| By: John Rice, Contributing Writer | Published: July 1, 2009 |
By John Rice
Media Guides for the University of Wisconsin Green Bay’s athletic teams won’t be distributed in print form anymore. Instead, they will be available on-line as part of the school’s new athletic Website: www.greenbayphoenix.com.
The site, which launched Wednesday, features an ongoing collection of video segments, along with newly designed electronic media guides, primarily created by students from the campus television station.
“Our [previous] Website agreement expired June 30,” explains Drew Harris, sports-information director for UWGB. “We thought our Website was not doing nearly enough. How can we make it better, and how can we afford it?”
Harris says his two-person sports-information staff was not enough to produce media guides and “do a better Website.”
“Do we really need media guides?” he asked. “I believe within a year or so, media guides will be pretty much extinct anyway. I think we’re ahead of the curve.”
Harris says he was concerned about reaction from coaches to abandoning the printed media guides. They use the media guides “for recruiting purposes,” he explains. “The problem with the media guide is the other half needs to be for the media.”
After reviewing numerous other Websites, Harris proposed the electronic guides to the coaches and “they were on board immediately.” He says reactions from the media were, “as long as we can get the information, it will be good for us.” The school will continue to print an all-sports record book for the media, but Harris calls it “a no-frills reference book.”
A key component to expanding the Website and making the electronic media guide work is the relationship between the sports-information office and the campus television station. “We have access to their people, and they have their own sports department, which will work directly with us,” says Harris. A studio has been constructed in the athletic facilities that “they’ll also be able to use as their learning studio.” Costs of new equipment were shared.
The studio uses existing Panasonic cameras, with the addition of new lighting and audio gear. “One of the driving components behind the studio is NewTek’s TriCaster,” explains marketing and promotions coordinator Adam Halfmann. “We’re really expanding the capabilities with that unit’s ability to provide for live production and pre-loaded video packages and highlights.”
While all video material will be recorded and posted on the Website, “from the production side, we’re really producing a live show,” he says. For those elements that need more extensive postproduction, the team is using Adobe’s CS4 Premium Suite.
While the new effort will likely result in overall cost savings for the athletic departments, Harris says it’s “really been a reallocation of money because of the start-up costs.” Still, “it came together cheaper than we thought was possible,” he adds. That’s partly due to taking advantage of existing gear and the production team’s creativity. “We made three home-made teleprompters for a couple hundred bucks instead of spending over $1,000 on one.”
Harris sees the development of the new Website and electronic media guides as “a new challenge. It’s exciting to go to work and do something different.” He believes the Web versions of the media guides will be “so much more personal. Instead of reading about a student athlete, we’re going to sit down with them and you’re going to have video clips of them. It’s going to be a lot more interactive and a lot more fun.”
Working with the team coaches, Harris says they are truly excited about the concept. “They say, ‘Here’s what we’d like to have on our site. This would really help us with recruiting,’” he says. “They’ve been great to work with.”
UWGB does not have a football team. That, according to legend, is due to input from Vince Lombardi when the school was first established in 1965, pointing out that there was already a football team in Green Bay. But the school does participate in 16 NCAA Division I sports, including women’s basketball, in which the Phoenix has won 11 straight Horizon League conference titles.
Related Stories
Sponsor Microsite Spotlight
Sponsor Microsites
Team SVG
