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.

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!

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.

This is my 21^st Football Season start up at Learfield.  My, how we have changed the way we do things.   At the risk of sounding old or old fashioned, 21 years ago our staff consisted of two producers, who split many jobs.  Among those are:  affiliate relations, game production, crew preparation and traffic.  We also had an office assistant that helped us as we hand-placed all spots on each network’s log and mailed them out to stations (thank goodness for technology).   That’s three people getting the games for 5 Networks on the air.

Now, our staff included 7 producers who are multi-talented, but zeroed in on specific jobs in our prep.

Matt Brown makes sure our connections for broadcast is set.  Rick Kennedy and Ben Connelly are our imaging guru’s who have developed our sound on your speakers.  Ryan Kormann and Clay Broughton make sure all commercial copy is set and ready to go.  Our broadcast manager Tom Boman has been busy with our Network General Managers, making sure everyone is on the same page.  Our affiliate relations staff (4 people that have worked hard all spring and summer getting the stations together for our product, something you will hear about from their manager, Keith Kowalski from time to time.) and our traffic staff (7 more people, led by Felicia Moore)is getting logs ready for each and every broadcast.   My job to make sure your game day experience is not just good, but the best for not 5, now, but 42 Networks and their broadcasts.  That’s not including our engineers and help we get at many of our flagships and the hundreds of people that make up our broadcast crews.  

A great number of professionals make up Learfield Sports and we all are working together to make that “sound over the speakers” something you can be proud of.   I’m proud of not just how much, but how we have grown from my first season to now.  Enjoy the games and remember, “Go (insert your school here)”!   Keith Sampson 08/09/10

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!

Vince Lombardi

Part Time Temporary-Traffic Assistant

 Must have a positive customer service attitude, be detailed-oriented, well-organized & computer proficient with Microsoft Office Word and Excel applications. We are seeking a person with a team player attitude & excellent oral and written communication skills.

If you know anyone who fits this description and might be interested in this position, please have them contact me at fmoore@learfield.com or call me directly at 573-556-1263.

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!

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.

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.