I’m trying to watch the live stream. ABC apparently has a monopoly on that stream.
The feed barely works. It is choppy. It freezes, then jumps again. Segments are being skipped. Resolution varies from high to low without warning.
Of course, the preroll ads work flawlessly.
I have a very high-speed cable connection, about 50% faster than consumer grade. I have a commercial-grade router and wifi connection. I stream video ALL DAY LONG. I stream huge data files, up and down, every day, with no issues. It’s my job.
This feed is garbage. I’m about to give up and do something else. I’m pretty sure that the first debate was streamed by CSPAN, and it worked flawlessly. I had no such problems with the any of the GOP debates (although the content was garbage).
SOMEBODY negotiated this contract. SOMEBODY chose this time. SOMEBODY agree to have one and only one feed. I think we all know who that was.
We Democrats can and must do better than this.
9:55p update
This cause of this doesn’t matter. The effect of these interruptions, skips, and freezes is to destroy the effectiveness of the statements of ANY of the three candidates.
10:05p update
I give up.
Here’s a standard of performance for the Democratic Party — and, for that matter, for any public agency:
Any online streaming should work at least as well as the average free online porno site (there are thousands). Any web interface (like health care or unemployment sign up screens) should work at least as well as the average subscription porno site.
Surely our party and our government can do as well the average pornographer.
You would think they have an interest in delivering quality service.
Indeed. It was completely unusable with Firefox, slightly better for awhile with Chrome.
I confirmed my ability to stream other videos normally, and I confirmed using benchmark tools that my connection to the web was operating normally.
I will be astonished if I was the only person with this issue.
I was with the Boston for Bernie crew for the first debate. We attempted to watch the stream through an Internet connection. It could have been a bad one in the community center where we were, but there were tons of people watching that around the country (and possibly world through proxies), and it was incredibly frustrating how frequently it froze up.
Fortunately, we watched the third one tonight through a television tuned to ABC, and that one was flawless.
I expect ABC to make the video available through their site to watch, in which all that should be necessary (and I imagine you already have it), is to login with your cable subscription.
No, I don’t blame Debbie Wasserman Shultz for the bad connection, but the tech folks who didn’t prepare for the heavy demand both within ABC and their hosts.
If you visit ABC later, I imagine there won’t be the same simultaneous demand, and you want have the same problems (aside from all the crappy bloated ads).
In a more perfect world, there would be one signal feed from the debate site (video + audio + whatever). That feed would be immediately multiplied into many (as in at least 5-10, maybe more) internet sources — commercial or public. Picture a classic Oval Office speech or press conference from 20-30 years ago, where any viewer could watch the same material on any broadcast channel. Those of us who had a good signal on channel 5 and a terrible signal on channel 7 (and vice versa) could still see and hear our President live without the editing, spin, and “interpretation” of the media.
The internet was supposed to greatly multiply that capability, so that anybody with a net connection can see raw source like last night’s debate as it happens. That did not happen for me last night, no doubt because (as you surmise) some intervening server between me and the ABC source was choked with traffic. Apparently your access was effectively blocked during the first debate, and was fine last night.
We have the technology to solve this. We have a member of our party in the Oval Office today. While we may be a minority party in Congress, we retain a majority mind-share of the American public. This failure happened because, for one reason or another, we did not provide enough capacity for the audience that actually showed up. We relied on one vendor (ABC), and that vendor could not satisfy the demand while the event was taking place. Had multiple internet access points been available for the same material, then the traffic load could have been balanced across those access points — at least for those who, like me, have the knowledge needed to switch from one access point to another.
The discussion that was taking place when my feed finally froze for the last time (I turned it off after 10 minutes) was a serious and substantive exchange among all three candidates, and especially between Mr. Sanders and Ms. Clinton, about wealth concentration, the destruction of the middle class, and what each candidate proposed to do about it.
It is THE issue of the campaign, and is THE centerpiece of the Sander’s campaign. It is a discussion that, as Ms. Clinton pointed out several times, none of us will see in a GOP debate because the GOP won’t talk about it.
That serious and substantive discussion — that might have swayed anybody watching to at least pay attention to the issue (because actual FACTS were being presented by all sides) — was blocked by anybody using the same path to ABC news as me.
I don’t think anybody planned this, I don’t think this was an intentional act of manipulation. I think, instead, that DWS and the national party didn’t need this debate. I think they therefore did enough to see that it was broadcast, and called it a wrap. In my view, the timing reflects these priorities. Similarly, I think the 1% that owns ABC and that buys the ads (that always work perfectly somehow) didn’t intentionally sabotage this substantive discussion. I do think that if the same technical issues were causing the pre-roll ads to freeze (and therefore causing them to violate the SLA they have with each sponsor), the problem would have been fixed IMMEDIATELY, and heads would have rolled if it came up at all.
In the real modern world, this is how the 1% effectively manipulates us. Serious and substantive debates that threaten the choke-hold of the 1% end up being unavailable to the public, while the endless advertising and talking-head spin (that carefully ignore or marginalize those topics) continues to work flawlessly.
In my view, the job of the tech folks is to do the best they can with the resources and funding they are provided — I think they did that. I strongly suspect that technical directors have been saying to their management for some time now something along the lines of “we are likely to see quality issues during this event, unless we get blah blah blah, and management has said “that’s an issue for the executive board, and out of scope for this project. Our job is to get the most we can out of what we have”.
In my view, it is the job of the DNC to ensure that these serious debates get before the American public. The stark differences in tone and substance between the GOP and the Democratic Party — especially on the key issues of wealth concentration, Wall Street control of government, and too-big-too-fail — have the potential to change electoral dynamics for generations, no matter which Democrat is nominated.
Debbie Wasserman Shultz is hired by the DNC to carry out that job. She, and the DNC, failed.
That’s why I think she should be immediately replaced.
Did you try deleting your cookies? derp