Jason Snell likes baseball. I don’t, and sometimes he teases me about it. That said, his impressions of Apple’s new “Friday Night Baseball” was a really interesting read. I particularly like how he thinks the whole thing could become much more interactive:
Every single viewer is watching on a smart device of some kind. How about letting us customize what stats we see on screen? What about alternate camera views or a natural-sound-only audio stream featuring crowd noise and mic’ed up players? What about alternate broadcasts entirely, with audio from statheads or scouts or umpires or former players talking about a different game aspect? What about something I’m not even thinking of here?
Literally anything is possible. I realize all of it would take work to build. I even understand why it’s not available on week one and might not even be available this season. But the fact remains that Apple, an incredibly innovative technology company, debuted baseball games that it’s streaming internationally exclusively via Internet-connected devices… and the broadcast itself is as flat as a pancake, a vanilla video stream with no digital extras.