The weekend was some combination of media blitz, bull riding event, and New York City energy. Riders were at the stock exchange to ring the closing bell. A bunch of them were featured on people.com in an article that seemed to be called "Why they are hot." Douglas Duncan was everywhere at once on media of all kinds. Riders tweeted about Chinatown and bad-driving cabbies, a football player named Bear Pascoe pulled Luke Snyder's rope, and energy was very, very high.
We waited a long time for this new season to start, and it started well. Flint Rasmussen said that it was the best PBR event he has ever been to. Shorty Gorham said that it was the best crowd ever. The crowd noise was so loud that television viewers had a hard time hearing the broadcast announcers. Cody Nance won, riding all five of his bulls, and Luke Snyder got payback for Pistol Robinson by riding the bull that broke both of Pistol's legs the night before. The only downside of the weekend, of course, was the injury to Pistol. (See more on that here.)
In addition to the energy-fired event itself, the weekend was a technological win. The first round of the first event of the year, the first broadcast on YouTube, and expectations in about a million houses were very high. The PBR's YouTube debut didn't go totally without a hitch, but it worked, complete with a full team of announcers. A few pixelations and freeze-ups, and one moment of angst about 20 minutes in when it started all over again from the beginning (hit refresh to fix that), but overall, it was a hit.
Between YouTube, two television stations, the Live Event Center, Twitter, and Facebook, the wires were alight with the PBR this weekend. Fans had whiplash going from one to another. But it was bull riding, and it was good. I like living in a world where one weekend a year the bulls run up the ramps at Madison Square Garden.
Between YouTube, two television stations, the Live Event Center, Twitter, and Facebook, the wires were alight with the PBR this weekend. Fans had whiplash going from one to another. But it was bull riding, and it was good. I like living in a world where one weekend a year the bulls run up the ramps at Madison Square Garden.
