What makes someone paddle into a wave that could kill them… and smile while doing it?

That’s the question we ask as we uncover the haunting true story of Marcio Freire – the Brazilian big wave pioneer known as “Mad Dog.”

On January 5, 2023, at the legendary Praia do Norte in Nazaré, Portugal, Márcio paddled into one of the world’s biggest, most terrifying waves – and never came back.

In this powerful video, you’ll discover:
How Marcio redefined big wave surfing at Jaws
Why he risked everything to surf Nazaré – without a tow
What makes Nazaré the deadliest surf break on Earth
And how Marcio’s life became a legacy of soul, silence, and sacrifice

“You don’t beat the ocean. You learn to listen.” – Márcio Freire

Márcio wasn’t in it for fame. He didn’t chase sponsors. He chased truth. The raw, wild, unforgiving beauty of the sea. And in the end, it claimed him – but never broke him.

He became the first surfer to ever die at Nazaré, reminding the world: This wave may be surfed… but it is never conquered.

Watch now to feel the force, the meaning, and the legacy of a man who paddled into death – not because he had to, but because he was called to.

He didn’t surf to impress.
He surfed to feel free.

Marcio Freire (1975–2023)

In this interview with Streaming Media contributing editor Jan Ozer, Gary Hunsberger, general manager of U.S. operations at NPAW (Nice People At Work), outlines the company’s approach to end-to-end quality monitoring, actionable data, and monetization support. Hunsberger, who joined NPAW seven weeks before NAB 2025, shares how the company differentiates itself in a crowded analytics market, discusses future AI integration plans, and previews growth initiatives in the U.S. and Canada.

With a presence spanning small houses of worship to global media platforms, NPAW delivers streaming analytics from the network probe level through to the end-user session, all within a single, customizable interface. Hunsberger explains how the platform helps customers retain subscribers, optimize CDN usage, anticipate churn, and make sense of overwhelming amounts of quality-related data—all while laying the groundwork for a greater North American footprint.

Below is a lightly edited version of the conversation.

From Bitmovin to NPAW

Jan Ozer: I’m sitting in the Nice People at Work booth with Gary Hunsberger, who’s going to talk about the products and services offered by NPAW. Thanks for joining me, Gary.

Gary Hunsberger: Nice to be here, Jan.

Jan Ozer: So, give us a few seconds on what you’ve been doing. Where’d you come from?

Gary Hunsberger: About seven weeks ago, I joined NPAW—formerly from Bitmovin—and I’m now the general manager for the U.S. and Canada.

Target customers and differentiation

Jan Ozer: We’re in your booth at NAB. What’s the big message here? Who are the companies you’re trying to reach, and how do you differentiate your products and services for those targets?

Gary Hunsberger: It’s any customer delivering streams to end users who wants to ensure a good customer experience. That could be anyone from small churches to the large organizations we all deal with.

Jan Ozer: Small churches? Is that really a market you serve?

Gary Hunsberger: We have customers that serve that market.

Jan Ozer: It’s a crowded market with several solutions. What’s different about NPAW?

Gary Hunsberger: What we’re doing from a network probe and network monitoring perspective—very early in the content lifecycle all the way out to the individual user session—is monitoring the stream throughout that entire process. Bringing that into a single window, or a single pane if you will, is something we’re doing that’s very unique.

Making data actionable

Jan Ozer: Maintaining quality is pretty complicated. There’s the merger of QoS and QoE. Describe your solution; what happens if I have a problem? How do you solve it before I even know it’s there?

Gary Hunsberger: That’s really where it’s at: making sure the data is there, but also that it’s actionable. Your teams need to get to that data quickly, understand the root cause of what caused an alarm or what’s going on with a CDN, and be able to act quickly.

We allow you to tailor the events that get triggered in a very granular way to suit your organization’s needs—and make that an easy process. We support customers with training and modeling, and in dashboard setup. The dashboards are highly customizable, and it’s important to have a simplified view when you need it. If you’re a network operator who just needs a simple view, customization is key—and we do that.

Live event support and root cause resolution

Jan Ozer: If I’m a live event producer, what am I watching during the show from a quality perspective?

Gary Hunsberger: It starts with your internal network. Then it’s the health of the CDN. When something goes wrong, how do you crack that open and figure out the root cause?

