I'm sitting in the sports information office at Charleston Southern at 5:55 pm and I'm not stressing out. I was looking back on an old blog entry where I detailed the trials and tribulations of getting stories filed to the station and I marvel at how far things have progressed. I got to Charleston at 4:30 pm and was able to preview the game send the piece back to Myrtle Beach by 5:30 pm in plenty of time for our 6pm newscast.
It used to be that we had to have a gameplan to jump through a bunch of hoops to possibly get some kind of story for one show, but now it takes is a laptop computer and internet connection to report from just about any place. Last year, I would have had to furiously sprint from Buccaneer Field House to the ABC station in Charleston and try and get into an edit bay and rush to the back and buy a satellite window and hope that we could dial in the coordinates and have a five minute clock to make it all good.
Tonight, I will connect my camera to the laptop at halftime and the highlights will be in the sports edit bay in Myrtle Beach during the second half. This allows us to bring more information back to the viewer when the biggest sporting events happen.
Sometimes slow connections can make things a challenge, but in time, we should be able to get information back from the field almost anywhere. This is great news for big events like state championship games, NCAA coverage and even places like Darlington. I think it is going to significantly enhance the way we can cover local sports (it already has).
We are getting ready for Signing Day 2010 and should have an update on carolinalive.com sometime this week. We're looking at about six I-A signees and a whole bunch on the lower levels. As always, we will air a 30 minute special on February 3rd at 7:30 pm.
