Channel 4 takes gamble on the popularity of prep football
By: John Maffei - North County Times | Wednesday, August 30, 2006 11:38 AM PDT ∞
The schedule:
Aug. 31: Oceanside at Helix
Sept. 7: Bogalusa (La.) vs. Bonita Vista at Southwestern College
Sept. 14: Poway at El Capitan
Sept. 21: Monte Vista at West Hills
Sept. 28: Valley Center at Mission Hills
Oct. 5: Ramona at Escondido
Oct. 12: Steele Canyon at Valhalla
Oct. 19: Chula Vista at Sweetwater
Oct. 26: Mar Vista at Hilltop
Nov. 2: Carlsbad at Rancho Buena Vista
Nov. 9: Cathedral Catholic vs. St. Augustine at Southwestern College
NOTE -- All games live at 7 p.m. except for the Sept. 21 and Sept. 28 games, which will air immediately following the conclusion of Padres games.
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Turn on the lights and gather around the television set. The show is about to begin.
For the first time since San Diego County high schools began playing football more than 100 years ago, there will be a prime-time TV Game of the Week.
Starting with tonight's Oceanside-Helix game, Channel 4 -- yes, the same station that carries Padres games -- will televise 11 Thursday night regular-season games, with the majority carried live at 7 p.m.
Channel 4 also will televise three playoff games as well as the championship quadruple-header on Dec. 4 at Qualcomm Stadium.
"Outside of the Padres, the high school football and basketball playoffs are the highest-rated, most-watched thing we do," said Dennis Morgigno, station manager for Cox Communications and Channel 4. "So we were very receptive to the idea of expanding our coverage to the regular season."
The idea of televising a game of the week was the brainchild of CIF San Diego Section commissioner Dennis Ackerman.
"The light came on about four or five years ago," Ackerman said. "The CIF has a great relationship with Cox. They like doing high school games and got great feedback from doing the playoffs. So the next logical thing was to take this to a weekly basis."
There was one major hurdle, however.
Since Cox Communications is a cable company, its signal has to be sent out on fiber-optic cable lines.
Qualcomm Stadium, Petco Park, San Diego State's Cox Arena and the University of San Diego's Jenny Craig Pavilion have fiber-optic lines in place. On most high-school campuses, however, fiber optics are about as foreign as health food.
The idea of regionalizing games -- setting up fiber-optic lines at Escondido High in the North County, Torero Stadium in the city, Grossmont High in the East County and Southwestern College in the South Bay -- was discussed. But schools didn't want to give up a home game for a contest at a neutral site.
So up stepped ITV and Channel 16, which owns a microwave truck. With that truck, Channel 4 is able to bounce a live signal out of just about any location in the county.
"That truck is what makes it work," said Jason Bott, who will be the producer for Channel 4's Game of the Week series.
The tradeoff is that Channel 4 gets the rights to the live game and two replays, while Channel 16 gets a pair of replays, giving the Thursday night Game of the Week five exposures.
But why Thursday night?
"Because we felt there was potential for a larger audience," Morgigno said. "If you carry a Friday game, people are out at one of the other 40 or 50 prep games."
There are way too many college games on Saturday for a prep game to work. Sunday and Monday are out of the question because of the NFL. And Tuesday or Wednesday didn't give teams enough practice or recovery time.
Plus, there isn't a lot of sports-programming competition on Thursday nights.
ESPN has Thursday night college games, but many aren't from major conferences. The NFL Network has a Thursday night package late in the season, but not everyone has digital cable to get those games. And most college games will start more than two hours before the prep games -- a time when many people in the workforce are stuck in traffic on their way home.
Morgigno and Ackerman believe a 7 p.m. kickoff on Thursday is perfect, giving fans time to get home, eat dinner, then relax and watch football.
According to Student Sports president Mark Tennis, the San Diego Section's game of the week concept, while not unique, is certainly in the minority.
"There are a lot of different approaches to high school football throughout the country," Tennis said.
For example, Tennis said, Tennessee and Illinois have good regional telecast packages, while games in Georgia are carried on a PBS-type station.
"In Texas, there are games on in the Dallas and Houston areas, but not on a regular basis. The same goes in Florida," Tennis said.
In California, Tennis said Sacramento is talking about a game of the week idea. And Stockton shows some games.
The Southern Section has a deal with Fox Sports Net Prime Ticket for a minimum of 10 games a season as well as the Division I championship. But games will vary, with some on Thursday and some on Friday.
Nationally, ESPN will carry 13 high school football games this season. But they are on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, with the bulk of the games on ESPNU -- a network not available in most areas. Only three of the 13 contests are on either ESPN or ESPN2.
"High school football is huge in San Diego," Morgigno said. "We think we have something special here. We want to carry the great rivalry games. We want to create a buzz with these games."
The buzz started early on the Oceanside High campus.
"This is a great way to show off San Diego football and our team," said Oceanside quarterback Steve Carroll. "And Oceanside-Helix is a great way to start. Hopefully, people will watch. I would think most teams are like ours. We have a team dinner on Thursdays. I would think we're going to sit around eating spaghetti and watch the high school game. I would guess a lot of other teams will do the same."
Asked about the pressure of playing on TV, Steve Carroll was honest.
"Once we kick off, the pressure is off," Carroll said. "Once you're playing, you don't notice the cameras. The pressure is before the game. There is more hype, and the routine for a TV game is a little different."
Pirates receiver Maurice Patterson agrees with his quarterback.
"The TV people have been to practice, talked to players," Patterson said. "That was different, and the guys were pretty excited. But Coach (John) Carroll is telling us to relax and that this is just another game. But it's not. We're all pretty excited. I would guess a lot of players will record this game, play it back a ton of times."
