Following the disappointing Game 6 loss to the Bruins, like all Canucks fans I eagerly anticipated Game 7 of the Stanley Cup final and wondered if after 40 seasons of wishing and hoping this was finally the night the good guys would bring home Lord Stanley’s Holy Grail to the west coast - and I’m not referring to the long-standing NHL tradition of Milan Lucic spending one day with the Cup in East Vancouver this summer.
As the huge crowds continued to grow in the city centre with each passing game during the extended playoff run, I decided to watch Game 7 with a group of friends on the periphery of downtown. The plan was if the Canucks were to prevail, we’d walk (OK, skip would probably be more accurate) over the Cambie Bridge to join the mass celebrations and high five 100,000+ of my fellow ‘Nucks fans. By the time Brad Marchand scored the Bruins 2nd goal, there was an empty feeling in my stomach, perhaps foreseeing that I would not be journeying across False Creek to party, but would be heading straight home to grieve instead. Sure enough, the Bruins deservedly won the game and hence the series and shortly after Chara’s victory lap hoisting the Cup around Rogers Arena, I left the bar and headed home.
As I ventured outside, I checked my mobile Twitter app to read some post-game analysis only to find out a car was just overturned and set on fire on Georgia Street……the 2011 Vancouver Riot had just begun. During my trip home on the B-Line Express, I was constantly checking Twitter for updates on the mayhem and as soon as I got home rushed to the TV. For the next three hours I was glued to the riveting unscripted reality programming on the local stations. I must admit that for several days afterwards, I spent much more time on-line than usual reading post riot articles and commentaries in both the local and national newspapers, watching on-line video on YouTube.com and staring at photo montages on various sites. I was guilty of being consumed by the appalling behavior of a handful of my fellow Vancouverites rather than celebrating what a great year our Canucks had.
As outlined above, I used social media to find out about the incident, watched television as the events unfolded live and accessed the internet to try to make sense of it all. For those that follow media measurement, the above mediums have metric systems in place that can track their respective audience/usage in a very short period of time. With a little bit of research, this data is readily available.
That got me thinking about radio. Due to industry policies, radio is one medium that may have had an impact on how the public followed the events but was unable to quantitatively track its impact until July 7th 's PPM release. So as the riot unfolded, did the public turn to radio as a means to stay informed?
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JGC