Issues usually show up on the player, and it’s guilty until proven innocent. It’s imperative that you can understand if it’s a DRM license server that’s not working correctly, or if you’ve got CDN caching issues. You must be able to quickly open that up and troubleshoot it.

Customer success stories and expansion strategy

Jan Ozer: What are your big plans for NPAW in the U.S.? I assume you’re here to increase presence, revenue, and profitability.

Gary Hunsberger: It’s an underserved market for us. We’ve got some very big names—lighthouse customers—but overall, it’s pretty underserved. I’m looking forward to perhaps putting out a U.S. office in New York, being closer to our customers, supporting them better, understanding their unique needs in this market, and growing the business that way.

Filtering the noise

Jan Ozer: One of the biggest problems in this business is that there’s almost too much information. You get so much data that you don’t know what to do with it. What’s NPAW’s solution?

Gary Hunsberger: That definitely happens. You can set a large number of filters and get a lot of errors. What we’re doing is putting an AI intelligence agent across the entire workflow—that’s going to help customers more quickly understand what’s causing those errors. We call it Sentinel.

Sentinel will make recommendations and allow customers, through a process of elimination and more training, to get to the root causes more quickly.

Jan Ozer: Who does the training?

Gary Hunsberger: We take care of that. We’re very strong in professional services—handholding customers, helping them set up dashboards. This is something that’s very new to a lot of customers, so we’ll be heavily involved in assisting them.

AI now and later

Jan Ozer: Where else are you seeing AI touch your products in the next 12 to 24 months?

Gary Hunsberger: This is a lot of work. I think we’re just going to get really good at this for now—and then we’ll see where it goes.

Helping customers monetise

Jan Ozer: We’ve been hearing “monetization” over and over. How does your product help customers monetise?

Gary Hunsberger: It’s about retention. Churn is an ongoing challenge for many of our customers. That gets to the heart of making sure the end user is having a good experience with their subscription or with the stream they’re watching.

We’re enabling customers to use the data we’re gathering to ensure that quality of experience is a good one. When it’s not, we help customers understand why and allow them to be more proactive.

For example, I had a meeting here with our friends over at Cleeng. They’re involved in subscription management. They can tell you how many customers churned last month—but they can’t tell you why.

When you couple a solution like Cleeng with what we gather, we can tell customers, “Everyone who churned last month was on Android.” That gives you actionable data. Let’s go take a look at our Android implementation and find out why that might be. Then we can be more proactive.

Jan Ozer: I want to prevent churn. How do you help me do that?

Gary Hunsberger: As you’re monitoring and tracking these issues, you can anticipate future problems. If you know you’ve had an issue with a DRM license server, that allows you to get ahead of it.

Maybe you reach out to those remaining Android customers, give them a free month, or just let them know you’re working on it. That proactive outreach can help keep them from churning.

Optimising multi-CDN delivery

Jan Ozer: What about multi-CDN? It’s something we hear about a lot. How are you helping customers implement that?

Gary Hunsberger: That’s really important. It speaks to cost. We all know there’s significant cost in distributing content.

Sometimes customers choose a CDN based on performance but don’t understand that there might be a more cost-effective CDN they could be using at any given time. Being able to monitor the performance of those CDNs—and switch actively, even mid-stream—is going to be a huge benefit.

Adoption rates and competitive differentiation

Jan Ozer: Looking at publishers in particular, how many of them currently have a QoS solution in place? Is it 100%? 50%?

Gary Hunsberger: What I’m seeing is that it’s about 100% in all cases. But when they take a look at the portfolio we’ve got and the holistic view we can give them, the lights go on.

Jan Ozer: What are the table-stakes features that differentiate you from other providers?

Gary Hunsberger: It’s that holistic view. There are a lot of siloed implementations out there. It’s important to be able to share and view data across the entire workflow.

If you’ve got data in one silo and data in another, you can’t share that. Organizations need to be able to share information amongst themselves.

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Zype Streaming Platform Partners with NPAW to Add Full Analytics Suite

Zype, an all-in-one video management and distribution platform, and NPAW, a leading provider of AI-driven video analytics solutions, have partnered to offer streaming businesses an all-in-one solution for optimizing content delivery, increasing user engagement, measuring quality of experience (QoE) and ultimately, driving revenue and customer satisfaction.

19 Dec 2024

MILWAUKEE — FBI agents arrested Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan on charges of obstruction after she allegedly interfered with a federal immigration arrest operation.

