ON THE DL

Hockey! Tech! News! Oh My.

Hockey talk. Get yer hockey talk. Note, this show was going to be called Hockey, Tech, Jews, oh my, what with Jeff Bakalar from CNET and Lindsay Applebaum from The Washington Post joining the show to talk pucks.

Two interviews in one show. First we talk with Jeff Bakalar from CNET’s smash hit podcast The 404. Why would we talk to a tech guy about hockey? Bakalar is one of the biggest hockey enthusiasts I know and always tells us to talk pucks. So why not talk about it with him!

We first touch on a story we briefly discussed last week. Wyshynski had the story about director Kevin Smith being booted from NHL.com for...well, for being funny. According to the league, Smith’s material was a little too risque for them. Bakalar, like Smith, is a Devils fan so we get his take on the issue.

As a tech person, how does he see the progress of NHL.com? Do they give the audience enough content? They are up for a Webby award, so they must be doing something right. But I ask Jeff about advances NHL.com has made to embrace technology and if that translates into attracting new fans.

Last week we brought up the fact that NHL.com charges fans $19.95 a day to watch the playoffs online. Nick and I thought that was obscenely high and an organization like the NHL should be giving away more content for free, like at least the first few days of the playoffs. The playoffs attract far more interest than anything during the regular season. New fans -- or fans finally coming back to the game -- should be welcomed, not charged. So I ask Jeff what the NHL can do to attract these fans, but still manage to pay their bills. Has anyone figured out a way to properly monetize video online? Why can CBS (note, a parent company of CNET) give us the Masters and March Madness on Demand in HD for free, but organizations like the NHL charge 1/3 the price of a ticket to the game to watch a sub-standard quality video online?

Jeff has been to some games, so has the atmosphere in the playoffs been as exciting as he expected? And is the NHL rooting against traditional thinking in hoping that both NY market teams lose their respective game sevens tonight. Why? Because that would set up a matchup between Crosby and Malkin vs. Ovechkin in the second round. If the Devils win, it would set up a Boston/Pittsburgh and NJ/Washington second round. How scared is the NHL that the Eastern Conference finals could be Boston and New Jersey?

You can catch Jeff as co-host of The 404 at CNET every Monday through Friday at around 11am with live video. The show is also podcasted and ready for download later in the day.

Musical Interlude...

Lindsay Applebaum, Washington Capitals editor for The Washington Post joins us in part two to discuss game what hockey feels like in DC right now. How big a deal is tonight in DC? Applebaum says that the city is in a frenzy and the feeling is almost like that of a Stanley Cup Final game.

But is that a good thing? After all, it’s only the first round? Are fans really behind the Caps, or is this just an off-season dalliance until the Redskins start again? Applebaum thinks that this Caps fever may be the real deal. And in a city that -- other than the Redskins -- only supports their teams when they are winning, it’s good to have the city’s support for the Caps.

She explains that when teams in DC win the numbers on washingtonpost.com are much higher when they lose. Even for the Redskins they get much higher traffic when the teams win. It seems to be the opposite in Philly, as I’ve heard that calls and traffic to local sports talk sites actually increases after losses. The sports cultures are very different in DC and Philly, and we discuss which is better -- a bunch of people you can’t please or a bunch of bandwagon jumpers.

Covering a team like the Caps is difficult when there is not a city-wide interest. Does Applebaum feel that the Post needs to cover the Caps differently than if it were the Redskins? Does she feel the need to help promote the team more than cover it? In other words, should the writers focus more on human interest stories and write positive things in order to get more interest in the team. Because more interest in the team means more readers to the site. The Post would be promoting the team, but really, promoting themselves.

Is there a balance between promotion and news coverage?

The fact remains, the league needs an audience. Based on the numbers from this weekend, the NFL Draft’s first day nearly tripled the rating for the NHL on NBC. ESPN nearly tripled that of NBC. And the second day of the draft also seemed to beat Sunday’s hockey coverage in a game that featured a New York team and one of the top players in the sport.

Does hockey care about national ratings anymore, or has the sport become so colloquial that the league only cares about how each team does in home markets? How important is a national foothold to the future success of the league, and what can they do to get that foothold back?

Some of that is technology, which we talked about in our first segment with Bakalar. But Applebaum has some interesting things they are doing at the Post. She explains a few new interactive features the Post is employing to get readers more involved directly with the writers who cover the team. Specifically, a new video ‘chain letter’ with Mike Wise, an interactive timeline with beat writer Tarik El-Bashir, and of course, Steinz. Pretty interesting stuff...now let’s hope the Caps stay in this long enough for people to check it out.