7 Comments Add your own

• 1. Gorman  |  October 8th, 2007 at 9:57 am

  At my former employer, we put a great deal of online effort into the HS football season, going back to 2001. For one night a week, I could cover the big news story (depending on news of the day) for *every* one of our rural towns–how did their team do?

  With other sports it gets a bit tougher since they play multiple times a week, and at least from a TV station’s perspective, schools aren’t in the habit of faxing in box scores and stats, since they never made air, they just called in “Us 62, Them 58.”

  User-generated content is great, but at least in our and neighboring markets, most sites don’t even do the basic scores/schedules/standings, they just throw up repurposed video clips or printed recaps and call that their special coverage.

• 2. discreet_chaos  |  October 8th, 2007 at 12:32 pm

  The uploaded, user-generated content may be new, but the story halfway sounds like they started doing something in the reporter’s hometown, so it must be new.

  I can’t say for sure that it reached back into the 70s, but WRAL was definitely doing a Friday Night show in the 80s and I don’t know why it wouldn’t continue to this day. There’s a pre-Letterman high school sports show in Albuquerque, which has been on the air since I arrived and I’m pretty sure that I remember one from Boston. (Though, I may actually be remembering something out of Providence because though I’ve lived in a couple of places in the Boston market, I only remember watching it when I lived in the crossover zone)

  I’m sorry, but I’ve lived in a lot of places (14 television markets at last count) and I’d have to say that the lack of a Friday Night show in a market would be a surprise to me because my impression is that it’s been the norm for decades. The amount of video often varies due to the station’s size and user-generated could easily bridge that gulf, but I pretty much every market had a station for “hometown sports”.

• 3. Anonymous  |  October 8th, 2007 at 2:39 pm

  Honestly, this is nothing new….stations for years have focused on HS football…but it has never really impacted the station’s numbers.

  The web site idea is great….but it won’t gain traction. Not enough content and not enough scale.

• 4. Michael  |  October 8th, 2007 at 2:53 pm

  We just launched our own high school sports section last month. (Click name for link)

  The biggest problem we ran into here in Atlanta was the number of high schools. I think at last count we had well over 50, probably closer to 100.

  With that many games, you have a hard time finding a photographer to shoot all the games you want.

  We have slowly filled out our section with an automated scores feed from an outside source and the weekly AP poll rankings they do here in Georgia.

  I agree 100% that high school sports is a great way to get hyper-local and create buzz. A lot of traffic today can be generated based on how “cool” a site is perceived. Once you get the kids on board, the parents should follow if only for the “look at my kid” factor.

  I think people are missing the boat on this concept by plugging in “user-generated” video and picture areas and then not providing basic information. We are, after all, a news station.

  You can’t throw out the information part of the section if it really is going to work.

• 5. JoeMo  |  October 8th, 2007 at 6:37 pm

  I think they call themselves “student journalists” but they would be a great resource. Real simple, bring them in, show them around your station and get them generally interested in what you are doing and I am sure you can talk them into shooting / recording scores and reporting them back to you. Sure, maybe you won’t have the best shots in the world and you might miss a few games here and there but I bet you would get much better content then UGC. Just my 2 cents anyways, give it a shot, call the local schools and find out if they have an A/V club.

• 6. Rob W  |  October 8th, 2007 at 9:44 pm

  High school sports is a backbone of some of the regional sports networks [besides the pro stuff]. For example, New York’s MSG Network has season-specific high school shows [football, basketball lacrosse] … all fully subscribed with sponsors … a Sunday high school game of the week … and those programs get the most viewer response and participation via video and email … and since the programs focus on the suburbs around NYC … the demographics are superb … there are tie-ins with local athletes who made good like Long Island’s Norman “Boomer” Esiason … it’s a huge moneymaker, and non-controversial … unlike that other staple of MSG programming … that train wreck of tall folks known as the Knickerbockers … hell everyone likes to watch one!

• 7. BobbyH  |  October 19th, 2007 at 12:31 pm

  This is our third year of shooting high school for Grace Christian Academy in Knoxville. We provided a highlight DVD the first year at the end of the season for all of the players, but last year and this year we have been shooting and streaming the highlights at http://www.gracefootball.com. We’ve had really good response from the coaches, players and fans, but because it is a new school with only 3 years of alumni and is not community based (it’s a private school and students come from several counties), we have been drawing a fairly small numbers of viewers (a few hundred a week) and which makes generating ad revenue basically impossible when compared with other advertising opportunities. We have two sponsors who are really making a donation instead of a advertising buy. Both have kids in the school. I thought this article was very interesting as we have looked extensively at the high school sports video opportunities, including possibly live streaming via Tricaster, etc. Obviously if we were at another school with 100 years of alumni and a community around it for support, advertising sales would be much easier. We very much want to find a successful path for high school sports coverage online. Without a doubt the technology is available for extensive coverage, but finding a model that will cash flow may be difficult without at least regional or national coverage. It will be exciting to watch it unfold.

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