Dick Durost, the executive director of the Maine Principals Association, said he was happy with the television coverage of the high school basketball tournaments and is hoping the Northeast Sports Network and the Maine Public Broadcasting Network will return to do games next season.
The MPA already has a seven-year deal in place with the Atlanta-based National Federation of State High School Associations Network to livestream the quarterfinals: two more years on the current contract and a five-year extension. The NFHS Network is a subscription service.
The Northeast Sports Network, based in Lyndonville, Vermont, streamed the semifinals and regional championship games and MPBN televised and streamed the 10 state championship games. Both were free and each had a one-year deal with the MPA.
“We were pleased with all three [organizations],” said Durost. “They were all great to work with.
“I was at games the entire week, so I didn’t get much chance to watch any games [on the Internet or television], but I assumed by the lack of emails and phone calls that people were pleased with it,” Durost added.
Durost said he expects to discuss future coverage with NSN and MPBN “very soon.”
“If there was a statewide television entity that wanted to talk to us about doing the semifinals and the regionals finals as MPBN did in past years, we’ll certainly be open to conversation,” said Durost.
However, he added that he “couldn’t imagine” any television stations with a national affiliation being able to televise semifinal, regional final or state championship games.
Cory Morrissey, director of marketing, public relations and corporate support for MPBN, said they were “excited” about how things went and said, “I know our team wants to do it again. It would be great to do. We love doing it.”
He said there were a few glitches during the live streaming.
He noted that the audio was garbled for 10 or 15 minutes of one of the Class B state finals on Friday night before it was fixed, and the Class A girls game between Lawrence of Fairfield and York lost the video for much of the second half.
Morrissey explained that during the York-Lawrence game, the problem was that its streaming service adopted a new policy that allowed for “just one stream per account.”
“We didn’t know about it, and it wasn’t an issue until the second half of the game,” he said. “We called tech support and they told us we could only have one stream at a time. So the MPBN team quickly opened a second MPBN account and it was smooth sailing from that point on.
“Other than that, the broadcasts were flawless,” said Morrissey. “Our slow motion and instant replay worked well. We were getting 3,000 to 4,000 viewers watching each of our live-streamed games.”
MPBN will receive the TV numbers in March.
Morrissey said a collaboration with the Time Warner Cable Network and the New England School of Communications was very helpful in their ability to cover the 10 state championship games at the Cross Insurance Arena in Portland, the Augusta Civic Center and the Cross Insurance Center in Bangor.
But they did eventually reach an agreement with the MPA to carry the state championship games and Morrissey said they were able to use their own personnel and hire freelancers to provide complete coverage of the 10 games.