The countdown to kickoff clock that I’ve been referring to the past couple of posts now sits at zero and last night we had our first set of football game broadcasts with many more coming up this weekend.  I was listening to ESPN Radio this morning and really loved the speech that Bill Curry, head coach of Georgia State University, gave to his team on the eve of their first game yesterday.  Essentially he was talking to his players about the fourth quarter and how his players would be tired and he asks his players what they would do.  Before he could finish posing the question one of his players yells out “I won’t let my teammates down.”  Bill Curry then asks his whole team what their teammate said and in unison the whole team yells out “I won’t let my teammates down!”  It gave me goose bumps!

Essentially this week we are in the 4^th quarter of our preparations for the 2010 football season and I can’t tell you how impressed I’ve been by our various departments.  Every year the week of kick means a lot of late hours for our staff and we are put into circumstances where most people would throw their arms up and say “that’s their problem” or “it’s too late to change/fix that.”  I can’t tell you how many times this week I’ve heard our producers, traffic coordinators, engineers and affiliate staff been posed with items where they could simply shake their head and not try and solve the problem.  Instead, I’ve heard people say “I’ll take care of it” or  “let me figure out how to fix the issue.”  Man, I love it, this speaks volumes about the people that I work with.  Are they skipping back to their office to face this daunting task?   Well I can’t say that I’ve witnessed that so far this week, but I can say that our staff as a whole are telling our property staff, our affiliates and each other “I will not let you down.” 

I am so proud to work with a group of such amazing people, the amount of pride that they take in their work is uncommon and will certainly be evident in the broadcasts that we air this season.

We are now one week away from our first football broadcast and if you haven’t noticed the information on our affiliate web-site is growing. 

Here are a couple items that I want you to pay special attention to when visiting your Network’s affiliate site:

Schedules

Once you come to this page you will notice there are several links which break down a schedule for each one of our different broadcast groups.  After clicking on a schedule link you will enter our calendar program and it will show you when the broadcast(s) will take place and also the broadcast start time.  You’ll observe that we currently have all of the dates and many of the times listed for the football and football coaches show broadcasts and will post the winter sports schedules once we receive that information.  We update our calendars frequently so please check back regularly for any changes that may occur.  Please note that many kick-off times will not be announced until conference season begins. 

Logs

Several years ago we would fax logs to our affiliates before shifting to emailing the logs, now we’ve taken it one step further by simply posting them on the affiliate web-site.  We found that this is the easiest way for our affiliates to gain access to the logs as they wouldn’t get lost in the shuffle (like faxes once did) nor would you have to worry about emails not coming through.  Our goal is to have the logs posted 48 hours before each broadcast, there are times when we are waiting on approval of the logs so if you notice they are past this time please know that the Traffic Coordinator assigned to your Network is working on getting them approved/posted and it is a priority for us to get this information to you as soon as possible.

Audio

Our producers take a lot of pride in offering our affiliates some sharp audio pieces that you can use to create promos and for your news updates.  On the audio tab you’ll currently find promo works parts and :30 promos for the upcoming football season.  After each football game we will also post a highlight package as well that you can use for your sports reports.

Affidavits

When we built the affiliate web-site last year one item that we wanted to include was the ability for stations to electronically fill out the affidavit forms.  After one year, we’ve found that this system offered a very low rate of return.  So this year we are reverting back to our former method of retrieving the affidavits by posting them on the affiliate site monthly.  You can return them to us via email, fax or mail. 

Station Information

We use email as our main form of communication for any changes that occur during the season and our database can only stay as current as the personnel information that you provide us.  If you haven’t already sent us an information sheet for your station this summer please do so or your staff may be left in the dark concerning some important information during the season. 

Procedures

This is probably the tab that people spend the least amount of time on, but they shouldn’t.  This tab has information pertaining to our weather delay policy, our distribution method and category exclusivities. 

As you can see our affiliate web-site has a litany of information to help you carry our broadcasts and the site will be constantly updated from now until the end of the season.  Please let your affiliate representative know if you have any questions during the season, and just in case you need that information their number is on the affiliate web-site!

There is a clock in our broadcast studio area that has been ominously counting down to the start of the 2010 college football season since early May.  Suffice it to say,  the numbers on this clock appear to get larger and brighter with each day that passes.  The clock now sits at 19 days and will end one day before our first football broadcast of the season, which takes place on Thursday, September 2^nd.   It has been a steady reminder that the football season is coming and that all the work that we’ve done this spring and summer is about to come to a head.  In fact in some ways the broadcast season has already started as we had a Texas A&M football coaches show last week, this seems fitting because after living in Texas for the majority of my life I think we could have a football coaches show any month of the year and there would still be a lot of interest. 

