Cashing In On Sports
Must See TV
By Guy Junker

High school football on television is hardly new. Decades ago, WQED pioneered the idea locally. But this fall, TV lights hit area stadiums like never before, with Comcast, Adelphia and FSN televising games weekly.

Overkill?

Nope. Not if ratings, advertising dollars and viewer interest are any indication.

Adelphia has been doing games since 1988. Comcast started last year. But FSN made a splash because they broadcast games live. The network has been doing the WPIAL championship games for years, but the regular season is a new venture. When they decided on a Thursday schedule, some schools sent letters lobbying to be included. But others weren't interested in playing on Thursdays. Neither was WPIAL executive director Larry Hanley.

"On a local, state and national basis, we are against Friday night college football because we like to think of that as our night. So it seems disingenuous to turn around and move some of our games to Thursdays for television purposes," Hanley says.

John Stroh, director of programming for FSN, says, "The thinking was that our target audience would most likely be attending high school games on Friday nights, so we wanted Thursdays to be focused on the only game in town."

The idea worked.

"From an advertising and sales standpoint, it's been a humongous success," says Stroh.

FSN has averaged a 1.49 rating on their games with a high of 2.0 for Beaver Falls-Aliquippa. That's more than 17,000 homes and about 38,000 people. Comcast also gets a tremendous response to their games. The unique video on-demand available to Comcast customers means they can watch any of the broadcasts from the entire season anytime they want. They can be paused, stopped, or restarted just like watching a DVD or VHS tape.

"Our on-demand high school football broadcasts are by far the most popular and best locally produced Comcast product in the country," says director of community affairs Frank Polito.

It may not be the NFL, but it's not cheap. FSN budgets about $22,000 for each live Thursday telecast, compared to about $8,000 for Comcast's Friday games, produced for replay. Adelphia has the smallest budget. Producer Joe Magnu calls it, "more of a good community thing."

The only time the cable companies have to pay rights fees is to the WPIAL when FSN broadcasts the championship games from Heinz Field.

Expect changes next season, especially with a sale pending for Comcast to buy Adelphia.

But one thing is apparent: televised games are here to stay, already a part of tradition-rich high school football in western Pennsylvania.