Fish Report LIVE!...

Yogi Berra said it best, "when you don't know where you're going, you might wind up someplace else."  That kind of describes what happened recently when I thought my Fish Report website was legit enough to obtain some media credentials to the high school state cross country championships a couple Saturdays ago.  I wanted to do live streaming audio coverage of the race for all the local folks back home that couldn't make the trip and I even had a few personal requests to do so.  So I emailed in the media credential application as required and received a reply the following day that read, "Our analysis of your website is that is a personal blog, not a bona fide media website.  Therefore, we will not be able to give you a media credential for the cross country state championships."  I replied back asking what is required to become a bona fide media website?  I received another reply that read, "A bona fide media website is one that doesn't contain personal content or photos and essentially has articles and coverage like a newspaper."  So, for the 900+ daily Fish Report visitors out there, please understand we're not bona fide.

I was a little frustrated over the whole situation.  After all, I still wanted to cover the race, but I wasn't allowed inside the fence to do so.  That's when I suggested to my neighbor, a fellow cross country fan, that we do a state cross country championship preview show and stream it live on my new Fish Report LIVE! page.  I told him I would set up a studio in my basement and it would be just like ESPN.  He liked the idea and we decided to air our first show the Thursday night before the state meet.  Rigging up the set was a little challenging with wires going everywhere for internet, a webcam, and some lighting. We also had a lot of notes to help us out.  Once the show started however, it was 28 minutes of fun.  After we finished we both agreed, this is something we'll do again.

I'll admit, it's not ESPN, but the 13 people that tuned in that night and commented to us afterward all seemed to enjoy it.  We plan on talking about a variety of sports and with basketball season coming up you can bet we'll be talking hoops for a few months.  We would also love to have any special guests that care to share their expertise or opinions on the show; just email me and let me know what you're thinking.  I'm a big Twitter fan and we hope to eventually be able to read live tweets during the show.  I'm also using Twitter to send out messages while we're broadcasting, so if you have a Twitter account you can follow me at: twitter.com/Fish_Report.  To go back to the quote I started this blog post with, Yogi was right...I wasn't sure where I was going and now I'm someplace else.  I'll give you one more Yogi quote that explains where we're at, "You can observe a lot by just watching."