Industry News: CollegeSwimming.com Launches Free Broadcast Service

SOMERS, Wisconsin, January 29. IT's one thing to watch "Live Results" online. It's quite another to SEE those results live.

CollegeSwimming.com aims to resolve that with the launch of CollegeSwimming.tv.

CollegeSwimming.tv will enable college and universities to broadcast their meets, and coaches' shows online in the highest fidelity. CollegeSwimming.tv gives life to those results and lets parents, alums, fans, and RECRUITS look in on the action live. Any school with a video camera, computer and Internet connection can be set up and broadcasting in as little as 10 minutes. Add a microphone, couple of announcers, and multiple cameras and you've got yourself a professional broadcast team. Combined with CollegeSwimming.com's Live Results service, fans can follow the action at a time and place that's convenient to them. Best of all, the service will be, for the time being, free.

The site debuted last weekend with the broadcast of the Carleton College Mini-Invite.

"We got good feedback from alumni and parents" explained Carleton Sports Information Director David Pape – so much so that the Knights plan on webcasting their Feb. 7 meet against crosstown rival St. Olaf.

This weekend's official launch will be highlighted by a dual meet between #5 Williams and #12 Middlebury College along with the Wisconsin Private College Championships. Next week, CollegeSwimming.tv will turn its lens South to the North Texas-Texas Christian dual meet.

COST
The launch of CollegeSwimming.tv fits with our mission of increasing the exposure and accessibility of college swimming teams. Since our inception, we've worked to make resources available to coaches, teams and readers for free. That's not good for the bottom line, but it is good for the health of our sport. With CollegeSwimming.tv, we've committed thousands of dollars to getting meets on the web. So here's our plan: We're going to let schools broadcast every single meet FOR FREE until the money runs out or a big sponsor comes along (which, given the economy, we're not counting on). Even after the money runs dry, we'll subsidize the costs to the point that a conference could webcast its championship meet for less than half the price of a new technical suit.

SERVICE
CollegeSwimming.com has partnered with Stretch Internet to create CollegeSwimming.tv. Stretch is a name familiar to college athletics and was chosen because of their insistence on customer service. From the moment a meet is scheduled, to the end of the broadcast, they provide schools with the resources and expertise to get their meet online. If something goes wrong or you have questions, you've got a person on the phone who can help – not a computer or a call center half-way around the world. Set-up for Saturday's Private College Championship literally took less than five minutes.

QUALITY
Meets and coaches' shows are broadcast using highest fidelity in video streaming – QuickTime Video. Widely adopted by Hollywood for its on-line trailers, QuickTime offers the highest possible fidelity in video streaming without slowing down viewers' connections. Neither Windows Media Player or Real Player offer the video quality.

GET STARTED
Schools and conferences interested in steaming their championship meet should e-mail webcast@collegeswimming.com with:
* Your name, e-mail and phone number;
* Your institution;
* Opponent or meet name;
* Meet date; and
* Meet time.

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