Ch-ch-ch-anges

This has been a year with a number of changes, both personal and technical, so I thought it may be interesting to write a bit about some of them here.

1) Shift Changes
In September my team at work, which had been running on shifts of four days on/four days off/four nights on/four days off switched to a trial of two days on/two nights on/four days off. I had really become accustomed to that pattern, I felt it really suited me, and I especially loved the night before my first nightshift. That was a time that I could catch up on my Sky+ recordings, play some games and generally have a little me time.

Now I don't have that. I tried staying up late after my second dayshift, but it didn't work. Lots of experimenting saw that the only way I can really work with this is to go to bed at a normal time after my second dayshift, and then get a sleep in the afternoon before my first nightshift. It's had a bit of a negative impact upon my personal life, but I've been able to get through work without feeling too tired.

2) No More Google Reader
For a number of years I had become somewhat of a Google Reader addict. For me it was the easiest way to keep in touch with my RSS feeds, especially the Lifehacker feed which frequently published over 20 items a day.

I held out until the end, hoping that Google would change their mind and continue to support Reader. However they proceeded with the shutdown as planned on July 1st, and I had to switch. I tried Digg Reader, but for some reason I didn't like it as much.

Additionally just after Google Reader died a digital death Lifehacker carried out what felt like their umpteenth instance of needless tinkering with their RSS feed, again changing their RSS feed so that only part of an article was shown. Their intention was clearly to drive more traffic to the site itself, but by doing this again at a time when I was considering the usefulness of RSS readers they managed to change my behaviour entirely. I unsubscribed from the RSS feed and began to follow them on Twitter instead.

So I'm no longer an RSS junkie. I was a Twitter junkie already, so that behaviour is unchanged, but Lifehacker are seeing much less traffic from me (N.B. I retweet them frequently, as I think their writers are usually fantastic). I keep a few low volume feeds in Digg Reader, but to be honest I can't remember the last time I even logged into it.

3) Farewell ESPN America
Although I had already unsubscribed, I was still disappointed when ESPN America went off the air on August 1st as part of the reshuffle of sports channels that saw the start of the BT Sport service. The disappearance of the only sports channel specifically for North American sport was disappointing, and forced me into a position where I could only keep up with my favourite shows by podcast (Pardon the Interruption, Highly Questionable) or in some cases not at all (yep, I've really missed College Gameday this season).

While I'm not party to the ESPN decision making process I wonder if part of the reason for the channel's ultimate demise was the restrictive nature of the highlights they were able to show, and the ultimate effect it had upon many of their programmes, including the flagship SportsCenter franchise.

In addition to being reduced to being a podcast listener, I've also come to find meagre highlights and features on various YouTube channels. To find other highlights and clips I've had to become somewhat of a YouTube ninja, and while this has been bearable (along with my reduced quantity of TV watching), I do still miss it somewhat.

Ultimately I look forward (hopefully) to a time where media rights can be eliminated, and programmes like Pardon the Interruption can be shown globally in their intended format. Until then I'll just have to get by in the way I do at the moment. It may sound naïve, but with torrenting and streaming still prevalent I think major channels like ESPN and Sky will look to find a way to monetise their broadcasts globally rather than losing out on additional income.

Considering the Previously Unthinkable

Remember how years ago I considered Pardon The Interruption and Around The Horn to be shows I couldn't miss? For that matter, do you remember how barely a few months ago I praised Dan Le Batard is Highly Questionable? Those days seem like a long time ago, because unfortunately the channel responsible for showing them in the UK, ESPN America, is becoming an unwatchable mess.

Consider the following:

• Pardon The Interruption, possibly my favourite programme on television and for me the quickest way to catch up on the biggest American sports stories, is now effectively a glorified radio show. The highlights which still accompany the show in America are nowhere to be seen in the UK, apparently due to rights footage restrictions. Sky hold the rights to NFL games, BBC to many Tennis events, and the two share plenty of other events, such as Golf. No rights, no clips, but plenty of Kornheiser and Wilbon referring to clips that we can't see. Sad.
• Dan Le Batard Is Highly Questionable relies even more heavily on clips. This appears to be the reason why it is no longer shown at all on ESPN America. Ditto for SportsCenter and SportsNation (the latter is not my cup of tea, but lots of people I know really enjoyed it).
• Even a programme which should be immune from this nonsense isn't safe. College Gameday only covers College Football, which as far as I know is only nearly exclusively shown on ESPN America. However when Landon Donovan appeared as a guest on the show the feed was cut as the American broadcast was about to show highlights of Donovan's goal against Algeria from the 2010 World Cup.

