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High School football rant.

F

flytrap

i know I'm oversimplifiying things, and this is just a rant. But I have a few pet peeves about high school football on the radiio, especially around these parts
First. Why can't high schools have their games broadcast on a station that can actually be picked up in the town the school is located? For instance Brandon Football should be on WJFN-Brandon. Pearl should be on WJNT in Pearl. Jackson schools should be on Jackson radio stations. etc. I've heard football turn up in some weird places such as WJSU and low power WLEZ. Northwest Rankin has been heard on WPBQ, which last time I checked can hardly be picked up at Northwest Rankin. I've heard Rankin County schools on WZRX which barely makes it past Pearl at night.

Another pet peeve is one that will never change because of the world we live in today. Broadcasting a game over a cell phone. You have no idea how bad that sounds. Digital cell phones have always sounded like crap. I don't even like talking on them because of the gurgling and the echo. Modern land lines have pretty good audio these days, but people still insist on calling talk shows and ruining it for me because they sound like they are under water. Sports is just tiresome over a cell phone. Especially when they try to broadcast the band playing the National anthem or a halftime show.

BTW. Does anyone remember when small town daytime only stations used to tape the game and play it back on Saturday? I'm not sure if anyone cared because by then everyone already knew who won. Are any stations still doing that?
 
I'm not a sports aficionado but I'm totally with you on the cell phone thing. It's the cheap way out versus buying a wireless setup or using ISDN, I guess? Whatever it is, it sounds HORRIBLE.

Friday night is not the time to listen to radio in Mississippi because ALL local stations to me except MPB are doing games, and almost all of them are on cell phones. Thank heavens I get free music through my satellite TV or I'd go mad on Fridays!
 
Usually the high school's
go for the station that offers the best deal (The Cheapest)

Fortunately for us in Dallas, Only the Rockwall games are cell quality, that is on a Class A Radio Station that does not give a local signal in Rockwall.
 
I quite well recall when daytimers replayed the Fri nite game on Sat AM. That was mostly in the old days when daytimers truly signed off at sunset. Now many of them stay on at night with some low power like 47 watts, and that gets by OK in a small town ... also some of them have FM translators, which helps ... some supplement their night coverage by sending their audio to the local cable system, and it accompanies the bulletin-board or program guide channel.
 
I just heard a replay of a high school game this morning on WSFZ. WSFZ has a decent nightime signal. Not sure why they were doing a rerun unless they had something else on the air friday night. The cell phone thing is the top of the list as one of my pet peeves especially playing the band over a cell phone. I think its fine in an emergency when they have technical problems. As mentioned before. having a game on a radio station that can't be picked up in the town where the school is located is dumb. I think schools should try to get their games on a station nearest the school, or pick one that can be picked up.
 
When i was in school we didn't have cell phones and they had a plain old land line in the press box. it still sounded like a telephone over the air, but at least with old fasioned analog, you could get some half-way decent speech quality audio. But cellphones sound terrible. I can understand them using it at an away game or if they don't have anyway to hook up a "real" phone, but at the home field it would be worth it to wire it correctly.
 
I haven't used this phone in years, but somewhere I have a Kyocera handheld that I used as Verizon prepaid that had a "force to analog" mode built in. If I were a broadcaster, I'd be scouring for a phone like that just to get that clean analog sound on the play-by-play.

Dunno if they would still work, though, seems like I recall hearing where Verizon won permission to start turning off the analog fallback capability of their cell sites.
 
J Alex Bowab said:
I quite well recall when daytimers replayed the Fri nite game on Sat AM. That was mostly in the old days when daytimers truly signed off at sunset. Now many of them stay on at night with some low power like 47 watts, and that gets by OK in a small town ...
Click to expand...

You're assuming they actually limit themselves to their legal 47 watts ;)

I am quite surprised how many daytime station personnel believe it's perfectly legal to run day power on Friday nights to carry football games.

DXers have learned Friday nights during football season are a VERY good time to catch stations they can't ordinarily hear...
 
I ocasionally hear football from some far off places on friday nights. I've heard quite a few on the air way past their bedtimes. Maybe the FCC should just go ahead and grant permission for them to run low power only on friday night as long as they only cover a few miles area, and sign of as soon as the game is over.
 
I heard the Saturday morning broadcast on 930. Not sure what school it was (Ridgeland, maybe?). They do give priority to Jackson Academy, so that's probably the reason why for the Saturday morning broadcast. Also, WYAB aired a game on Saturday morning too. If I'm not mistaken, they usually cover Tri-County Academy in Flora. I don't recall if it was a rebroadcast of the TCA game or not.
 
Many years ago I worked at WVSA in Vernon, AL. and we would replay the game on Saturday morning. The reason was simple. According to the local high schools, if we would broadcast the game, it might hurt the gate on game night. Well after a few more negotiations, we were able to braodcast a playoff game live on a Friday night with our mighty 20 watts, and guess what? The stands were packed and a ton of people brought their radios to the game so they could hear all of the action and not miss anything on the field. And yes for that game a land line was used and it sounded pretty good. But unfortunately, the schools once again decided not to take a chance and decided to once again not allow us to carry the games live. What a shame
 
the golden boy said:
I heard the Saturday morning broadcast on 930. Not sure what school it was (Ridgeland, maybe?). They do give priority to Jackson Academy, so that's probably the reason why for the Saturday morning broadcast. Also, WYAB aired a game on Saturday morning too. If I'm not mistaken, they usually cover Tri-County Academy in Flora. I don't recall if it was a rebroadcast of the TCA game or not.
Click to expand...

Here is how I look at the Saturday morning thing...

I know that to many of us who do not have kids of high school age, replaying a game on Saturday morning makes no sense whatsoever, because the final score is already known. However, if you don't think that Mom, Dad, Grandma, Grandpa, and that kid aren't hovered around the radio on Saturday listening for them to call out said kid's name... you'd better think again! I can promise you that if people are going to hear their kids on the radio, they will listen.

And if a station can sell ten $75 packages on said ballgame, it probably beats anything revenue-wise that they have on the air that morning.

Now when the local team gets beat 80-26.... they probably aren't excited to relive that memory, but there are more people than you would think that listen to that. I've done the games and have seen the reaction. It is interesting to say the least....

Even in some of the bigger markets... in Memphis, I know that used to, whatever game was on WHBQ the night before would be replayed on 1210 AM on Saturday morning. So it isn't limited to Forest, MS or the smallest of markets.
 
Zach said:
I haven't used this phone in years, but somewhere I have a Kyocera handheld that I used as Verizon prepaid that had a "force to analog" mode built in. If I were a broadcaster, I'd be scouring for a phone like that just to get that clean analog sound on the play-by-play.

Dunno if they would still work, though, seems like I recall hearing where Verizon won permission to start turning off the analog fallback capability of their cell sites.
Click to expand...

They all turned off their analog signals...
 
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