Ian Walker, skipper of ADOR, explains their situation in the…
Ian Walker, skipper of ADOR, explains their situation in the boat’s October 31 video package.
My favorite video from the last few days, offering a glimpse into what’s going on on the lead boat, with a rundown on strategy from Ian, and cool footage of an amazing boat being driven flat out.
One of the frustrations for me (and a lot of other people, judging by the SA forum), has been the difficulty of getting access to the latest information from the fleet. The central VOR media operation apparently has made arrangements to provide access to the raw video feeds only to established media outlets. The daily feeds from the boats are cut up and repackaged, then released via posting to YouTube in the following ways:
- The individual teams’ media operations will post an edited version of that team’s videos to their respective YouTube channels. Depending on the team, this either happens relatively quickly, with the content mostly intact (Dongfeng, Mapfre, and SCA), relatively slowly and/or with heavy-handed and off-putting editing (Vestas, Brunel, and Alvimedica), or mostly not at all (ADOR).
- The central VOR media operation will put out a package with small chunks of the individual videos edited together, sometimes with inane commentary added. This mostly happens within about 24 hours.
- After about 48 hours, some third-party media operations (the SailworldNZL channel is the best I’ve found so far) will post a relatively complete version of the videos uploaded from the boats. These are actually some of the most-interesting videos to me, since the extended, uncut feeds include lots of interesting stuff that gets cut from the more-processed pieces released earlier.
- Later, there’s a weekly (I think?) extended video that is released by the central VOR operation, apparently intended as a weekly show to run on cable TV. Inane commentary and banal musical arrangements on top of the (heavily edited) feeds from the boats.
There’s a hugely compelling (at least for someone like me) story taking place on the water, and a relatively sophisticated operation in place to produce and deliver wonderful content in near-real-time from the OBRs. And then… it goes into a black hole at VOR headquarters and comes out in dribs and drabs, heavily diluted and adulterated. It’s super frustrating.
I assume that someone at VOR HQ believes that this is the way to maximize the value of their product, that if they just give it away by posting the raw feeds straight to YouTube, then no one will pay the big money (or small money, or whatever money it is) for their produced weekly show.
I don’t know. Maybe they’re right. But I know that I, as a potential consumer of their product, am being poorly served, and dearly wish I could route around the damage.
Take the shackles off the OBRs and let them perform the role they’re intended to play. Let people view the videos — the whole videos — as they come off the boats.
Ugh. Done ranting.
Reposted from http://ift.tt/1ugaOLA.
Tags: vor, volvo ocean race, ador.
