Strange thing about working on either TV or radio: For as long as I've done both, I've always, always, always preferred live to anything taped.
More relevant, that's something I routinely hear from those who actually do TV/radio for a living. That, because you know you can't afford to mess up anything that's live, you just stay sharper, more focused, more aware of what might come next. There's no parachute, nowhere to hide, no chance to simply sigh and try it again.
As such, I've wanted forever to try something live here. And so, we will.
Beginning Monday at 1 p.m. and then every weekday, we'll put out a live interactive video program called 'Afternoon Ask Anything,' in which I take your questions for a half-hour or so. It'll be available on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and, of course, right here on this app/site. Once it's done, we'll very quickly distribute the audio as a podcast through all our usual channels, ideally out by 2 p.m.
You'll be able to participate through any of the platforms mentioned by posting a question, a reply, a comment, whatever. You'll see them on the screen as I read them out loud. And hopefully very soon, you'll also be able to see yourself there as we work to add video calls to the equation. But blink and you'll miss it. This will be somewhat rapid-fire, as I strive to cover all sports and as much ground as I can, though there'll obviously be exceptions as warranted.
So yeah, it'll be fast and, ideally, it'll be fun.
Why are we doing this?
Well, after a couple months of researching and preparing for this, Dali and I came to the conclusion that this could offer a reliable way to connect to outsiders and let them know what we have right here on the app and site, from our articles to our videos to our podcasts to everything else. Within that are a ton of technical reasons -- boring little stuff like, for example, how Facebook automatically pokes all users with an alert for live videos -- and the ultimate outcome is that we reach a lot of people we wouldn't commonly reach.
Oh, and if you're interested in sponsoring this, please email me directly -- DK@DKPittsburghSports.com -- and let's figure out a fit for your business.
BUY BASEBALL!
Also, hey, we've still got all three sponsorship opportunities available to support our newly expanded baseball coverage:
• General Pirates content: This is the biggie. Your brand gets attached to almost every baseball article we put out, and that includes direct links on all our social media, as well.
• Our Pirates podcasts: The opening segment of my Daily Shot of Pirates is the only one that's still without a sponsor, and we've got two other baseball podcasts we do each week. All three are wide open. In the case of my Daily Shot, it's a live read, meaning I'll actually read it during the segment. Oh, and this one also comes with a social media component.
• Live game/event files: There's no value like a baseball live file here, considering there are 162 of them, plus spring exhibitions. They get the heaviest traffic and interaction of any individual files we produce.
THE NEW CHEESEHEADS
We had a very different discussion this week in What's Brewing about the abstract concept of inviting readers to be symbolic owners of our company, in the spirit of the Green Bay Packers. This is nowhere near fruition, but we'd be crazy not to get feedback before even thinking about pursuing it, so we're grateful to have gotten exactly that.
Short version: Our readers would become builders toward our next level, and any and all funding that'd arrive would go 100% into promotion/growth initiatives, with every penny documented as such. And in return, they'd get something ... well, totally lame by comparison! I'm talking like coffee with the staff, T-shirts, custom items, names on cyber-walls, designations on commenting avatars and so much more that was floated.
WEEKLY APP TIPS
Sharing ways to make your app experience even better:
• This one's personal: Check out the TODAY button on the app. It's out front on the horizontal blue stripe. Once you tap it, you'll see a schedule unfurl. That's updated every day, complete with links, and it lays out our coverage plan, as well as details of our covered teams' plans for the day. And under that, you'll find the just-mentioned What's Brewing feature that poses a weekly survey for our community, welcomes new users and, of course, includes our staff map.
I say this is personal because I manage these myself, and the usage data isn't very high on either of these. I'd love to see that change. Just me. Personally.
No, really. Go try it.
Our previous two tips:
• Try our new standings, statistics and schedules offered on our Penguins page, right there on the blue horizontal stripe near the top. These are packages we designed ourselves, with our own usage preferences in mind, as we hope you'll experience when you search for information yourself. Also, within the schedules, you can find boxscores, both current and past. The aim is to have these function live for you to watch as the game's progressing, though we aren't there yet. We also aim to have Major League Baseball fully updated by opening day, and the NFL is a work in progress.
• We often hear from readers who miss a feature we had on the old app that allowed one to see all content -- every single post -- displayed in the order of publication. We don't have that here yet, but a similar experience can be had by simply tapping the team-page buttons. Choose Steelers, Penguins or Pirates, and all the files will be there in order of publication. Same applies for all four college team pages.
BACK TO BUSINESS
• Our page views for the past week were 534,501, up 16.8% from the previous week. Our most-read original piece was Dale Lolley's mock draft for the Steelers, at 15,306. Broken down by team, articles on the Penguins brought 25.3% of our traffic, the Steelers 22.2%, the Pirates 11.6%.
• Our new subscribers for the past week were at 81, up 10 from the previous week.
• Our new app downloads for the past week were 80 for Apple, down 3 from the previous week, and 32 for Android, up 15 from the previous week.
• Our podcast downloads for the past week were 83,386, up 6% from the previous week and a single-week record. That also included a record day of 16,669 on Thursday.
• We're at 39,930 (+96) followers on Twitter, we're at 37,103 (+21) followers on Facebook, we're at 14,444 (+11) followers on Instagram, and we're at 1,138 (+161) followers on YouTube. These figures are just for our official company account on each platform, not for us as individuals.
• We make mistakes. If you see one, email: Typos@DKPittsburghSports.com
• Anything you need, including lost/forgotten passwords, email: Help@DKPittsburghSports.com
• Oh, and twisting this fun final thing around this week, we had at least one active user of our app in every single country in the Western Hemisphere except for two. I'll spot you Haiti, the poorest place on this side of the planet, but you've got to guess the other.