As many of you know, the first official top 25 poll came out for the FBS last week and I was pleased to see that there were nine Learfield schools in those rankings, including the Alabama Crimson Tide who are looking to defend their national title.  The FCS top 25 should be coming out shortly and several of our schools should receive mentions in that poll as well.  

There is definitely a buzz around our office and it reminds me of an orchestra in that different instrument sections (or in our case different departments) are working together to create a great sound.  Our engineering department has been running Network tests this past week, last week emails and other communication pieces started flying out en masse from our affiliate and traffic departments getting our affiliates ready for the season and our producers are cranking out several audio pieces as well.  Yes, before I know it that clock will hit zero and we’ll be off and running with the start of the 2010 football season.

Kick-off to the 2010 football season is right around the corner!  It seems like just yesterday that our final broadcast of the 2009-2010 athletic season ended and in that short amount of time it’s amazing how much work has been done.  On the affiliate side, we have spent the past couple of months visiting with our affiliates either over the phone or through in person meetings to discuss the upcoming season and to review the previous season.  From the operations end, the focus has been on continually improving our already exceptional sound and to provide our affiliates with the necessary tools to promote and carry our broadcasts. 

The purpose of this affiliate web-site is to serve you, our affiliates.  This is the second season that we’ve had the affiliate site up and over the next couple of weeks we encourage you to spend some time on your Networks site.  You’ll find a lot of great information regarding broadcast schedules, sample logs and even promotional audio that you can use to get ready for the season.  We are constantly updating this site and quite frankly take a lot of pride in the information that we provide. 

With that said, know that we are always open to your opinions, never be afraid to tell us what you think of not only our affiliate site but also of our broadcasts.  Unfortunately, I haven’t come across anyone in our company that is omniscient so it’s vital for you to state your opinion.    How do you do that you ask?   Well it’s simple, you can either contact your affiliate representative or you can email sportshelpdesk@learfield.com.  That email is sent to someone in each department of sports operations and affiliate relations.  I promise you that we read and react to every email we get. 

Here’s to a great 2010-2011 season!

As you have probably noticed the amount of updates on the affiliate web-site has slowed considerably since the end of the basketball season.  With a little over four months before the start of the 2010 football season one could say that things seem pretty calm around Learfield Sports right now.  However, I would equate it to a duck making it rounds in a pond.  On the surface, it appears as though the duck is slowly moseying along while underneath the water it’s a different story as the duck is working furiously churning its legs to move forward.  This analogy would be a good way to describe what is going on right now, we are already moving forward with our plans to build upon our quality programming for the upcoming football season.  To learn more about what we’ll be doing the next couple of months be sure to check out the video on our affiliate home page (and each Network page). 

As for me, this is easily my busiest time of the year.  I just got back from an affiliate trip in North Carolina and am in the middle of working on building my various Networks, so with that said I’m going to give this blog a rest until August.  At that time I’ll give you an inside look into our preparations company-wide to get ready for the 2010 football season.  Have a good summer!

With the basketball season almost in our rear view mirror, our affiliate recruitment season has already started in earnest.  Brittany Heck, Adam Froidl and Ryan Suttenfield have already made their first affiliate trips while I will be heading out to North Carolina the week of April 12^th.  This is an exciting time for the affiliate relations staff. We’ve been in the office since mid-August and are itching to get back out on the road.  Over the next couple of months we’ll be travelling around the country to see as many affiliates as we can, and I wanted to let you know going into the 2010-2011 season that we have shuffled some of the Network responsibilities around.  Below are the Networks each affiliate representative will be responsible for this upcoming season:

Keith Kowalski

Army, Bowling Green, Chattanooga, Clemson, Maine, Missouri Valley Conference, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Southern Illinois, Toledo

Brittany Heck

Indiana, Iowa, Iowa State, Kansas State, Minnesota, Missouri, Northern Iowa, Purdue, Wisconsin

Adam Froidl

Louisiana Tech, Memphis, Mississippi State, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Tulsa

Ryan Suttenfield

Boise State, Fresno State, Idaho, Montana, Montana State, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon State, Utah State, Wyoming

Aaron Worsham, our Vice President of Affiliate Relations and Operations, will continue plying his affiliate relations craft by working with San Diego State, San Jose State, Stanford and Xavier along with focusing on flagship partnerships around the country.   Finally, Jeff Tarman at Penn State and Tom Roberts at Alabama will handle affiliate relations and also play important roles on the broadcasts for their respective schools.    

