The NCAA News - News Features

Radio broadcasts over the Web scoring points with alums

BY SALLY HUGGINS
Staff Writer

The NCAA and its members have found a new way to reach out and touch alumni around the world -- through sports broadcasts over the Internet.

Making use of new technology, schools are taking their radio broadcasts of athletics events and "rebroadcasting" them over the Internet. Alumni and fans anywhere in the world can log on through an Internet access provider and hear any athletics event that is being broadcast by a participating institution.

The NCAA is using the technology by making the radio broadcasts of the Final Four, Women's Final Four and College World Series championships available on the Internet, said Timothy Campbell, vice-president for broadcasting at Host Communications, Inc., which arranges for the NCAA broadcasts.

Campbell works with AudioNet, one of the largest and most comprehensive radio sites on the Internet, to send broadcasts for the NCAA and numerous schools across the country on the Internet. He said any school that broadcasts its athletics events and has certain basic computer capabilities can use AudioNet or a similar service to make games available in this manner.

The technology is fairly new. The first live, continuous commercial radio broadcast on the Internet was in September 1995, but many schools and professional sports teams have since taken advantage of the technology.

The broadcasts are free to the consumer except for the cost of connection to the Internet, Campbell said. The first time a consumer wants to listen to a broadcast, some software must be downloaded and an initial setup must be completed, but Campbell said the process is simple.

The broadcasts particularly are welcomed by what Campbell calls displaced fans -- people who live outside the broadcast areas for their teams.

"We have listeners overseas -- Hong Kong, Russia, Israel, armed services personnel," he said. "It is such a novelty for people who live away and have not been able to hear broadcasts of their schools. We get many comments from people grateful to have a way to access these broadcasts."

The cost to provide the service is relatively small if a school already is broadcasting the event, Campbell said. "It is basically a rebroadcast of the existing radio broadcast," Campbell said.

Cost doesn't deter Division II school

But some schools, such as California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, have worked around the absence of a commercial broadcast. Ron Freemont, assistant athletics director at Cal Poly Pomona, said the athletics department worked with the university's communications department to create a broadcast practicum for students, who staff the broadcasts.

"Our campus has been without a student radio station for 20 years and we haven't had any athletics events on commercial radio since 1980," Freemont said. "We learned about using the Internet."

The two departments together purchased the remote radio equipment, and the athletics department went live -- the first Division II school to do so, he said. The project kicked off with women's volleyball this fall; the school broadcast all home games as well as an NCAA Division II regional. It will continue with all home men's and women's basketball games and baseball games.

"It's better than commercial radio," Freemont said. "We don't have to sell advertising and anybody in the world can listen to this."

James A. Marchiony, NCAA director of broadcast services, said use of the Internet for more NCAA championships broadcasts is possible as radio broadcasts become available.

"It is an area that the NCAA will continue to explore with great interest, because it has the potential to increase the exposure we get for NCAA championships," Marchiony said. "In doing so, we bring the fans closer and that is our goal."

Administrators at high-profile institutions are sold on this use of the Internet. Marquette University men's and women's basketball games broadcast over the Internet have been heard in places as far away as Iceland and Australia, said athletics director William L. Cords. Marquette began making its broadcasts available a year ago.

"We wanted to get involved with the Internet in a lot of different ways," Cords said. "We thought radio would be great for alumni, especially those living on the East Coast."

The University of Florida began making broadcasts of football, baseball, men's and women's basketball, and women's volleyball available last year through its home page on the World Wide Web, said athletics director Jeremy N. Foley. Schedules for broadcasts are on the home page.

"Folks who live outside of our broadcast area are in love with it," he said. "It has been a great way for us to get exposure for our program."

Bob Jacoby, college representative for AudioNet, has worked with schools to get their Internet broadcasts on-line. He says that broadcasting of athletics events is only the beginning.

As the technology matures, Jacoby sees potential for schools to use the Internet for recruiting, fund-raising, distance learning, merchandising and distribution of administrative information -- such as a state-of-the-university address.

'Virtual tours'

Developing technology soon will allow a school to create a "virtual tour" of the university athletics department that any interested prospective student-athlete could tap into, Jacoby said. With limited recruiting visits, the virtual tour could enhance a coach's recruiting, he said.

Schools already are able to enhance their communication with alumni through coaches' call-in shows that are being broadcast on the Internet. Campbell said a coach's show broadcast from Syracuse University recently prompted a call from a fan listening in Colorado.

Another anticipated benefit is providing distant families of student-athletes with an opportunity to hear live broadcasts of a son's or daughter's athletics event via Internet, said Cal Poly's Freemont.

"Parents love it because they can listen to their students' games," he said. "If you have family in Berlin, they can hear it. And we can interview our student-athletes live on the radio. These are students who don't regularly get interviewed live."

Jacoby said the industry has seen exponential growth since broadcasts began a little more than a year ago. He said he believes Internet broadcasts are the third leg of a media triangle -- radio, television and the Internet.

"This is just the beginning," Jacoby said. "It hit the market in the summer of '95 and we've come a long way already in that one year."