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Sporting Events having an "Social Media/Interactive Feed"


Thundershock MN

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So, I'm sitting here watching Fox Sports North's annual production of Hockey Day Minnesota. They go all out for the production producing 16 hours of coverage from three locations (one of them being outdoors) and, have "all hands on deck" even having some of the Fox Sports Wisconsin talent pitch in. Anyway, one of the new features this year is an "Interactive Feed" on the Fox Sports North Plus channel. It's basically a full simulcast operating in squeezeback mode. The surrounding space allows for pictures shared via twitter & instagram along with a space at the bottom for tweets.

 

ESPN did something similar to this with the BCS Championship game this year. I'm sure the networks like it as it allows them to aggregate viewers from two channels for ratings purposes. Plus, it generates some buzz on social media potentially resulting in additional viewers looking to see what. So, What do you think of this use of an additional channel for "big" sporting events?

 

 

Sidebar - Fox Sports 2 also carried Hockey Day Minnesota live from it's 9am start through the conclusion of the Gophers/Buckeyes game. Thought this was a great way to give FS2 some unique, live content. I wonder if they might lean on the Fox RSN's like this for some original content that can be cleared nationally.

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So, I'm sitting here watching Fox Sports North's annual production of Hockey Day Minnesota. They go all out for the production producing 16 hours of coverage from three locations (one of them being outdoors) and, have "all hands on deck" even having some of the Fox Sports Wisconsin talent pitch in. Anyway, one of the new features this year is an "Interactive Feed" on the Fox Sports North Plus channel. It's basically a full simulcast operating in squeezeback mode. The surrounding space allows for pictures shared via twitter & instagram along with a space at the bottom for tweets.

 

ESPN did something similar to this with the BCS Championship game this year. I'm sure the networks like it as it allows them to aggregate viewers from two channels for ratings purposes. Plus, it generates some buzz on social media potentially resulting in additional viewers looking to see what. So, What do you think of this use of an additional channel for "big" sporting events?

 

 

Sidebar - Fox Sports 2 also carried Hockey Day Minnesota live from it's 9am start through the conclusion of the Gophers/Buckeyes game. Thought this was a great way to give FS2 some unique, live content. I wonder if they might lean on the Fox RSN's like this for some original content that can be cleared nationally.

 

They also have or used to have something called the FOX Sports Game Connect used during baseball broadcasts which had a heavy social media component to it. Last season, FS San Diego did a Social Media segment every Tuesday during the baseball season, where they read fans' tweets/showed pictures on air and they even had a dedicated social media reporter. It was very annoying and a lot of people hated it, except for the suckups who kept getting featured.
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A lot of places are doing "second screen" experiences. Meaning you won't see this kind of stuff on one of the on-air channels, but you'll see it on your smartphone/tablet. WWE already does this during Raw and Smackdown.

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I'm not talking about a "Second Screen Experience." This was a straight up linear channel running a simulcast in squeezeback mode. The area to the right was for viewer submitted pictures. The bottom was for comments from twitter. I've attached a picture although it's a thumbnail. I can't figure out how to resize it to make it larger and I had a hard enough time trying to upload it from my phone. So, it will have to work. But, I'm sure you'll get the idea. It's similar to the Fox Sports Live squeezeback just with user content via twitter.

 

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Using WWE as the example. If they were to do something similar it would be akin to simulcasting a "big" Raw event (ie: anniversary show, etc) on SyFy (or another NBCU channel) and running it in squeezeback with similar user submitted content.

 

So, I guess my question(s) are really what do you think of this idea? And, do you see this type of thing catching on for other "big" events?

 

 

 

Since these two tie together a side conversation to this whole thing is the simulcasting events across multiple linear channels. As I mentioned this was simulcasted across three channels FS North, FS North Plus & FS2 (minus the Wild game.) The broadcast was exactly the same across the three channels save for the aforementioned "squeezeback" on FS North Plus. ESPN has done similar things with in the past with Full Circle and more recently with the BCS Megacast. Also, One of the Megacast feeds (ESPN2?) had a similar "interaction/social" component via ticker. Do you all think this is a new trend as well for "big" events?

 

Also, One thing thing that did make me chuckle with FS North/ FS North Plus simulcast was that the Wild game was shown on two channels while the Timberwolves had no tv that night.

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