AFANA Footy BBS

Hi guys,

I got this email from Ben Amarfio from the AFL's broadcasting department.

Phil

We continue to receive numerous enquiries via our website about US & Canadian broadcasting of AFL matches in season 2005.

Last year our matches were broadcast on Fox Sports World (FSW) but as you may have heard, from 7 February FSW will become a dedicated Soccer Channel. We are therefore now speaking with alternative US broadcasters re airing of AFL matches for this season.

Our first match of the 2005 season commences on Thursday March 24, so we are hopeful of signing a US network prior to that time. Once a deal is signed we will announce it on our website at - afl.com.au - so please keep checking for any updates.

Thanks for your interest in, and support of, our great game.

Kind Regards,

Ben Amarfio
AFL Broadcasting, Publishing & New Media Manager

> I got this email from Ben Amarfio from the AFL's broadcasting department.

Thanks for posting that, Phil. Thanks, too, for supporting efforts to keep footy on TV here. Your response was consistent with what other fans have received. Mr. Amarfio deserves credit for replying to fan inquiries.

More broadly, to all BBS participants and lurkers (and this is a reaction to e-mail we're getting at AFANA):

I'd like to ask anyone who gets messages about the coverage, whether from the AFL or a TV network, please forward a copy to AFANA at tv@afana.com . This helps our team follow up properly and make sure we include relevant info in the next TV newsletter. No problem posting messages here, though, in addition.

I'd also ask that for now, everyone hold off contacing the AFL as we requested in the last Media newsletter:

"Fans can be assured that with just 10 weeks until the start of the 2005 AFL season, we will be following the situation very closely. Time is not our friend and active lobbying by fans may prove necessary. However, at this stage we think it is wise to give the AFL and FSI a reasonable amount of time to find a new home of the sport without action by fans."

I know everyone wants to help and express their desire for footy. Trust me though, that if the AFL fails to make progress, (whether as a result of their own failings, those of FSI, or lack of response from networks) AFANA will make the clarion call for fan action. We know that the clock is ticking. AFANA's roots are in the tremendous internet campaign in 1995-96 to get footy back on the air and we know just how important fan action can be.

For now, as long as the AFL is making a serious effort and Mr. Amarfio is in regular communication with AFANA about the situation, let's give them room to deal with it. I'd rather have Mr. Amarfio spending his time finding footy a home as opposed to answering hundreds of e-mails from fans. Make sense?

-Rob de Santos
AFANA Chairman

AFANA Blog

Rob, I have the feeling that I'm not on the mailing list for the newsletters anymore.

When I paid for my AFANA membership I used a different email from the one I have now. I have one of those fancy new Gmail accounts which the public doesn't have access to yet (by the way I have 6 Gmail accounts I can give away, let me know if you want one) Could that be a problem? I did sign-up my new email address when I got the new one, and when I try to re-sign up again it says my new email address is already in the database. Nevertheless I'm not receiving these email newsletters that you mention

Phil
from Winnipeg

> Thanks for posting that, Phil. Thanks, too, for supporting efforts to keep
> footy on TV here. Your response was consistent with what other fans have received.
> Mr. Amarfio deserves credit for replying to fan inquiries.

> More broadly, to all BBS participants and lurkers (and this is a reaction to
> e-mail we're getting at AFANA):

> I'd like to ask anyone who gets messages about the coverage, whether from the AFL or
> a TV network, please forward a copy to AFANA at tv@afana.com . This helps our team
> follow up properly and make sure we include relevant info in the next TV newsletter.
> No problem posting messages here, though, in addition.

> I'd also ask that for now, everyone hold off contacing the AFL as we requested in
> the last Media newsletter:

> "Fans can be assured that with just 10 weeks until the start of the 2005 AFL

> season, we will be following the situation very closely. Time is not our friend and
> active lobbying by fans may prove necessary. However, at this stage we think it is
> wise to give the AFL and FSI a reasonable amount of time to find a new home of the
> sport without action by fans."

> I know everyone wants to help and express their desire for footy. Trust me though,
> that if the AFL fails to make progress, (whether as a result of their own failings,
> those of FSI, or lack of response from networks) AFANA will make the clarion call
> for fan action. We know that the clock is ticking. AFANA's roots are in the
> tremendous internet campaign in 1995-96 to get footy back on the air and we know
> just how important fan action can be.

> For now, as long as the AFL is making a serious effort and Mr. Amarfio is in regular
> communication with AFANA about the situation, let's give them room to deal with it.
> I'd rather have Mr. Amarfio spending his time finding footy a home as opposed to
> answering hundreds of e-mails from fans. Make sense?

> -Rob de Santos
> AFANA Chairman

> Rob, I have the feeling that I'm not on the mailing list for the newsletters
> anymore. ...
> I have one of those fancy new Gmail accounts which the public doesn't have
> access to yet ...
> Could that be a problem? I did sign-up my new email address when I
> got the new one, and when I try to re-sign up again it says my new email address is
> already in the database.

Almost certainly the main problem. Phil, contact me off the board and I can manually check any address you provide (send old and new). Every once in a while our "pattern matching" to determine if the address is already present produces erroneous results. This is a product of a semi-sophisticated effort to prevent invalid addresses from getting added to the list by spammers. It can also be one of the problems below:

To everyone: if you change your e-mail address you must unsubscribe the old one and subscribe the new one at: http://www.afana.com/newsletter_signup.shtml If you don't do that, as soon as the third bounce occurs your old address is dropped and we can't contact you. This is necessary for AFANA to be a good netizen and not keep sending mail to ISP's who've already told us you're not there anymore. Also, since we're on this subject please remember the following:

• Please insure your anti-spam software does not block your messages from us by adding afana.com to your whitelist of acceptable senders. This is particularly important for users of services such as Hotmail, MSN, AOL, Yahoo, Gmail, etc. We get more Hotmail and MSN bounces than all other sources combined.

• Please be aware that AFANA does not respond to challenge/response e-mails. Readers should whitelist afana.com instead. In other words, if you send us a message saying that you will only accept mail if we respond to a confirmation message, we'll ignore it and you're out of luck. If we start doing that, we'll waste hours of time and might as well go back to a manual mailing list.

• Please do not send auto-reply/out of office messages to us as this may cause you to be inadvertently unsubscribed. Our system sees your "I'm not here, but on vacation in Tahiti" message as a bounce. We waste lots of time resubscribing people who just keep doing this and we aren't going to do it much longer. So make sure you don't send such messages to AFANA. Ever.

-Rob de Santos
AFANA Chairman

AFANA Blog