LIVE@17, which provides live Web coverage of the 17th
hole at this week's TPC, debuted yesterday on both
PGATour.com and USANetwork.com and "could eventually become
a regular feature," according to Michael DiRocco of the
FLORIDA TIMES-UNION. PGA Tour VP/Interactive & New Media
Len Watson said that "preliminary numbers" for the venture
"were more than twice what PGA Tour officials had hoped
for." The venture is a partnership between the PGA Tour,
USA Network and Internet video streaming services company
Microcast. Microcast estimated that "roughly 100,000 users
with a broadband Internet connection were logged onto the
site at any given second throughout the day." DiRocco
writes, "That number converts to 250,000 if half of the
users were using a broadband connection and the other half
using a 56K connection." Watson: "The demand far exceeded
our most optimistic expectations of what would happen. It
was enormous." But Watson noted the site "had to make some
not-so-minor adjustments," including the "elimination" of
the registration page, as "so many users were attempting to
log in that the server handling the registration page wasn't
able to process the information" (FL TIMES-UNION, 3/24).
