So the first live webcast is in the books.  I give it an 85.
>>  We started late, with just two minutes to go in the first half.  We had a "technical issue".  A replacement cable was missing and was sitting 15 miles away in the office.  So we fired it up as fast as we could and got on...well....not cleanly, but we got on.
>> A good broadcast once it got going.  While I drove back for the replacement cable, my color guy kept track of the game.  When we hit the air, he filled everyone in on the scoring and the trend of the game.
>> The sponsors got plenty of mentions, and it was a great game, won by the team we're following, 42-35 on a late touchdown.
We threw the following at the game:
>> A two-person announce crew.  I had been trying to get one of my broadcasting friends to do the game, but could not.  So I did it myself.  I recruited my son's friend to do the color.  He's a broadcasting student and a stat geek who knows more about the players than the coach does.  He did a creditable job.
>> I put my son on the sideline with our home video camera (a Panasonic VHS-C hand-held),  to get video highlights.  He'd never shot sports before, so I kept my expectations very low.  I wanted video because the still cameras we have do not work under night/outdoor lighting conditions.
>> My son and his friend the color guy each got $20 for their efforts.
>> My sports editor, who would have covered the game anyway, was there with audio gear for the first time and did his post-game interviews in audio as well as for the text piece.
We posted a text story, a page with a video player for the two minutes of pretty good video my son got, a page with audio comments, and a page with the archive of the live game broadcast.  So we got a lot out of a little.
 
Sponsorships more than covered our costs (remember, live streaming thru ustream.tv is free), other than the extreme amount of time it took to get the first broadcast organized from a technical standpoint.  Despite the problems, we proved the viability of local broadcasts.  Microcasts, anyone?

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