Convergence at Euro2008

So Germany eked out Turkey in today’s semi-finals. For me, that’s a good day. It was a high-pressure game, where no team had the lead for more than 10 minutes. But the main tension for me was that the TV feed kept dying at crucial moments, and I had to find alternative sources of play-by-play information.

I turned to ESPN’s live commentary, but since the commentators are in a newsroom watching the game on TV too, they were in the same boat at first. Then one of the commentators decided to go in search of a radio, to find a station with live broadcast from Basel. Most of us don’t have radios in our office cubicles, but the ESPN team started transcribing the radio commentary onto their website. A minute or two behind the game, yes, but play-by-play nonetheless.

Turns out the Internet’s not gonna eliminate other technologies, because sometimes it needs old-school partners to help it out.