GITV crew members, front, Chuck Wegmann, Buster Crumpton and Chris Crumpton look on during the Classic City Championship. Photo by Chad Rhym.
By KEVIN MOBLEY – Web Writer
Gladiator Internet TV, an athletics broadcast program for Clarke Central High School through the PlayON! Sports Network, has evolved since its conception in 2011.
Sports fans frequently turn on their TV and tune in to watch their favorite teams or the game of the week. Within the last decade, through new technological advances, sports broadcasting has extended its reach to encompass the Internet and mobile devices.
Clarke Central High School dove headfirst into the digital broadcast field through the vision of athletic director Dr. Jon Ward. He received a flyer from the Georgia High School Association about a new project – a partnership with the PlayON! Sports Network that would give schools in the state the capability to broadcast their athletic events online.
The GITV crew looks on during halftime at the Classic City Championship. Photo by Chad Rhym.
Thus, Gladiator Internet TV, known more commonly as GITV, was born.
The PlayON! Sports Network, which describes itself as “the nation’s premier high school sports media company,” would provide the bandwidth for CCHS, as well as high schools across the entire country, to conduct its own broadcasts.
Ward then met with former CCHS broadcast teacher Kenneth Gibbs, who volunteered to handle the technical component of the production.
“At that time, we had the video broadcasting class taught by Gibbs,” Ward said. “He thought it was a good thing. He agreed to become involved because (technology) is totally out of my realm of knowledge.”
Shortly thereafter, Ward and former CCHS varsity football head coach Leroy Ryals targeted alumnus, parent and longtime supporter Buster Crumpton about being a play-by-play announcer for the broadcasts. Crumpton, at the time, was handling the duties of public address announcer for the varsity baseball team.
“I thought (Ward and Ryals) were joking,” Crumpton said. “One, up to that point I’d only done baseball. Two, I didn’t have anybody playing on the football team, but Ward just said, ‘No, you’re the guy I want. I know you enough to know that you know the history of the school, you bleed red and gold and I just think you’d do a good job of it.’”
In order for Crumpton to accept the job, he had one condition for Ward.
“As a matter of fact, Ward and Ryals had approached me just doing it by myself,” Crumpton said. “I told them I wouldn’t do it unless I could have Chuck Wegmann in there with me as my tag-team partner.”
Wegmann, Crumpton’s close friend from their days of watching their respective sons, Chaz and Nick, play baseball for the Gladiators, would now join Crumpton in the booth. There was one more aspect left to fulfill – the duties of sideline reporting. That duty would be filled by Ward’s wife, Holly, who maintained an interest in broadcast journalism that dated back to high school.
“When Coach Ward came home and said, ‘We’ve got this great new thing; we’re going to do GITV. We’re going to be able to broadcast our sporting events,’ I was like, ‘I never ask you for anything, please let me do something with this,’” Holly said. “It was something that I really loved and was passionate about.”
Though Crumpton, Wegmann and Holly still contribute to GITV, the format has evolved significantly since its beginnings.
“The first year we didn’t have the website. The second year, (Crumpton) took the initiative to create a website that goes along with it, and I know that’s something out of a labor of love,” Jon Ward said. “It’s provided a new realm of viewership.”
Another change came to GITV when Gibbs was relocated to the Athens Community Career Academy in the fall of 2012. Crumpton’s brother, Chris, replaced Gibbs as GITV’s technician.
“(Chris Crumpton) has all of the expertise in the technological engineering part, and knew how to get the computer to be able to do what we needed it to do to make all that happen,” Holly said.
Jon agrees that the addition of Chris to crew has resolved any past technical problems, and that he has accelerated the pace at which GITV has grown.
“We were able to escape any boundaries we thought we had with the equipment,” Jon said. “The production of what we were doing was really enhanced when Chris came on board.”
[pullquote]“I think (GITV) has made (the Athens sports community) much more global, international and connected. People who are connected to Clarke Central that may not live in Athens have been able to be a part of our sports community more closely. Former players, when they go to college, watch the game on GITV on Friday nights.”
–Holly Ward,
GITV’s sideline reporter[/pullquote]
Once GITV added Chris’s innovational skill, the group was able to expand and develop into a package based not only on the online broadcasting of CCHS athletic events, but also included a website that encompassed weekly talk shows and regularly updated standings, rankings and results.
“We created the website and the name ourselves,” Jon said. “Some schools that do it, it’s just PlayON! Sports that you go on, but Buster and Chris (Crumpton) really jazzed it up a little bit.”
