That's what ESPN does. The network created the games, which gives it license to put cameras in unusual places, winning it Emmys and admirers. ESPN's Web site also gets into the act, trying out new technologies and ways to work more effectively with the network's broadcast side.
"We're definitely a test tube," said Ron Buck, ESPN.com's onsite editor here. "It's all about what can we do in the X-Games that we can then do elsewhere."
At the 5th Summer X Game here, which began June 27 and runs through July 5, ESPN.com, a subsidiary of Walt Disney Co. (NYSE:DIS), is doing several things it hasn't done before, including:
X-Games Raw, live streaming video of events;
The X-Games 360WebCam, which promises continually updated panoramic Webcam shots, letting users pick camera angles;
and televised, live chat crawl on ESPN.
The site also encouraged users to send in photos of themselves in X-sports, some of which will appear on ESPN July 3.
Buck said the interactive chats boost ESPN as an entity, because they are one of the only ways the network can actually interact with viewers.
"One of the biggest things about the Net is the accessibility to the story," Buck said.
The site also has access to live events, through streaming video. ESPN.com says it has run at least an hour of live events each day. This means fans can see things before they're on air, since ESPN typically doesn't broadcast events for several days. For instance, when skateboarder Tony Hawk pulled off a first-ever 900 on Sunday, it was on the Web site well before TV viewers saw it Tuesday night.
Loren Schwartz, ESPN.com's senior producer for new technologies and multimedia, noted that the 10-day long event means less concentrated traffic, which allows ESPN.com to see how well the technology works without choking its servers.
Coming to baseball?
"This is sort of a precedent-setting event, and hopefully we'll use some of this technology in other events," Schwartz said. He didn't give details, but he said that the panoramic camera may make its way into ESPN.com's coverage of Major League Baseball this summer. A fan might pick a view from home plate, then decide whether to look down the first-base line or the third-base line.
Schwartz said ESPN.com is looking at a host of other technologies for the next X-Games, though he would not comment specifically. He did say, "We'd like to see the X-Games become a much more immersive multimedia event. We're focused on shifting from text-based coverage to more multimedia-based coverage."
As for the TV and Web integration, the ESPN TV folks will check in on air with one of the half-dozen members of the Web team to see what the latest word is from the chat area. The chat crawl running during the broadcast is an experiment that may well return, as well.
"There's a lot better integration here than at other places I've been," said Kristen Fischer, a senior producer at ESPN.com. Fischer, who's been at ESPN.com for three weeks after spending several years at ABC.com, said, "This has been one of my best experiences on the road with a dot.com."
