The Bygone Era of Tape-Delayed Sports

Problogue: I am sad that I won't live long enough to see all the cool things that can be done on the internet.  Yeah, there's trash and annoyance and lots of sin, but some really great things also.  Like online broadcasting...

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Twenty years ago I was co-owner of TEAM Sports in Kansas City, doing video play by play (with one camera, exactly what people are doing now) of local high school sports.  

Twenty years ago, there was no internet to stream to, so we recorded on SVHS tape and then hustled that tape to Comcast Cable in eastern Jackson County (Missouri) for airing on Tuesday and Thursday nights.

Tape delay of high school sports was pretty cool at that time; the game would be played, we did a fair job of putting it on tape, and players/parents/friends/fans were thrilled to be able to see the replay in their home.

We even tape-delayed the state high school basketball and wrestling tournaments for a couple of years, distributing the broadcast tape to cable outlets across Missouri.  I believe it was the first ever state-wide video coverage of those events.

And it was pretty new.  And it was pretty cool...for awhile.  And, importantly, there were interested sponsors.

The truth, though, became apparent to me fairly soon: the fun part of sports is the drama of the game as it's happening.  It's a real life soap opera (click the link if you don't know what a soap opera is) being played out in front of you.  It's what we love...it makes it worth being there, even if "being there" means watching it on TV.

Tape delayed sports is subject to spoiler alerts.  If you know the result and the details, it's really not a lot of fun to watch, at least as a fan.  Maybe players want to see how they look in their uniform, or impress other people that they're on TV, but the drama is long over if you know the outcome.

Radio knew it all the time...live radio sports beats delayed video sports, although in the early 2000s it was close for awhile.

There came a point where we just couldn't find interested advertisers to back delayed sports coverage, and our company came to an end.

We had discussions and disagreements over implementing the internet for broadcasting, giving us the ability to go live.

I decided it was worth the gamble.

My first online broadcast was in the Missouri-Iowa-Nebraska-Kansas (MINK) League, with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes team the Kansas City Grays.  With the help of TEAM Sport's computer guru Mike Perry, we set up a small audio system (maybe WireCast?) to do a game from Blue Springs.

My anxiety over doing the game itself was pretty high, but my head was about to explode when I started getting messages on my broadcast laptop that the system was failing, and that I was continually being disconnected.

I struggled through the game with the notion that nobody could hear it.  And had a terrible feeling, of course.

Come to find out the next day, the system only had the capacity to support five listeners at a time.  So, we kind of blew up the system with an overload of listeners, which helped my attitude immensely.

That fall, I received a phone call from Rockhurst University's athletic director, asking if I could do online streamed radio coverage of Hawks basketball home games.

Rockhurst Hawks

Heck yes!

So I became the play by play announcer and chief engineer for RockU for two years in the NCAA.

That led to twelve wonderful years online, both audio and video, with William Jewell College, and now 2+ years at North Central Missouri College.

During that time we also formed broadcast networks for a couple of high schools, led by high school students wanting to have the experience.  I helped initiate the first-ever NCAA Division II conference-wide broadcast network, and have done internet coverage of national basketball, baseball, volleyball and softball broadcasts.

The point is, after 2005 or so, none of that would have happened using the tape delay concept.

"Live" is king in sports.

The internet allows everyone to go live if they choose to.

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Jon Gruden: Wow.  Takeaway: you shouldn't be thinking it, but if you are, you better not write it down anywhere.  But still, we should know by now not to think it.

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We have a staff of 10 people who are interested in our sports broadcast production team at North Central Missouri College, where we start our video basketball coverage on
Pirates Digital Media November 2nd with a Women's/Men's doubleheader.

Our multi-camera approach is pretty impressive with the right numbers of staff, and not only is this group good by the numbers, I think they're  going to be pretty good when they get going (maybe great!)