Though Buster, Wegmann, Chris and Holly provided the core of GITV, the program was aided by interns from the University of Georgia. One of these was Josh Miles, a UGA graduate student who was earning his Masters degree from Grady College in Telecommunications.
“Jon asked me to come over to (CCHS) so I could meet up with him, and see all the stuff they had for GITV and how they broadcasted the games,” Miles said. “I said, ‘Wow, this is a really cool setup,’ and I knew for sure that I wanted to be involved with it.”
Miles’ duties included play-by-play and color commentary in the fall of 2012 for the CCHS C-team, JV and varsity football games, as well as play-by-play in the winter for the varsity boys and girls basketball teams. Jon Ward feels that Miles and other assistants have been crucial to the success of GITV, as the crew members are all volunteers.
“I think the driving force are those people who are devoting their time to promote and, in a sense, celebrate Clarke Central’s student-athletes and their athletic program,” Jon said. “I think without them, it would be nonexistent.”
Under Chris’s leadership as technician, GITV has invested in a video mixer to incorporate various camera angles and has implemented a more strictly updated scorebook and refined graphic design.
“The main thing with (Jon) Ward is he just wanted us to be better than everybody else out there,” Buster said. “There’s a lot of schools that do (broadcasting), and they don’t have play-by-play, or they have a camera, but the cameraman won’t move with the action. We just try to take a lot of pride in presenting it the best way we can.”
The GITV broadcasts have also been enhanced by the press box facilities, constructed in 2006, that the group obtained after the CCHS broadcast program left to join the ACCA. This included a studio in which to film the weekly shows and a broadcasting booth for Buster and Wegmann to call games.
“(The facilities) are top notch,” Buster said. “We go on the road all the times to do other games and Clarke Central is probably the only press box that’s actually hard-wired with the internet. That’s why our home games have so much better of a broadcast than the away games.”
With the dedication of the staffers and the continuous upgrade of the broadcast to be more “TV-like,” as Buster said, GITV has had success in conveying its production to the targeted audience – CCHS family members and former players.
“I think (GITV) has made (the Athens sports community) much more global, international and connected,” Holly said. “People who are connected to Clarke Central that may not live in Athens have been able to be a part of our sports community more closely. Former players, when they go to college, watch the game on GITV on Friday nights.”
Nevertheless, there has been a debate between high school athletic directors about the broadcast programs through the PlayON! Sports Network.
“There was a discussion, and there still is a discussion, between athletic directors whether or not (broadcasting) is a good thing or a bad thing because if you’re broadcasting live, and that’s something we’ve wanted to do from the get-go, then somebody might stay at home instead of paying seven dollars to come see a game,” Jon Ward said.
This year, schools participating in the PlayON! Sports Network project also had the option to waive their $1,500 licensing fee, and instead restrict the broadcasts to pay-per-view as an alternate source of revenue.
“We decided we wanted to pay the $1,500 fee and allow our viewers to watch it free,” Jon Ward said. “We don’t make money off of it, whatever we take in pretty much balances out with upgrading equipment, paying the licensing fee and things of that nature.”
While aware of concerns of other athletic directors around the state, Ward did not see GITV causing a similar conflict.
“I felt (the discussion) really wasn’t an issue,” Dr. Ward said. “The people that would really want to come see the game would come see the game, and what we were doing was to provide an opportunity for those who could not come see the game live to watch the game live whenever we’ve been able to broadcast it live.”
In spite of debates on efficacy of the broadcast and advances made since its inception, Miles feels GITV still has room for growth.
“A lot of people don’t even know about GITV,” Miles said. “Maybe there could be more advertisement on it or more marketing in terms of getting the word out there to people. I would assume a lot of people don’t even know what GITV is or GITV does.”
Moving forward, the goals for GITV in its expansion are to increase development in CCHS athletic events besides football, to progress alongside the advancements of technology and to strengthen student involvement. The consensus of the crew is that they are making strides in the first two areas, but are lacking in the third.
GITV sideline reporter Holly Ward speaks with CCHS varsity kickers coach Paul Waller. Photo by Chad Rhym.
“I think we should do a better job of communicating with the students of (GITV)’s accessibility,” Holly said. “I would love to see more students actually participate in learning and production.”
Though the field of online broadcasting of high school athletic events, and sporting events at all levels, will continue to evolve and grow, one thing remains the same: the announcers’ passion.
“High school football and high school sports are a huge part of life and growing your good character as a young man or a young woman,” Miles said. “It was really cool to be a part of that even as just a simple caller of the game.”
