The Ashes – a few digital observations
The Ashes and digital media
So, England have won the Ashes and we have all turned up at work this Monday feeling unduly cheerful. I’ve even had a sensible conversation about cricket with a Spaniard – which underlines the gravity of the situation.
But let’s leave the cricket to one side and have a look at the effect of the series on digital media.
Firstly, as it was not available on terrestrial television people who did not have access to Sky were forced to find alternative ways of following the progress of the team. This meant listening to TMS online, watching the highlights later in the evening on Demand Five or following the live text updates on the BBC.
None of this is new, but the lack of straight TV coverage made people look around for alternatives. And when they found good places to watch/rewatch or listen to the action online, they would have also found more photos of the action, additional interviews, podcasts, blogs, videos, chat rooms and viewers’ polls. [See here or here]
Secondly, the series – which was played in stints of various days over the course of a month and a bit – encouraged social interaction online. People sent in their observations, their anxieties and their jokes, and they shared their photos and blogs while following the players and commentators on Twitter.
And one of the more surprising adoptions of Twitter came from members of the TMS team – a group of quite wonderful eccentrics that few would expect to understand any technology that had been introduced since around 1933. Here are some of their accounts:
And from Sky:
Not doing badly are they? – And it refutes one of the eight commonly used excuses for not using the web (“I leave social media to a younger generation. I’m too old.”)
The series also seems to have had a good effect on the BBC, and if you have a look at this round up of the Ashes series, you will see how they are beginning to share their Googlejuice by linking out to a range of external sites (mostly they are newspaper run websties).
This has not always happened, and if you believe in Jeff Jarvis’ link economy then this is a significant step forward. I wonder if they will soon start linking to blogs in the same way?
The Ashes is the kind of series that can change people’s habits. The nature of the sport is that you have to return to it, again and again, week after week – making it the perfect catalyst for altering behavioural patterns, and much more effective that a one-off football or boxing match.
I’ll finish this off with an excerpt from an email that I have just received from my Australian boss.
“Due to Australia’s unfortunate loss in The Ashes, I will be leaving the country on Wednesday evening and returning back to work on the 16th of September when hopefully everything has calmed down.”
I don’t feel sorry for him a bit.
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Update. Robin Goad, the Research Director for Hitwise UK has shown how much the Ashes have boosted the BBC and Sky Sports cricket websites.
image credit: fat mandy