Sunday, April 06, 2008

Michael Phelps 400 IM at the 'Columbus Grand Prix'


Attention USA Swimming or WMG: DO NOT PULL THIS VIDEO! If you do, you will only alienate us again and I hope you have learned something over the Floswimming fiasco.

SwimNetwork has not made any video available thus far of the Columbus Grand Prix available so I am posting this Michael Phelps 400 IM here. Mega thanks go out to swimmingismylife
over at You Tube.

There is a 'plugin' for the Firefox browser called "Download helper." With it you can download videos from You tube; or other sites that contain video, directly to your hard drive and view at your leisure. I am bringing this up because I have a bad feeling that when I wake up tomorrow this video will be gone. Hence, get the 'plugin' and use it for those videos you would like study so as to make you a better swimmer.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wait, what fiasco? I just saw your comment over at Swim Network and came here to learn more... Mel's explanation on no Grand Prix video raised a red flag to me -- they've had the rights for too long to not be ready by now. Plus, they covered Nationals last year, so that made no sense. My instincts are that they're stretched too thin and have inadequate expertise to do production. Seems like they'd benefit more from a collaboration with WCSN rather than trying to take them on and put both organizations at risk. (Certainly does the sport no good.)

As far as your assessment on their site, I don't know if they launched too early or just have a dubious business plan. But they're not really doing anything quite right at present... The site is basically just Timed Finals with worse usability and that god awful blue on blue color scheme that no legitimate news organization would use if they wanted people to actually read the coverage without getting a headache. They need to get that platform right before they decide to double as a production company, or vice versa.

I will say that from an intellectual perspective, it's interesting to see first WCSN and now Swim Network trying to do everything all at once. I don't think I've ever seen a media startup succeed in that endeavor, it's usually a shortcut to mediocrity on all fronts and ultimately a cash burning death wish. Someone needs to scoop up all these different sites in an acquisition and have each do what they're good at. But what do I know, I only make a living assessing the optimal direction of media companies. ;-)

Tony Austin said...

I remember talking to you after a Santa Mo workout and I was so blown away about your observations regarding trying to do a web product and a TV product all at the same time.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, well, I'm blown away by your ability to keep up this website and make it to practice more than twice a week!

I'm still curious about the "fiasco."