs (worried about what they will do during the downturn) got access to the full slide show (insight & analysis), which Sequoia was planning to give only to its portfolio companies.
In addition to this, entrepreneurs could compare this advice online with equally insightful analysis from Jason Calacanis, Fred Wilson and Paul Kedrosky, to name a few. All before getting together with other members of their team to decide what ideas they have. Knowledge is truly power, and there is no shortage of financial power across the Internet, blogosphere and Twittersphere.
This is just one example of many. What about those tweeting to each other during the presidential debates? Or the influential bloggers who now influence how mainstream outlets cover key topics on the campaign trail.
With the situation that this Nation is currently facing, due to gross errors made by this administration, we can't afford to be ignorant anymore. I would argue that the "wisdom of the crowds" won't let us or the mainstream media be that way anymore.
Are you finding the insight and analysis that you need to survive the downturn online via blogs, through Twitter, or are you still tuning into mainstream media for insight? Let me know.
kyledaustin at hotmail.com or @kyledaustin2440 on Twitter.