Personally, I’m very excited about taking over new Networks this season.  I am especially eager about taking over the reigns of the Clemson Tiger Sports Network for the first time since 2002.  In July of that year we were awarded the multi-media rights to Clemson. I was sent out to renew and grow the Network with less than two months before the first football game of the season – it was a whirlwind trip but very successful.  Ryan Suttenfield will get to enjoy the beauty of the mountainous west region as he begins a three week trip covering the states of Utah, Idaho and Montana in mid-April and will then head out to Oregon in May…we’ll encourage him to take his camera.  Brittany Heck maintains her Midwestern roots by adding the Indiana Hoosier and Purdue Boilermaker Networks while Adam Froidl will add Oklahoma and Oklahoma State to his stable of Big XII schools along with Louisiana Tech, Memphis and Tulsa.

The collective gasp you heard on Monday morning was from our Sports Operations staff in Jefferson City, MO as they came up for air between the two weeks of conference basketball tournaments and the beginning of the post-season men’s and women’s basketball tournaments.   Last week our Networks around the country aired 225 broadcasts with 135 of those broadcasts coming out of our Jefferson City studio. 

As you’ll be able to see on this video (Tournament Memos), it’s a yearly tradition to put the tournament memos detailing each teams possible broadcast times and dates on our Executive Producers (Keith Sampson) wall.  Last week we had so many memos posted that it spanned his entire window offering a wall of tournament possibilities.  The process of formulating all of these broadcasts is like a giant jigsaw puzzle as several steps need to be taken to ensure that the broadcasts get on the air, much less achieve the quality that we promise our affiliates.  Crew travel, rooms and credentials need to be planned and confirmed, logs need to created, lines need to be ordered, a massive amount of affiliate communication needs to ensue and a littany of other tasks go on behind the scenes to make our broadcasts sound top notch. 

Over the past two weeks we have geared up for several men’s and women’s conference tournament games but have also focused our efforts and attention on baseball and hockey broadcasts as well as coaches shows.  The fun doesn’t stop there as this coming week we have over forty teams participating in post-season basketball tournaments along with several important baseball and hockey game broadcasts. 

Good luck to each team, I’m looking forward to watching the play-in-game tonight as well as some NIT games before the NCAA tournament starts on Thursday.  Oddly enough, once college basketball season ends the following day there is a clock in our office that starts counting down to our first college football broadcast of the 2010 season.  There is no rest for the weary here at Learfield Sports. 

The Ohio Valley, Big South and Horizon League conference tournaments started yesterday which means that ”March Madness” has officially begun for me.  Most people associate “March Madness” with the NCAA tournament, but they are missing some great drama associated with the tournament games played in conferences that historically only receive one bid to the NCAA tournament. 

I know you’ve all seen the games on ESPN and ESPN2 with two less than household teams vying for their conference’ s automatic bid. They’re playing in arenas fractions of the sizes where most major conference tournament games are contested.  You’ve also probably noticed there is a lot of passion in these games. This is a chance for players to play in front of a national audience for probably the first time in their careers and they are forty minutes away from realizing their dream of making the NCAA tournament.  My favorite scene is at the end of the game where the players are locked arm-in-arm as the seconds count down, and they rush the court when the horn blows.  Mind you, there aren’t thousands of fans joining them ala the Cameron Crazies at Duke, but these players just earned a spot in the “Big Dance” and now have a chance to put on Cinderella’s slipper by beating a team from a power conference in the first round of the NCAA tournament.    

I must explain my bias at this point, I went to Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas, and I am a HUGE supporter of the Lumberjacks to this day.  Last year SFA won the Southland Conference tournament earning their first ever NCAA tournament appearance in school history.  I vicariously shared in the players excitement after they beat UT-San Antonio and was equally thrilled to see Stephen F. Austin come up as the thirteen seed to play Syracuse in Miami, Florida during the selection show on CBS.  Most people didn’t give SFA a chance to beat Syracuse (they eventually lost to Syracuse 59-44), but as a fan and alum winning the Southland Conference Tournament was equivalent to winning the National Championship. 

Over the next two weeks take some time to watch one of these games, not only will it help you fill out your brackets but it will also give you another reason to love college basketball.

Evaluations are vital for growth.  I know, evaluations elicit the same excitement as a trip to the dentist.  However, let me continue with that analogy.  When you go see the dentist, he/she is really taking an in depth look to what is going on with your teeth and the best part about it is that they are experts.  It’s pretty hard to get one by the dentist when they ask you if you are flossing daily or brushing multiple times a day, they truly know the effort you are putting into this aspect of your health.  After the dentist has had some time to check things out and ask you some questions they give you their opinion of where you stand and how you can improve (side note: when I was a teenager I had 12 cavities at one visit…my parents were thrilled and my mouth was numb for a month!).  Evaluations in the business world are very similar.  One must make sure that they are getting evaluated by someone in the know.  A good evaluator also takes the time to poke and prod along with asking some educated questions.  Finally, you might not want to hear what the evaluator has to say but nine times out of ten, what they are telling you is accurate and insightful.  At that point you either have an “a-ha” moment or you knew you were supposed to be acting on their suggestion before they even mentioned it.

