Belo rolling out HSGameTime.com
Cory Bergman August 19th, 2007
Belo is in the middle of a multi-market rollout of HSGameTime.com, a national high school sports site with local ties to each of its TV and newspaper properties. Beyond the stuff you’d expect, the site features a social network for both parents and teens, as well as the capability for users to host their own blogs and upload video and photos. Much more later, but in the meantime, check out the Dallas version of HSGameTime, one of the first to launch. (Full disclosure: I work for KING5.com, which is a Belo property.)
9 Comments Add your own
1. thedetroitchannel | August 19th, 2007 at 6:08 pm
the fine folks at HearstArgyle would do well to point HSPlayBook(dot)com (which it appears to own) to highschoolplaybook(dot)com rather than to a const. page.
just a suggestion from someone who feels a pair of eyeballs is a terrible thing to waste.
btw- nice layout cory. the black makes it look really bold.
2. Dan | August 19th, 2007 at 8:15 pm
Why try to create an entirely new brand?
Why not leverage the good name you already have like
king5.com/highschoolsports ?
or Seattletime.com/highschoolsports ?
Seems like a huge waste of resources to start from scratch.
Dan
3. Cory | August 19th, 2007 at 8:34 pm
Dan, the thinking (like Hearst-Argyle) is to create a national destination with media partners that fill out the markets where we don’t have a property.
4. tdc | August 19th, 2007 at 9:22 pm
as it should be cory.
5. Barry | August 20th, 2007 at 4:57 am
Dan,
I know in our case we are locked in to the look of the rest of our web site because of the company we use.
6. Dave W | August 20th, 2007 at 7:06 am
Kinda like maxpreps.com, no?
7. Facebook | August 20th, 2007 at 7:36 am
Both of these launches seem like advertisements for the local tv stations.
I think HS kids would laugh at these sites.
HSgametime is no better than what a local newspaper does online now.
HSplaybook looks like an adult tried to create a social network without ever using one.
The opportunity is still there, but major adjustments need to be made.
8. Dan | August 20th, 2007 at 9:31 am
Cory,
Gotcha. I hadn’t considered this was also for markets beyond just the ones where you have coverage now.
Will there be anyone in the local markets training the local high school shooters/editors like I read some other sites will do?
Dan
9. Rob | August 21st, 2007 at 1:19 pm
Slick presentation. Small World Labs has a great product for local vendors and Belo’s done a great job skinning this site. I’m looking forward to seeing how this pans out locally and with FishComm’s purchase of Pegasus News how the social network wars progress in Seattle, Portland and Boise.
One complaint. There’s no universal registration. If I live in Dallas, for example, I have to register once for the WFAA or Dallas Morning News website, another time for NeighborsGo.com and a third time for HSGameTime. What’s annoying about that is that NeighborsGo and HSGameTime are both Small World Labs products but there’s no common database.
Single-point registration integrated across all platforms administered by a single site is key to avoiding customer frustration.
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