John’s Blog

While I’m writing this (taking a break from some job-related networking), I’ve got a window up behind Firefox that’s got streaming video of a Stanford baseball game that’s happening in Waco, TX right now (playoff game). I have to say that while the quality of the video isn’t quite what you’d get on television, it’s pretty darn good — and definitely definitely definitely better than not seeing it at all.

It’s just another example of how the economics & reach of "Long Tail" offerings are changing. Demand for watching a college baseball game, especially one that’s not in the College World Series and is between two relatively small private schools (Stanford & Baylor), and during a workday to boot, is never going to be high enough to justify a real TV broadcast with professional broadcasters — but it’s definitely high enough to have the university’s video students and radio broadcasters cover — and broadcasting like this, reaching a bigger audience than they could otherwise — should generate more donations for them, plus give them a way to put in more advertisements to generate even more revenue.

But mostly, I just like being able to see Stanford baseball, even when it’s happening such a long way away.

And, incidentally, we’re now in the 11th inning, with a Stanford sophomore (Reynolds) having pitched the whole game so far. Win or lose, pretty gutsy effort by Reynolds, who’s only started 5 games this season.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 6th, 2005 at 3:01 pm and is filed under Web/Tech. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.