So let me get down to the motivation of the post.  As you may or may not know we introduced a new affiliate web-site at the start of the 2009 football season.  We’ve taken a lot of pride in this site trying to create optimum communication with our affiliates to ensure that you have all the necessary tools to air a quality broadcast.  Along with going to a paperless system for logs and affidavits we also input several audio pieces and news items to allow our affiliates to be fully engaged with our product. 

Even though we are in the midst of a great college basketball and hockey season and still have plenty of athletic broadcasts yet to be aired we want to know what your thoughts are on our affiliate site.  What items do you use the most?  What would you like to see added for the 2010-2011 athletic season?  What could we change on our affiliate web-site to make it easier for you to carry our programming?

Now that you’ve had a chance to poke and prod our affiliate web-site, how can we manage the affiliate web-site in the future to serve you better?  Email me at kkowalski@learfield.com.

Our affiliate travel season is about to start which means this is by far my favorite part of the year.  Going around the country to visit with affiliates and prospect stations gives us a great chance to tell everyone about our programming face-to-face, but as a side benefit we get to see parts of the country that normally we never would have had a chance to see.  Mind you, I hate the fact that I go through places like Nags Head, North Carolina or Myrtle Beach, South Carolina in a business suit, but every now and then we get to enjoy the cities we visit. 

Every year I think our affiliate reps could write a book with stories concerning their trips.  My most vivid memory from last year has to be the time I spent on a beautiful highway in western North Carolina/Eastern Tennessee.  After finishing my meeting in Bryson City I was well on my way to the Asheville area for my last meeting of the day.  I had been on the road before and wanted to take a different and more scenic route to Asheville.  I knew that my next meeting was two hours away and that my GPS device was screaming at me to stay on the same path.  However, there was a sign pointing to a route going through the mountains that beckoned me saying that Asheville was only 90 some miles away.  I listened to my inner Robert Frost and took the road less traveled.  What a mistake, I ended up getting extremely lost on a very narrow two lane highway that was reminiscent of a roller coaster.  By this time it was me and a ton of joy riding motor-cyclists.  I had no cell phone or GPS service and because the road had so many twists and turns I couldn’t find a spot to turn around. 

I was mad!  I had an important affiliate visit to get to and I was kicking myself for trying to be adventurous.  For literally twenty minutes I kept going and going without finding a single spot to turn around and grew furious because I couldn’t call the GM at my next meeting to let them know I couldn’t make it.  Finally, at some point I just said to heck with it.  I knew I was going to miss the meeting and I was smack dab in the Smoky Mountains.  My attitude changed immediately.  I turned the windows down, threw in a CCR CD and enjoyed a beautiful sunny day in North Carolina (or maybe it was Tennessee at the moment).  Once I finally made it back to the road I was supposed to be on my cell phone coverage and GPS system came back and I called my next appointment in Asheville asking if I could re-schedule.  I’m glad I finally took advantage of this unplanned excursion and the road I was on will go down as one of my most favorite I have ever been on. 

Below are just a few of my other favorites that I’ve had over the years:

Favorite city:  Enterprise, OR – This quaint town with a population of just under two thousand is located in a beautiful area of north-eastern Oregon.  Felt like I could touch the mountains when I was there and the people I met were incredibly friendly. 

Favorite affiliate visit:  Elizabeth City, NC – Went sailing on the Atlantic Ocean with the General Manager in 2002.  Neat story here, the GM signed up with the Tar Heel Sports Network the year before and she did so well selling the local spots that she used her commissions to buy the sail boat we took out.  If any of my affiliates want to top this experience during one of our meetings this spring/summer, please feel free to do so.   

Favorite car accessory:  GPS device – Not sure how business travelers ever went around the country without this device.  I used Map-quest print outs when I first started traveling and can’t believe I never got into an accident trying to figure out exactly where I was.

Favorite restaurant:  Subway – It’s pretty easy to pack on a few pounds when you’re on the road.  We normally don’t get to our hotels until after 8 p.m. and most of the time it is just easier to go by a fast food place.

As we begin our travels, I look forward to finding some new favorites along the way only this time I’ll listen to my GPS device.