(11-23-2013 01:48 AM)JRsec Wrote: That's the ticket, but they are going to have to have access to satellite time for self production to be distributed. I had hoped initially that the P5 conferences would be smart enough to see the potential, especially since students in broadcasting would be the best way to go with the production start up. Utilize your own graduates and grow your consumer base.
It's not often that I get to say there is an angle you haven't considered JR.
For five decades network radio and it's brother network TV didn't use satellites to distribute their content from NY and LA to Little Rock and Birmingham. They leased physical wires from AT&T and Western Union and sent an analog signal down the wires. Satellite was cheaper so it replaced the wire.
I remember KATV in Little Rock telecasting the Razorbacks in the Great Alaska Shootout and they had to explain that because the leased lines available weren't good enough they had to split the audio out of the signal send it by conventional phone so there would be a mismatch between the audio and video and the quality of the audio would not be as good. Watched a bit and it was terrible.
Getting away from those problems was another reason satellite was embraced.
Today it is possible to send a digital 1080p video signal with 5 channel audio over the wires. Except now you don't lease a wire from point A to point B. Instead you buy the capacity for an amount of bandwidth entering the internet at point A and the capacity to receive that capacity at point B.
Sporting Kansas City of Major League Soccer is doing this. They are doing a peer-to-peer transmission at their stadium and sending it to their TV affiliates (one full time in KC and I think there are two others that take it at least part time in other regional cities). They send a peer-to-peer transmission to the MLS broadcast center for redistribution. It goes on satellite for distribution to Direct, Dish, and Sports In Demand (Comcast, Cox, Brighthouse, Suddenlink, ATT, Verizon, etc).
A friend is an executive with Sporting KC and I was debating whether to buy the PPV product or online product which are similarly priced. His advice was to take the online product because it gives access on every platform, the only downside is you don't get your choice of announcers like the PPV product because MLS sends only one feed.
You can distribute to TV stations or to local cable providers (the latter costs you access to Dish and Direct subscribers in the region).
In the Sun Belt nothing causes more frustration than a game being selected for the Sun Belt network. People who have UVerse, Direct and Dish get shut out and the Cox/Comcast people will license to Suddenlink and such but not the others and there is an ESPN3/WatchESPN blackout within the region.
Last Saturday I was in Cleveland, Ohio and watched AState via ESPN3, avoiding the blackout by virtue of being in Ohio. As I watched the game on a laptop, I had Bama-Miss St on TV. At halftime WatchESPN was doing look-ins on various games. I would see a big play on my laptop and then look up to watch again on TV because the hotel was using satellite for their TV. There was a lag and I would see the plays first on laptop.
There is no reason that universities who are producing (or hiring out) their own apps cannot add a feature to stream games and at 6:50 send a push notification that the women's basketball or a baseball game starts at 7 live on the app and do the same for games that aren't distributed via the legacy network of ESPN and Fox. Games distributed via broadcast TV stations or regional games can also be made available with blackout restrictions if needed.