NEWSFLASH: ESPN Sportscenter coverage starts tomorrow!

General
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This just in:

The ESPN Sportscenter piece on unicycling is scheduled to run tomorrow (Wednesday August 18) as part of their Around the World series.

"Theres been a story every day this week about a different sport on a different continent. Sportscenter had 3 shows on wednesday… 15:00 PDT, 20:00 PDT and 23:00 PDT … as well as re-airing the next morning… the story should air on all 3 shows… "

That’s from Greg Jewell, producer of the Tokyo segment.

Get your VCRs and TiVo’s ready!

Featured riders will be Jack Hughes, Jess Riegel, Zack Baldwin and other Americans, as that was the focus of the series. Interviews were done with me, Jess, and probably many others. Jack Hughes was the guy wearing the camera on his head, so I think all the POV shots will be his riding. He even wore the camera in some of the actual MUni races, even though he was a contender!

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sweet!! thanks for the heads-up :slight_smile:

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i keep adjusting my rabbit ears but i get ESPN to come in?

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Re: NEWSFLASH: ESPN Sportscenter coverage starts tomorrow!

That shouldnt matter, athletes do that all the time. It usually gets you pumped up even more.

Thanks for the update, I look forward to watching it.

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is this just for americans?

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What’s the D stand for?

Pacific standard
central

I though everything else was the same?

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Re: Re: NEWSFLASH: ESPN Sportscenter coverage starts tomorrow!

How about when the tiny little camera is wired to a 5-pound backpack? :smiley: Jack is tough.

For Pope, the “D” stands for daylight.

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For those lazy people it’s on:

Wednesday - 16:00, 21:00, and 24:00 MDT(Mountain Daylight Time)

Wednesday - 17:00 and 22:00 CDT(Central Daylight Time), and Thursday 01:00 CDT

Wednesday - 18:00 and 23:00 EDT(Eastern Daylight Time), and Thursday 02:00 EDT

If I messed up the times at all please tell me. I don’t think anyone here is from Alaska or Hawwaii so I didn’t post it for those timezones.

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What?!!!

Jason and KMM, as well as a few others, are from Alaska. And theBadger587 and I are from Hawaii. You didn’t even spell Hawaii right! *Shakes head in disgust.

Anyway, I hope to catch the segment tomorrow.

Thanks for the heads up.

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Any NZ riders here with Sky TV that know when we get ESPN coverage relative to the US of A???

Ken

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The ESPN listings for today (Wednesday, August 18) show a baseball game (Expos versus Giants) ending at 3:30 PM PDT. SportsCenter is supposed to be on 3:30 - 4:00 PM PDT, followed by another baseball game (Yankees versus Twins) at 4:00 PM PDT. SportsCenter is supposed to be on 8:00 - 9:00 PM PDT and 10:00 PM - 12:00 AM PDT.

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Thanks JF for the heads-up on this.

For anyone interested I captured two videos from this broadcast and am posting them to the unicyclist.com galleries.

The first (which is already up) is the short “teaser” segment. The file is in DiVX format and is 352x240, 14 seconds, and 5.43 MB.

The second (which is still in progress and may fail) is the full story. This is also in DiVX, 352x240. It’s still recompressing but it looks like it’ll be about 17.5 MB.

Both should be available at:

http://gallery.unicyclist.com/albuw39

Enjoy,

-mg

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Nicely done. You’re quick.
I’ve got my DVR recording Sports Center, but I haven’t had time to pull the video off yet. Looks like I don’t have to now.

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saw the story last night…very nice!

oh and sweet mohawk! :smiley: :wink:

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Mohawk

Who was that folliclly challenged man?

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Tapeing it as I type… It’s very strange seeing people like John and Jess, whose posts i read on an almost daily basis, on ESPN. Great to see the tv coverage on our sport!

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This coverage is even more impressive when you consider that ESPN flew the announcer and crew from their headquarters in Connecticut to Tokyo just to tape this relatively short segment. It can take many hours of raw footage to produce a tight three - five minute segment for air.

The Game Show Network did something similar when they sent a 10 - 12 person crew from their headquarters LA to SLC for NAUCC 2004. They spent the better part of five days following us with multiple cameras. I bet they ended up with 15 - 20 hours of raw footage. I heard that their goal for air was ten three-minute segments.

Things like this start to give you an appreciation why there are so many commercials on television and why commercial air time costs so much.

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Actually they flew in one guy, the producer, who worked with a locally-based crew. Still, they traveled and worked their butts off. Producer Greg Jewell was very nice to work with, and was kind enough to give me the heads-up on broadcast, something you often don’t get.

They also went to great lengths to “fill out” their story. Somebody had to not only dig up old file footage of circus, but they had to dig within that to fine unicycles. Thanks a lot, guys. :angry: But actually, I think the contrast with the circus footage worked. How better to show what today’s mountain unicyclists are not?

They also had me send them a copy of the photo I mentioned in the story. I sent them a digital copy, which they turned into the neat graphic they showed on the screen. That picture was taken at the USA meet in 1984. The little guy in the middle is none other than Yuichiro Kato!

The piece turned out to be focused mostly on MUni and Trials, because that was the shooting day where they got the most good footage. They missed the artistic competitions and were not at the track. They filmed the 10k races, but Americans were not as dominant there. The MUni and Trials venues were very photogenic.

Jack Hughes wore a camera on his head for much shooting, but most of the P.O. V. shots I noticed (only watched it once so far) seem to have been hand-held shots. How do I know this? Because Jack, with his heavy backpack, is actually in the shot! But the dismount shot in the downhill race was definitely Jack.

Thanks mgrant for posting a digital copy so fast!

The folically challenged man is yours truly. I suffer from male pattern baldness. I try to cover it up with the helmet, but you figured me out anyway! BTW, the guy with the mohawk is our new Trials champion, Zack Baldwin. He occasionally pops up here as “zack.”

Zack, who can grow his hair back whenever he wants, tried the mohawk for Unicon so he could stand out. It sure attracted him lots of attention, and continued to build a different image for trials riders compared to “normal” unicyclists. It was Zack’s first unicycle convention other than Moab this March, and I think his first time out of the country. His horizons have been expanded! Now he is hoping to help build the trials and street freestyle obstacles for the CA MUni Weekend.

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MORE!

Producer Greg Jewell contacted me today, asking how the unicycling community (you guys) have reacted so far to the coverage. I passed on a few comments, including one about the circus footage. Get this:

He had no trouble finding circus footage in-house, except for clowns on unicycles. He called everywhere. Ringling Bros., International Clown Hall of Fame, Barnum Museum. He didn’t find anything until he went to Alan Plotkin, the guy who makes all the videos at the IJA festivals.

So looking again at their circus footage, all the Ringling stuff is at least 50 years old, while the parts with actual unicycling in them are probably less than 20 years old, and were probably in color!

He offered to send me several copies of the video (for the main guys in it). Very classy. The last time I got that… It was also from an ESPN show – Amazing Games! They covered Unicon VI back in 1992. I hope we don’t have to wait for Unicon XVIII for them to do it again!

He also said he forwarded the movie to the producer of X-Games, “just so he can see what cool things people are doing on unicycles.” Is that cool or what?

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Ya the espn thing was cool but I wish it was longer. there also was’nt any footage of the bedford flames on all of are frames. but it was still pretty cool.

zack