Community access is all about local
engagement, and North Metro Television in Blaine, Minnesota is no exception.
With two stations – one for covering local news, events and sports, and one for
airing locally produced content – North Metro is a dedicated stream to what’s
fresh and exciting in Blaine and the surrounding areas. But how can a station
engage an audience with delayed programming?
That’s exactly the challenge that Matt
Waldron, North Metro’s sports production director, faced.
North Metro covers local high school sports
games, which are popular with the community and draw a large audience. However,
due to equipment restraints, Waldron and his team were limited to recording
sports games and playing them after the fact, sometimes up to two or three
hours later. Potential audiences frequently already knew scores and game
outcomes by the time North Metro could air the footage.
“We knew we needed to provide our audience
with live coverage,” Waldron said. “With sports, especially, if you already
know what happens, there’s no reason to watch.”
“We needed a solution that would allow us to
stream live from any location we needed it to, while providing consistently
high picture quality at a very low delay.”
Waldron knew he wanted to invest in bonded
cellular technology. But it took him a year of searching and testing bonded
cellular products before he settled on LiveShot. “I was initially impressed by
the high quality visuals,” he said, “but the low delay impressed me the most as
we continued to use the product – over an AT&T network, using an antenna,
we can usually expect about a half second of delay.”
“That’s as live as it gets,” said Waldron.
In addition to being able to broadcast sports
games live, North Metro Television has also been able to plan programming that
they had never before thought possible. “We used it for our November 2014
election coverage,” said Waldron, and instead of recording their coverage and
playing it back a few hours later with a tape delay, North Metro’s news team
was able to get out into the field live for the first time.
“The built-in IFB was very useful for that
[event],” said Waldron. “I could communicate from the studio directly with the
cameraman and the talent in the field, without a cellphone or any other
additional hardware.”
This summer, North Metro Television is
planning to introduce new live programming to their schedule. “We’re going to
broadcast important local events that we’ve never been able to cover before,”
said Waldron. “Local parades, which are very important to our community and
happen often during the summer, are now something we can cover live – this is
really exciting for members of our community who can’t necessarily be there to
see the event. We’re going to be able to bring the parade to them, in real
time.”
“Aside from going HD, being able to put our
channel on the air from any location is probably the biggest thing to happen
here in quite a while.”
For more information about North Metro Television, visit their website at http://northmetrotv.com/.
To learn more about LiveShot, visit our website or contact us here.
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