From: Geoffrey Haines-Stiles <ghaines@mail.arc.nasa.gov>
Subject: LIVE FROM MARS: TOUCHDOWN +6, AND NASA-TV
Date: Thu, 10 Jul 1997 10:19:18 -0400
FYI, Seth and all... LFM 3B was indeed >scheduled< to be carried by NASA-TV live at time of air, 14-16:00 Eastern, July 9. The first hour was not, but apparently the second hour was. According to NASA-TV, this was due to local problems at NASA Goddard. NASA HQ is concerned about the inconvenience this may have caused many of you, and intends to reschedule full 2-hour carriage of both LFM 3A and 3B (e.g. all 4 hours of TV) after completion of this current Shuttle mission. The coordinates were correctly conveyed to NTV, shared with GSFC, LFM was in the printed and online schedule, but still -- the program did not make it to NTV's transponder. HOWEVER, all informational material for LFM's summer programs, both print, online and direct mailing to science museums noted that NTV was subject to pre-emption for Shuttle or Pathfinder emergencies (though this is not what happened) and provided an alternate transponder on the same satellite, GE-2, channel 21, purchased by PASSPORT TO KNOWLEDGE and the American Museum of Natural History, New York, where carriage was 100% guaranteed, and where the program was available in its entirety just as planned. We chose this satellite to make the change of transponder, if required, as simple as possible. We hope many of you noted this information, and changed to GE-2, Ch 21, when you saw we were not on NTV. We understand, and regret, that this must be a little confusing to those whose only experience of TV is commercial broadcasting, where all you have to do is tune to a local channel and "there it is." The upside of direct satellite transmission is the kind of late-breaking coverage of a news story like Pathfinder, and the ability of a project like LFM to provide interaction with newsmakers like Donna Shirley, Matt Golombek, Rob Manning and the others, as well as companion e-mail and Web resources. The DOWNSIDE is that viewers have to be more active, and even pro-active. We hope most of you find the benefits outweigh the occassional problems. We've been working hard to secure wider PBS carriage as well as NTV, but though we've gotten up to some 200 of 350 PBS stations for some past and present PTK projects, not all stations consider live programming viable in their local markets. If you disagree, contact your local program manager with your comments. FYI, in Columbus, Ohio, Sunday's program was #1 in its last 1/4 hour rating period on WBNS, the CBS commercial station which supported the COSI uplink. So clearly Mars and this kind of interactive formatting can sometimes be both cutting-edge and widely popular. FYI, FYI, both programs also had intermittent "hits", which in TV means temporary video and audio dropouts (less than 1 second in length.) This was caused by a combination of severe storms in the New York area and planes landing at La Guardia and JFK. That's another inevitable problem with direct satellite up- and downlinks! Sometimes weather on Earth can impact interplanetary weather reports from Mars. In any event, we on the production team are pretty tired, but are overall very pleased with the results of all our efforts. It was a privilege to be out at JPL for this historic week, and to be able to share some unique aspects of it with you by live TV and the Net. We're also very pleased that NASA's Classroom of the Future and our partners at NASA Ames (Quest, Learning Teachnologies Project) were able to provide the alternate of Real Audio and Real Video, and/or CU-SeeMe on the net. We hope to do that more and still better with current and emerging technologies for any and all future PTK projects, to maximize access. We'd be happy to hear other "horror" or "success" stories to guide our future plans. Onwards and Upwards... to Yogi, Couch, Twin Peaks (OK, too far for Sojourner!), and beyond!!! Geoff Haines-Stiles & Erna Akuginow and the LFM team *** At 11:22 AM 7/10/97 -0400, SethLeary@aol.com wrote: >Hi all... > >Yesterday, my students and I were tuned in to NASA TV to watch the live >telecast of Touchdown (Part B) and it wasn't there! The voice of NASA said it >had been cancelled. (Our local PBS station had already told me that they >would not air it until fall...argh.) > >Well, I logged onto the Web to see if I could get some info. I went to the >RealVideo simulcast page (Classroom of the Future) and there it was, in >progress! > >Did anyone else find it not on the air? Do any of you know what happened? > >Seth! > Geoff Haines-Stiles Project Director, PASSPORT TO KNOWLEDGE & the LIVE FROM... specials "electronic field trips to scientific frontiers" Real Science, Real Scientists, Real Locations, Real Time vox: 973.656.9403 * fax: 973.656.9813 * mobile: 908.305.7061 alt. e-mail: ptkghs@aol.com http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/interactive Antarctica... Stratosphere... Hubble... Mars... and more