Eddy Spaghetti Penguins Blog

I don’t know if this has been reported anywhere else because it’s kind of a who give a frak story now… but for those of us who toil in the Wild West of Audio known as podcasts this is a big deal. On the first Penguin Hotline podcast of the season (thank God, I was getting nervous) host Bob Grove mentioned that NHL.com would soon announce the availability of full game podcasts.

Unanswered are the following questions:

• Free or pay subscription? The NHL gives away live audio feeds but charges for live video, what is the rule for permanent files of full audio?

The smart move is to push it free. To this point the NHL has been relatively new media savvy (save for Edmonton) which means giving a huge Easter Egg to a small yet intensely passionate minority is in the cards.

• Which announcers? Has to be radio… right? They wouldn’t take the audio from the TV side? Would they? Okay. Just checking.

Further more, will there be two feeds (Home and Away) for each game, or just one? Will we be able to download 35 games of Lange n’ Borque or all 70?

Since at this point only Super-super-super fans will subscribe to this, if the numbers crunch, it would be best to upload two feeds per games so the fan always gets his announcers.

• Where do I get this shit? This is a “who cares” move if the NHL buries it in some shitty nook on their site. This has an actual chance of working if they spend the money and take the time to have dedicated iTunes feeds.

Podcasts live on iTunes. Fact. If they ain’t there, they ain’t shit.

Also, if the experiment goes well on NHL.com, then it’s a nice press release. But if feeds for big market teams like Detroit, Toronto, Montreal, New York and Pittsburgh all of sudden start popping up in the iTunes top 10 (which considering the reach of the NHL is not a stretch) then all of a sudden you are the first major sports league to take advantage of burgeoning new medium in front of everyone who means something in tech.