Basketball and everything in between

(As you can see, I have changed the theme of my blog.  Let me know what you think of it by leaving a comment at the bottom of this post or email me at ashleyproud@gmail.com )

Every NBL fan (and non NBL fan) knows that the NBL has very poor TV coverage.  At the moment, we are lucky to get one game a week on Fox Sports.  Last week we were so lucky to get two games due to the fact that Maroi TV from New Zealand covered the Breakers vs Dragons game and it was played on delay late Thursday night on Fox Sports.  But apart from that, there is no games on Free to Air TV.  Last year we had a replay on Sunday morning on Channel 9 but I don’t think that this exsists anymore (I live in a part of Australia that does not get Channel 9 – we get Imparja!)

Michael from Shibz’s Spiel recently wrote an article entitled: Television Coverage A Must In Today’s Digital Age.  In this post he talks about the importance of having television coverage in this day and age and how it is impartive to get.  My friend (and co host of the TO) Grandmaster Funk and I were talking about this just the other day.  I then stumbled across Hoops TV – Episode V.  In it the guys interview Boti Nagy and he talks about the importance of even getting local TV coverage for home centres (e.g. Channel 7 in Adelaide covering 36ers games etc)  I think that this is an awesome idea but I am unsure if the networks would grab onto it.

I am also an avid listender of OH-FM (which seems to have disappeared from the radar) and I remember in this episode, Derek talking about something called BitTorrent  I had absolutley no clue what it was so I went and did some research and found out that it was a free, open source file-sharing application effective for distributing very large software and media files.  His plan was that the NBL would upload the games to a certain site and we could access it from here (I think that was his idea)  He talked about the legal issues and apparently this was a bit dicey.

An idea that the NBL seriously should consider is broadcasting the games over the internet.  The D League in the USA, apparently does this to great success.  Therefore fans (and I wouldn’t be one for two reasons: 1. I only have crappy dial up internet at home and 2. Even if we had broadband, my wife is the boss and she would say no!) could pay a subscription fee and access all of the games over the net.  There would be costs to the NBL.  They would need to provide:

1. Provide at least 3 cameras for each game (estimate….I have no clue $3 000 ??)
2. Two local callers ($800 all up for the night)
3. An ICT guy ($300 for the night)
4. 3 camera men  ($750 all up)
5. Stats people (should be $0 as they should be able to use the exsisting system)

So by my maths, I estimate that it would cost the NBL each night $1 850 for each game.  If the NBL charged $200 per season for each person to subscribe for the year, it should almost be cost netural.  There would be some start up costs for the NBL to buy the cameras but they could be shared amongst the teams. 

So there you go.  Hopefully the NBL does something soon about the TV coverage soon, but I am sure that saving the Sydney Spirit is higher on their agenda!