| By: Carolyn Braff, Managing Editor | Published: September 2, 2009 |
The Big South Conference has been successfully streaming live events from all its member schools for three years, but successful streaming is no longer enough. Rebranding its broadband channel from The Big South EDGE to the Big South Network and upgrading to the NewTek TriCaster STUDIO, the conference has increased the production values on all 600 events that it will stream this year, beginning with more than two dozen on Labor Day weekend.
“The Big South EDGE has been successful for us, but we were still using the equipment we started with three years ago,” says Mark Bryant, coordinator of new media for the Big South Conference. “It got to the point where we said it’s time to jump up to the next generation, and that meant getting the next model of the NewTek TriCaster, the TriCaster Studio. The leap in capabilities is huge.”
The Studio Look
With TriCaster STUDIO, Big South member schools will still be doing three-camera shoots but will now have full graphics integration. Bryant worked directly with NewTek to create a conference graphics package that will create a standard look for the games, no matter what school is producing them. The replay capability of TriCaster STUDIO (when paired with additional TriCaster add-ons) is also a huge step forward in production value.
“Replay is something that we had only really done on an experimental basis before and never had a streamlined way to do that properly for the viewer,” Bryant explains. “It adds so much to the experience. It’s one thing to have multiple cameras and an announcer so you have a legitimate game-stream experience; it’s another to really have it feel like a television game when you incorporate your graphics and your replays.”
Silverlight-ing the Way
JumpTV, which operates all of the Big South Conference schools’ Websites, including the Big South Network broadband channel, has transitioned to Microsoft Silverlight, giving the Big South Network’s video player a bigger screen and higher bit rates.
“We’re working with our campus IT staffs to make sure that we’ve got availability for the higher bit rate,” Bryant explains. “With the Microsoft Silverlight player, hopefully, the user has the best experience possible.”
Big South Central
The Big South Network is the hub through which all live competition video is streamed. The conference’s member schools can provide alternative programming — such as press conferences, highlights, and coaches’ shows — through video players on their individual school sites, but all live games are centralized through the Big South Network.
Through that portal, each school is required to stream all home games for football and men’s and women’s basketball; anything above that is at the discretion of the school.
“We ask that schools submit schedules in advance of the season so that we can post them on our site, and some schools turn in the entire home schedule and say, we’re doing them all,” Bryant says. “We encourage everyone to stream at least some games in all doable sports; we’re not asking much in the way of golf and cross-country.
“The schools are competitive, too,” he continues. “They want to be sure they’re doing the most they can, both in quantity and quality. It’s fun to see them push each other a little bit.”
Many Schools, Many Approaches
At the campus level, every school puts its productions together differently. Some schools have a dedicated streaming expert on staff, some put an athletics staff member in charge of the streaming, some hire third-party production crews, and some get the students involved.
“We’ve had some schools make it part of a television and broadcasting class, where, as they learn the craft, the students get field work with the streaming setup over the course of the semester,” Bryant explains. “There are a variety of solutions, the heart of it being that each production is done locally by the campuses but streamed centrally through the conference.”
The conference is also equipped to do its own streaming, with championship events produced at the conference level. The conference also produces some of its own video updates and extra content for the Big South Network.
This summer, each school sent a representative to a streaming boot camp, which taught the basics of the TriCaster, giving all the member institutions a common starting point. Many of the schools were already familiar with the equipment, however, so Bryant is looking forward to seeing just how far they go with the product.
Pay for Play
The game archives are available for free, but, for the live product, the Big South charges a subscription fee.
“We make it available for fans to customize however they want,” Bryant explains. “They can order a single game, a sport pass that gets them every event in a specific sport, a seasonal pass that combines all the fall sports, or an annual pass that is a full calendar year, which last year was around 600 events.”
Centralizing Video
In addition to the relaunch of the Big South’s broadband channel, the conference is redesigning its Website, in conjunction with partners JumpTV and NeuLion. Paramount to that redesign is putting video at the center of every page.
“Our commissioner loves to describe the plan as video-centric,” Bryant says. “Video will play a larger and more central role in every part of the site. It will be more obvious and more dominant. The trend is toward more online interactivity and more video, and we pride ourselves on being ahead of the wave as much as we can.”
The Big South Network will be promoted heavily throughout the new site, as will the conference’s blog, YouTube channel, Facebook page, and Twitter account.
Says Bryant, “We want to provide increased access and more elements to our fan base and followers through every avenue we can.”
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