The CPL T20 is almost upon us again and the team at Webcast Sport have once again voted to support the Saint Lucia Zouks in the tournament.
The Zouks are led by Zoukmiester-in-Chief Darren Sammy, who never fails to light up the arena when he appears – this year he is joined by Kevin Pietersen in what promises to be a fantastic display of power hitting. With local batsmen like Andre Fletcher the Zouks promise to give the other five sides a run for their money.
Come On You Zoukers!!!
Exactly how much over-the-top (OTT) and online video are cutting into pay-TV revenues has been a topic for some time but now research from Strategy Analytics has shown that the new media have changed how people watch TV.
According to the research, traditional TV viewers remain the largest segment in the TV viewing universe but now only account for a third (33%) of people online who watch TV.
The analyst dubs such viewers couch potatoes, one of six sub-groups it has identified in the report which reveals the main ways people watch TV today by the degree to which connected devices impact viewing and TV interaction.
Couch potatoes, very focused on TV when watching it, typically never phone or text people about what they’re watching and hardly ever use social media. None of this group uses Twitter trending topics or hashtags on a weekly basis to follow a show they’re watching. In general the survey found that fewer than one in five (18%) people online follow the show they’re watching on TV via Twitter.
The next biggest group was ‘OTTers’ accounting for just over a quarter. This segment is less interested in TV, being the most likely to go 24 hours without watching it. They prefer to watch shows via online or “over-the-top” services. Strategy Analytics found that 95% of OTTers watch a TV show they missed on a computer, tablet or smartphone.
The next key grouping was ‘couch chatterers’ taking up 12% of TV viewers. Similar in habits to couch potatoes they were found to be 2.5 times more likely than the average person online (90% vs. 37%) to phone or text others about what they’re watching on TV. None of this group use Twitter to follow a show they’re watching but people in the group were much more likely to be using another device (80%) when watching TV than the average viewer (65%).
The remaining part of the survey, 30%, was made up of multiscreen users, themselves sub-divided into three categories: manic, moderate and indifferent.
Commenting on the survey findings, Strategy Analytics principal analyst David Mercer said: “The traditional way broadcasters and advertisers have discussed TV audiences for 70 years – by age and gender – is becoming increasingly irrelevant and outdated. People within a traditional group, say 18-34 year old men, can watch TV in completely different ways so new behaviours are as important as demographics when it comes to planning for all elements within the TV industry – be it content, scheduling and advertising.”
However, Mercer warned broadcasters and advertisers that they needed to learn the intricacies about the relationship between TV and new devices. “There’s a lot of hype about how Twitter is changing TV viewing but, in reality, only two types of people are remotely engaged with ‘Twitter + TV’. Consequently, strategies heavily focused on this would be a big waste as it’s irrelevant to over 80% of TV viewers,” he added.
This article first appeared on Rapid TV News
[su_youtube_advanced url=”http://youtu.be/R_smD-SZIFk?list=UUwgbgWNS4StajoMZuVYVZ6w” width=”1280″ height=”720″ controls=”alt” autohide=”yes” loop=”yes” rel=”no” modestbranding=”yes”][su_youtube url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ea334H0qBk”][/su_youtube_advanced] Roller Derby is one of the fastest growing sports in the UK with leagues all over the country. Women of all types are taking to it like ducks to water and having a hoot by the look of it. Webcast Sport is currently in talks with one of the leagues, with the aim of bringing the sport to our site as one of the foundation sports. This report is from Healthista.com, one of Britain’s leading women’s health sites.
It’s a Saturday afternoon and we’re seated around a stadium. In its centre, women clad in fishnets, coloured hair and terrifying face paint ride around on roller skates at high speed bumping into and out of each other, falling over and getting back up repeatedly, pushing and shoving. Their jerseys sport pun-wielding names such as cLeo Slayer, Inya Endo and Elf Hazard. It’s as gung-ho as it gets but there’s no doubt that in amongst the jolting, grunts and shouts, they’re having a ball. Welcome to the wild world of women’s Roller Derby, one of the fastest growing sports in the world.
Roller derby is an all-female full contact sport on roller skates, with its roots in 1920s’ America. It’s modern version started in 2000 when a group of skaters in Texas set themselves up to start a roller derby league – they rewrote the rules so the focus was more on skating skills and athleticism and less on entertainment and ‘pretend fights’ as was the case previously.
It’s now an all-female full contact sport played by two teams of five quad skaters roller skating in the same direction around a track. The game is a series of short matchups called ‘jams’ in which both teams designate a scoring player, referred to as the ‘jammer’ with a star helmet cover, who scores points by lapping members of the opposing team.
The two teams attempt to assist their own jammer while holding back the opposing jammer — in effect, playing both offence and defence simultaneously.
In fact, Roller Derby is one of the fastest growing sports in the world, played by more than 1,200 amateur leagues in over 36 countries.
There are different teams throughout the UK who run their own leagues and the one we watched and interviewed, featured in this video, are The London Rockin’ Rollers. They’re quite a force and in 2012, one of their players took part in the first ever England World Cup Roller Derby team. Formed in March 2007, they were the third roller derby league in the UK – today there are almost a hundred leagues in the UK and Ireland alone.
But look at the rules and requirements and see the words ‘full contact’ and you’ll probably think it’s all athletes and super-fitties. Think again. We spoke to a few of the London Rockin’ Rollers and they were women in their 30s and 40s who worked in TV and healthcare, had been stay-at-home mums and former couch potatoes and were now these lean, mean rolling machines. They all agree that quite aside from the incredible community and camaraderie of the sport, it also gets you fit fast.
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