When it comes to covering high school football, the competitive fire burns brightly in the offices of Omaha TV sports directors.With the exception of KMTV (more on that later), showing as many highlights as possible has become a well-strategized display of manpower, mobility and - once the footage reaches the station - military-like precision.
Getting the maximum amount of highlights on the air on a typical Friday night means devoting less time to news and weather and more time to the sports segment. In the case of KETV's newscast Friday night, Sports Director Jon Schuetz was allotted more than five-and-a-half-minutes to broadcast his high school football segment.
KPTM Sports Director JJ Davis, who has worked in markets large and small from coast to coast the past 28 years, said stations that don't capitalize on a captive audience are shortchanging their viewers.
"High school football is big," Davis said. "It's the one constant that doesn't or shouldn't change when it comes to sports coverage.
"Games are games - kids are kids - parents are parents. They will forever want to see their team or their children or themselves on TV. It's that simple."
KPTM Leads Highlights Race
One week into the high school football season, KPTM has shown highlights from more games than KETV and KMTV combined.
On Friday night, KPTM broadcast highlights of 10 football games. KETV and WOWT each covered six and KMTV showed three games. The night before, KPTM showed highlights from three games, WOWT had two and KETV and KMTV each focused on the Millard North-Millard South showdown.
KMTV Sports Director Travis Justice told viewers Friday that "Action 3 News" will take a different approach to presenting high school football this season."Covering high school football doesn't require you to have a fever and the last time I looked, a covert operation can actually lead to confusion," Justice said, in obvious digs at competitors WOWT and KETV, respectively.
"This much I do know: quantity does not equal quality. So every Friday night during high school football season, we're going to give you extended coverage of the three biggest games - two in Nebraska and one in Iowa."
The luxury of devoting an entire crew - and live truck - to a single game virtually guarantees that a station will capture every highlight. However, when quantity - rather than quality - is the goal, photojournalists are often instructed to shoot a game until they get a touchdown or other pivotal play, then hit the road for the next stadium.
Once the highlights are back to the station, scripts must be written, scores passed along to chyron (graphics) operators and footage edited into 15 to 20-second segments.
Schuetz said with so many games matching top 10 schools, KETV elected to stay through the whole game at two contests Friday. That strategy might change, he said, depending on the quality of games each week.
For KPTM, the push to get highlights on the air is more difficult, given the fact the station's sports segment begins on as early as 9:40 p.m. on a Friday. That's more than 30 minutes before the competition hits the air with its highlights.
On the Air and On-Line
The popularity of high school football highlights has led three of the four Omaha stations to offer their highlights on more than just their Friday night broadcasts.WOWT, which dubs its high school football segment "Friday Night Fever," is placing all of its highlights on a special page on its website.
KETV's "Operation Football" is available via video podcasts by signing up through Apple's iTunes. KETV.com promises "unedited video highlights" available for download by Saturday morning.
KPTM's high school football highlights segment is known as the "EndZone" and is also available for download on the station's website.
Davis said he strives to meet the expectations of the parents, grandparents or students, faculty and fans who turn out in the thousands each week to catch their local version of "Friday Night Lights."
"What station has the best chance of showing you your school?," Davis asked. "Even if the highlights aren't the key plays sometimes? For my money, I'll bet on me."
2 comments:
Wouldn't you just sort of glaze over if you watched an entire sports cast of all area high school football results? I would in fact, I'm there just thinking about it.
Lip service to the academic part of high school but the reality shows with the inane infantile infatuation with game playing.
Grow up, people. Your jocks and jockettes are playing games. There is so much more to life than a lame football game.
Oh, wait, this is Nebraskans. The sheep. What a bunch of backwoods rednecks.
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