Team 1040 Podcasts: Vancouver Canucks Hockey Games

Rebecca and I missed the game last night between the Canucks and Oilers, and for good reason. Thanks to J.J from the Canucks Hockey Blog, I was able to get him to txt me the final score. 2-1 Edmonton for the final. Not the prettiest of games, and I’m sure we’ll discuss this on the episode of The Crazy Canucks that we plan to record tonight.

I did subscribe to the Team 1040 AM Vancouver Canucks Podcast that I stumbled upon a few weeks ago. At first, I thought it was just the talk shows that they do about the Canucks, which was completely true. They took “Canucks This Week” and sent it out via podcast, commercials and all. Not a horrible listen as you get a little caught up with highlights from Tom and Shorty.

To my surprise, after the first game of the regular season, all three periods of the game against Detroit showed up in my iTunes. These are exactly what you hear on the radio, but this isn’t AM radio quality. The sound is excellent. Dare I say it, but the commercials even sound better when it’s not coming across at 1040 kHz. Could have swore that I just heard some plastic crinkling in the background. Maybe it’s the sound of Larschied’s beer cups?

The downside is the size of the mp3’s. I’m listening to last night’s, final two periods right now. The 2nd came down at 128kbps, almost 58 minutes long, and 52.5MB in size. The end of the period just saw the audio go dead, so there was about 18 minutes of “dead air” as they transitioned into intermission. The 3rd period was even bigger, downloading a 256kbps mp3 at just over an hour in length and 113 MB in size. (Like the 2nd, the end of the 3rd period podcast had almost 26 minutes of “dead air” tacked on at the end.)

That’s a lot of space being eaten up on the hard drive of my laptop or my iPod, not to mention the time it takes to download. Perhaps this is something that can be changed in the future. I’m thinking that a standard of 96kbps would be an excellent sample rate. That would bring the size down considerable. (Hmm, maybe I should send Team 1040 an email with a link back to this post.)

Team 1040 AMListening to this as I write this post, there’s a commercial running for their podcasts. I should also mention that they do the same for the BC Lions, but I haven’t checked that out.

This would be ideal for someone who is a transplanted Canucks fan who wants some sort of play-by-play action to feed their need. Sure, it’s time shifted and you’ll have to do everything you can to avoid hearing the outcome of the game before you get around to listening to this, but there are some great advantages. Fast forward through commercials (standard TV break is two minutes) and skip the intermissions. There are kinks, but I’m sure they’ll get those worked through.

If you’re like me, you just want some recap on the action while going about your day. Sure, we got the score at the end of the game last night, but I would have never known how close the Canucks came to tying it up at the end of the 3rd with a pulled goalie. TV highlights can’t fill the void that Shorty gives you when the game is on the line in those last minutes before the final horn. Not too bad.

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One Reply to “Team 1040 Podcasts: Vancouver Canucks Hockey Games”

  1. Hi. Thanks for sharing this blog. Yeah, I’m with you. I was so surprised a couple of months back when I discovered the Canuck game is a podcast. I used to listen to the 1040 vault when I could but this is the ultimate for me. You see, my problem is that I’m a die hard Canuck fan living in Japan. I’m from Nanaimo, BC but went to Uni in Van, and lived there for 10 years, blah blah blah. Long story short is, all I get over here are the canucks.com highlights and 1040 with Shorty and Larchaide. I’ve been waiting for the day when I can buy and download Canuck games onto my harddrive or stream them live. I really don’t care if I miss the live game because of the time zone but I’d love to watch a re-run just for the fix. Again, 1040 makes me feel like I’m in Canda. I download it onto my ipod (takes about 3 or 4 mintues), and then I plug the ipod into my car stereo and drive around like some freak. As if I don’t stand out enough over here as a white guy in a small town -ha! What I really like about the podcast is that once the game is over, they just don’t stop it. I sometimes get to hear post game comments and even comments from the head coach. Very cool.
    I don’t know why sometimes they only give me the 2nd and 3rd period but I’ll take what i can get.
    Now if I can only pay to download the games. Then I’ll never have to miss the Canucks again!
    Best Wishes
    Kelly

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