Carving Out Niches

Tomorrow, we'll see a couple of brave experiments come to a first test. They might stumble, but I'm pretty sure they won't fail. More important, they represent the digital future for athletic departments.

Both are related to the rapid encroachment of rights holders -- local, conference and national -- onto campus. Long ago the ability to stream live football left Arkansas to various parties. What we own is anything not game, and anything before kickoff (or after).

OK -- let's create a streaming video pregame. For two years, that was just the same video that went to the main scoreboard screen coupled with the audio of football radio pregame.

Tomorrow, we'll have our own little original programing Countdown to Kickoff. Student run and manned through the RazorVision Academy.

The RazorVision Academy is the completion of a dream I laid out for the first time in 2006 to the J-School here. Battling for the concept through 2008 and 2009, here in 2010 it's about to start paying off dividends with the hiring of our dual-appointment sports journalism production assistant professor and director of the RazorVision Academy.

Along with the pregame show for football, they'll do all home soccer, volleyball, softball and track. That refocuses our professional staff onto other sports and into our specialty productions for on-line recruiting. Tons of real-world experience for students, better production for all.

Original experience programing is the untapped future. Big 10 Network vacuums up everything live, along with many other league-wide deals. So what is left? Get creative. We did a nine-part series this summer "Meet the Coaches" that was half sitdown with our assistant coaches and half mic'd up in practice feature. Fans get to know the assistant coaches. Assistant coaches get to talk about things that are important message points to potential recruits. We get a summer series for RazorVision subscribers when there is no other programing. Again, everyone wets their beak.

The other is iHog bringing out audio from football. This is still the beta in many ways, but I'm putting our money, time and engineering into audio streaming to mobile devices.

But I want to see the game, say the fans. Great. ESPN3 and the SEC Digital Network are going to do that either this year or next. They own the rights. And we're not going to dump very significant money into code and effort for something that may exist in our control for only a year.

Audio, however, belongs to the campus. And that's where our niche will be in the third-screen web 3.0 mobile world.