Major commitment made
Bott likes that idea and said there could be bonuses from the TV games down the road.
On ABC's telecast of last year's Rose Bowl, former Helix High running back Reggie Bush, the Heisman Trophy winner at USC, was shown doing his thing for the Highlanders. And in the corner of the screen, on national TV, was the Channel 4 logo from a CIF championship game.
"You can't buy exposure like that," Bott said. "After this season, instead of just a few games with highlights of great players, we'll have a closet full of them."
As is the norm for Cox Communications, it won't commit to a project unless it can be done first class. And the high school football games will be first class.
Cox will use five to six cameras for every game and 20-25 people on the telecasts. The cost per game will be between $15,000-18,000.
"That's a major commitment," Morgigno said. "And right now, we're not close to covering our costs. It's not that important that we make money on this project because we believe this is important programming for the community. We are a business, though, and so this is only a one-year deal now. We'd like to at least get close to covering our costs.
"We've heard from some advertisers who like the concept, but want to see the quality of the telecasts. I hope somebody steps up because we'd like to sustain this. In the long term, though, we can't lose money forever."
The bottom line, Morgigno said, is that Channel 4 officials know there is interest in high school football. Ratings for the CIF finals through the years have proven that.
"We believe there is so much potential that once people see the quality of the games, this idea will grow," he said. "We really think that audiences and advertising will grow as the season progresses."
The opener featuring Oceanside at Helix is a blockbuster, and the other games involving North County schools -- Poway at El Capitan on Sept. 14, Valley Center at Mission Hills on Sept. 28, Ramona at Escondido on Oct. 5 and Cathedral Catholic vs. St. Augustine on Nov. 9 -- all have the earmarks of being great contests.
The second game of the season, which features Bogalusa High of Louisiana vs. Bonita Vista, is a fund-raiser for the public schools of Washington Parish, La., to help rebuild and replace facilities damaged by Hurricane Katrina. Channel 4 will help by running trailers on how to make donations.
And while some quality teams were left off the schedule, Ackerman said a lot of thought and many hours went into coming up with a schedule.
First, Ackerman wanted each section of the county to be represented at least two times and assigned each major conference certain weeks. But when officials for the City Schools refused to let their teams play on a weeknight, other areas in the county got a bonus.
"The City Schools not being involved is very disappointing," Ackerman said. "I think when officials representing those schools see the quality of the games, the excitement we think the games will generate on campus, they'll change their minds for next season."
Bott explained there were other factors in determining the schedule.
There is a microwave "dead zone" on the Interstate 15 corridor, from just north of Mira Mesa to the south end of Escondido. As a result, Poway, Rancho Bernardo, Mt. Carmel and Westview won't host a home TV game.
Coastal neighbors Torrey Pines and Cathedral Catholic are in another dead zone, and Bott isn't sure Channel 4 can get a signal out of Ramona, Vista or San Pasqual.
"We won't have a backup game, so we have to make sure we can get a signal out of every site we pick," Bott said. "Just to make sure, I spent several days driving the truck to the sites we chose, just to make sure we won't have any problems."
There were other scheduling problems.
Torrey Pines coach Ed Burke doesn't want to give up a day of preparation and upset his team's routine, and he informed Channel 4 officials the Falcons wouldn't play on Thursdays.
Oceanside coach John Carroll only agreed to play on Thursday because the Pirates were chosen to play the first game. Oceanside's preparation schedule wasn't disrupted, and the Pirates get an extra day to prepare for their second game.
Some schools don't have adequate lights or facilities to host a game, so they were eliminated.
"Take Santa Fe Christian, for example," Bott said. "They have a great program. Brian Sipe (the former San Diego State All-American and NFL MVP) is the coach. But most of their games are on Saturday afternoons because they don't have lights."
No cutting corners
Bott estimates Channel 4 will commit about 150 to 200 man-hours to each game, including announcers Steve Quis and John Weisbarth.
The Cox production truck will arrive on campus about 11 a.m. on game day -- nearly eight hours before kickoff. The rest of the crew will arrive in increments throughout the day.
"We need to get on campus early to get the best spot for our trucks," Bott said. "If we get a very favorable spot, we might be able to mount a stationary camera on top of the truck."
That production truck, a 40-footer, uses its own generator for a power source.
"We'll need to get together with the athletic director and the campus facility guys so we can pull cables, set up the press box for our announcers, put in monitors for them," Bott said.
Bott understands that at high school fields, his announcers might have to be on top of the press box or at a table next to a press box. High school stadiums weren't exactly built to accommodate TV.
"We want to do this right," Bott said. "We will do it right. We don't want to cut corners and have it come back to bite us. Our commitment to this project is the same as it is to the Padres, Aztecs or USD."
Unlike the Padres, Aztecs or Toreros, high schools don't have sports information directors. Information that is so readily available on the internet for professional and college games isn't nearly as accessible for prep contests.
"We're going to have to rely on the coaches and newspapers for rosters and stats," Bott said. "We're going to have to ferret out a lot of information that is handed to us on professional or college games."
So Morgigno said Channel 4 plans to be sensitive to people stories as well as the history and tradition of the schools involved.
Channel 4 and the CIF are in the second of a three-year contract. And while there is no commitment to a Game of the Week beyond this season, both Ackerman and Morgigno said this year's football trial balloon could lead to a long-term deal -- and perhaps a basketball Game of the Week.
"You never know what might happen," Morgigno said. "In TV language, this could have legs."
Contact John Maffei at (760) 740-3547 or jmaffei@nctimes.com. To comment, go to nctimes.com.