FBI Director Kash Patel confirmed the arrest, stating Judge Dugan misdirected agents from detaining Eduardo Flores Ruiz, an undocumented migrant, after a court appearance April 18.

Multiple 12 News sources confirm the arrest happened Friday morning at the Milwaukee County Courthouse.

According to reports, Ruiz managed to evade initial detention but was later apprehended after a foot pursuit. Federal agents claim the judge’s obstruction increased public safety risks.

Judge Dugan has been on the bench for nine years, and the incident has drawn scrutiny and prompted an investigation.

The Braves outrighted lefty José Suarez to Triple-A Gwinnett, relays David O’Brien of The Athletic. Atlanta had designated him for assignment on Monday when they acquired Scott Blewett.

Suarez landed with the Braves a month ago. Atlanta and the Angels agreed on a change-of-scenery swap for Ian Anderson. It didn’t work for either team. Suarez has gone unclaimed on waivers, while Anderson is in limbo after the Halos designated him for assignment last night.

The 27-year-old Suarez made three appearances before the DFA. He managed 7 1/3 innings of three-run ball, but he walked a tightrope to do so. Suarez issued free passes to seven of 30 batters faced while recording only five strikeouts. While he only allowed three hits, more than half the batted balls against him were hit at an exit velocity of at least 95 MPH.

Suarez looked like a capable back-end starter for the Angels between 2021-22. His production has tanked since then, as he carries a 6.56 earned run average over the past three seasons. He lost a good chunk of the ’23 campaign to a shoulder strain, and he spent time in Triple-A last year after being waived by the Halos.

While Suarez could have declined this assignment in favor of free agency, he would have forfeited what remains of his $1.1MM salary to do so. He’ll head to Gwinnett as long relief depth and try to pitch his way back onto the big league roster. He’d become a minor league free agent at season’s end if the Braves don’t call him back up.

SwimSwam sat down with the coaches behind the upcoming Dual Meet Tournament that will take place at Georgia Tech on October 17-18, 2025. Chico Rego of George Washington, Iago Moussalem of Georgia Tech, Cauli Bedran of Wisconsin (who is not participating in the tournament), and Steve Barnes of Florida State all contributed to this discussion and laid out how this event came together, what it will look like, and how they hope it will impact college swimming moving forward.

The format of the Tournament is as follows:

*All Duals will be 90 minutes with a 10-minute “halftime” break*

• On Friday Morning (Oct 17), there will be four duals (Quarter finals): Two run simultaneously at 7:30am, then two more at 10am
• On Friday Afternoon, there will be another four duals (Semi Finals + Losers Bracket): Two run at 3pm (Winners and Losers from 7:30am Matchups), then two more at 6pm (Winners and Losers from 10am Matchups)
• On Saturday Morning (Oct 18), there will be three duals for the six teams that aren’t in the final
• On Saturday Afternoon at 2pm, there will be the Dual Meet Final

Diving will take place intermittently and will be more of a team event (more to come on that in the future). Roster limits per meet will be 15 swimmers and 2 divers per gender. Each swimmer can only swim 3 times per meet. Each team will have 4 athletes per individual swimming event and 2 relay teams per relay event.

Event Lineups for each meet are as follows:

• First half: Relay #1, (100 Free/Back & 200 Fly/Breast) OR (100 Fly/Breast & 200 Free/Back)
• Second half: 500 Free, 200 IM, 50 Free, Relay #2

The event lineup for each dual will be decided before the dual.

Scoring will be combined for genders. Each dual will have a total of 790 points (meaning the first team to reach 396 wins). Scoring is as follows:

• For diving/relays, 1st place is 22, 2nd place is 8, 3rd place is 4, and 4th place is 0.
• For Individual Swimming events, 1st place is 16, 2nd place is 6, 3rd place is 5, 4th place is 4, 5th place is 3, 6th place is 2, 7th place is 1, and 8th place is 0.

In the SwimSwam Podcast dive deeper into the sport you love with insider conversations about swimming. Hosted by Coleman Hodges and Gold Medal Mel Stewart, SwimSwam welcomes both the biggest names in swimming that you already know, and rising stars that you need to get to know, as we break down the past, present, and future of aquatic sports.

Music: Otis McDonald
www.otismacmusic.com