All these rights issues are pedantic and annoying, and not just in regard to ESPN America. I don't usually subscribe to Sky Sports because for the lack of spare time I have I really cannot justify the cost, however I usually pick it up for the NFL playoffs or if Palace are due to be covered. Not anymore. I've only really watched Golf's majors for years, but the way it carved up PTI in the summer has led me to loathe it. Andy Murray may have had a magical run to the Wimbledon final, but I kept thinking about how it was destroying PTI and frankly it made me bitter and disinterested.

With my favourite programmes being destroyed what on earth am I therefore forking out £13 a month for? Frankly I don't need it, and I struggle to justify it. So with that in mind once the final College Gameday of the season is shown on January 7th I will probably cancel my subscription, at the very least until March Madness. However as that is shown online for free I will probably be quite safe to leave it until the Baseball season begins, and by that point I may have joined my Fantasy Baseball colleagues who have promoted MLB.tv on the basis of the quality it provides for many years now.

(And no, it doesn't help when filler time is taken up with things like the American Hockey League and College Volleyball, low quality events in front of sparse and disinterested audiences. Ugh.)

The sad part of this for me is that all this takes to resolve this is rights of highlights to be shown on a few programmes. There obviously aren't problems with this in America, so why does it take place here? According to what I could find the problem appears to be with the UK version of ESPN America also being shown in Scandinavia. I'm not sure why that affects the UK and in particular highlights being edited out of shows. Goodness only knows what would happen if they allowed highlights to be shown in regard to these events and consequently make me interested in them? I'm not proud to admit it, but a few years ago I even took a partial interest in American Idol because of how keenly Tony Kornheiser argued about who should leave each week.

Showing highlights of different events effectively works as free advertising. A clip of something amazing on one of these shows might lead to me actually watching it on a different channel. Whoever makes these decisions, you may think you're doing yourselves a favour by denying these rights, but all it does it get my back up and the remote control handed over to my wife.

DLHQ: An Appreciation

I've noticed something that is consistent across the sports shows I love in the last few years, mostly that I've gravitating towards shows where pundits are having fun, are passionate about what they discuss and yet don't take themselves too seriously. It is true in the case of Pardon the Interruption and College Gameday, and has also become the case for Dan Le Batard is Highly Questionable.

My knowledge of Le Batard the journalist goes back quite a while. I remember him being one of the more significant writers in the Miami media to notice how bad a coach Dave Wannstedt was, and while I loved those columns I thought considerably less of him when he defended Ricky Williams' sudden retirement ahead of the Dolphins 2004 season. I held that against him while he occasionally appeared on PTI, but slowly grew to enjoy the self-depreciating humour and subsequent parodies of him. By the time of his epic radio celebration of Lebron James joining the Miami Heat I was back to being a fan of his.

(Yes, I like Dan Le Batard. There, I said it.)

An overload of television (by my standards) meant that I didn't pick up Dan LeBatard is Highly Questionable (or DLHQ, as it is known in both @DLHQ and #DLHQ form) when it started on ESPN America. I felt that PTI were especially keen to promote it (which on reflection was pretty mild). I gave the show a try, and found that while most of the show consists of Dan talking he isn't the real star - that's his Dad, Gonzalo. Or Papi, as he is more commonly referred to.

This leads me onto the other thing I've begun to enjoy on television: slightly eccentric older gentlemen who are unintentionally funny. Tony Kornheiser, Lee Corso, and now Gonzalo Le Batard.

There probably aren't words which can explain this adequately, so let me just mention a couple of (ir)relevant points:

1) The section of the show where Papi introduces "Si O No" has become my two-year-old's favourite thing on television, to the point she can now just about imitate it along with tilting her head from side to side.

2) Papi is genuinely really, really funny. I missed a few episodes while I was on holiday and picked up where I left up from the podcasts. The one where Dan and Papi discussed the National Geographic show "Taboo" and Papi called the Berlin Wall "a home wrecker" nearly had me crying with laughter at a set of traffic lights.

3) As someone with a somewhat dysfunctional father-son relationship I love the dynamic that there is between Papi and Dan. They're clearly comfortable in talking with each other and having fun together. I don't know for certain, but I'd suspect they're very similar to how they'd talk with each other in any other setting (although I'd guess the language would be more, ahem, colourful).

4) As well as being funny the show can also be poignant. After Ozzie Guillen spoke about his admiration of Fidel Castro Papi retold his own tale of leaving Cuba:



That is probably not the most representative clip from the show though. Here are some of my favourites:

And to finish, my personal favourite clip: