This is how I followed the NASA Phoenix mission landing on Mars.
I’ve set up my iMac so I can look over the top of the screen and clearly see the HD TV image projected on a 106 inch screen. So I’ve got Web-based media on the iMac and traditional TV on the big screen.
So I started out watching Phoenix landing coverage on the NASA Website, NASA.gov. They had live, moderated coverage via NASA TV. In another window I was watching for blog updates by a NASA team member who was blogging from mission control. And in yet another window, I had Twitter going and was following several interesting threads there.
Fox News and CNN came to the coverage late and really never had anything to offer. They brought in several experts to explain what was going on, but none of them were actual Phoenix team members at mission control. CNN had a former shuttle astronaut… commenting on an unmanned mission! He annoyed me. The main problem with both CNN and Fox was that they would just not shut up! This was a story that told itself. During the “seven minutes of terror” as Phoenix was descending to the surface in its make-or-break landing, the news anchors talked constantly, but not about what was happening right then! The Fox anchor was going on and on about how many millions of dollars the project cost and what a shame it would be if things didn’t go well. This was when the Phoenix was less than two minutes from landing.
The Web coverage on NASA TV was much different. They had already explained what was going to happen, and they just quietly let it happen. They let the pictures of the faces of the team members and the calm updates from the voice of mission control tell a much more powerful story. Earlier interviews with people who were actually running the landing gave me a much stronger feeling of connection to these people. On Fox and CNN they were just background faces at mission control, but on NASA TV, they were actual people whose names we knew and who we had seen explain things and show how excited and nervous they were. When the lander finally touched down, the explosion of applause said it all. The commentator remained quiet and let it all just play out live.
Plus, the information that I got on the Web, from NASA TV and various blogs, was just plain better, and more up to date. The networks need to step it up if they want to complete with Web coverage for big live events.
