
Fox Sports Southwest Puts Texas-Size Spotlight on High School With Texas Football Days' The RSN will deploy MTVG trucks, LiveU backpacks for marathon coverage By Jason Dachman, Chief Editor
Tuesday, August 28, 2018 - 4:03 pm
Print This Story
Story Highlights
When it comes to high school football, it simply doesn't get any bigger than Texas. And, with that in mind, Fox Sports Southwest (FSSW) is rolling out Texas Football Days across the state this week for the second consecutive season. The week-long gridiron celebration will culminate on Friday when Fox Sports Southwest produces 15 straight hours of Texas high school football coverage, including full-fledged live multicamera productions at two high-profile games and live look-ins at 10 others taking place simultaneously across the state.
Fox Sports Southwest is bringing back Texas Football Days for a second year with onsite studio shows at two high school games.
We're a huge region that covers six pro teams, and, for us, high school football is our seventh pro team, says Fox Sports Southwest Executive Producer Jason Walsh. The passion for the sport in Texas has been hyped in the movies and TV, but, until you see it in person, you don't fully appreciate it. Our high school championship games even outdraw some college bowl games. So we want to make sure, from a coverage and production standpoint, that we're doing justice to what we believe is a state treasure intrinsic to the towns and communities of this state. For us, it's an honor to be a part of something that is such a big part of Texas heritage.
A-Game Coverage for the High School Gridiron
Last year's Texas Football Days marked the first time University Interscholastic League (UIL) Friday-night regular-season high school football games were broadcast live in Texas. FSSW SVP/GM Steve Simpson helped lead the charge to obtain a special exemption from the league's legislative council and then tasked Walsh and his team to create a unique coverage model that appealed to fans across the state.
After a successful inaugural year in 2017, the Texas Football Days production will be centered on full productions out of Mobile TV Group's 27HDX and 38HDX mobile units in Brownwood (Brock vs. Brownwood at Gordon Wood Stadium at 5:30 p.m. CT) and Longview (Lufkin vs. Longview at Lobo Stadium at 8:30 p.m.), respectively. Each production will deploy a dozen cameras.
FSSW will also produce a one-hour Football Friday pregame show from Brownwood and a two-hour High School Scoreboard Live postgame show from Longview. In all, FSSW will air 15 hours of coverage, beginning at 10:30 a.m. on Friday.
For the first time, teams involved in the marquee doubleheader will be competing to take home a Texas Football Days trophy to commemorate the official start to the 2018 season.
The 12 cameras for each production comprise six hard cameras (two high-speed cameras from 27HDX and four from 38HDX), four handhelds (including two RF - one Steadicam and one handheld), a jib, and a drone.
We will have a camera complement similar to one of our bigger A-level college football games, says Walsh. We invest a lot into these broadcasts because it's about so much more than the game itself. It's about capturing the fans and the cheerleaders and the bands and everything that surrounds Texas high school football. We've added RF cameras, including a Steadicam, as well as live drone feeds for aerial coverage to make sure that we bring people into what it's really like to be there.
Across the State: LiveU Backpacks Go Live From 10 Schools
In addition to rolling out MTVG trucks for the two marquee games, FSSW will deploy 10 LiveU portable IP/bonded-cellular backpack systems to provide live look-ins from 10 other stadiums across the state.
Line cuts from both MTVG truck productions and live feeds from all the LiveU systems will be sent to FSSW's studios, where Walsh, Senior Director Elsy Watkins, and Coordinating Producer Ed Pete will be in the control room integrating the live telecast. The LiveU feeds will be recorded at the studio by Avid AirSpeed systems, and an associate producer will monitor three games apiece and alert the front bench when a big play occurs worthy of a live look-in.
When a big play happens, we will tell the reporter to do a live hit, and we'll B-roll a highlight of the play live on top of that, says Walsh. The tricky part for us was how to integrate all these [LiveU feeds] into the broadcast. So we decided to create a reduced-commercial format featuring sponsorship in each break. The game will stop for a commercial break inside the stadium, but we will actually do a content break on-air using our LiveU [systems] and reporters onsite.
With kickoff times for the live-look-in games staggered throughout the evening, the production team will have the ability to regularly integrate these LiveU feeds into the telecast.
For Texas Football Days, UIL Friday-night regular-season high school football games are broadcast live in Texas.
Our first game starts at 5:30, our second game starts at 8:30, and all the other games start somewhere in between, says Walsh. During your first game, the content coming in will be everything from an interview with a coach to locker-room sound to actual game coverage. We will plan out the first three quarters of the first game pretty much in advance. At that point, once we have our legs under us, we'll be able to see which games are close and which games are blowouts, and then we'll just start to adjust as needed.
FSSW used LiveU units for last year's Texas Football Days production and deploys them regularly for its Texas Rangers coverage and general ENG needs. According to Walsh, the systems have proved highly reliable despite operating in extremely remote areas in East and West Texas.
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
15/06/2025
July 2025 in Dublin, Berlin, Amsterdam & London
Photo: Thea Martre
Music Production for Women (MPW) have announced that they will be running a series of fo...
15/06/2025
Composer/producer launches free virtual instruments
Sulcata Sound is the latest venture of Jason Graves, a two-time British Academy Award-winnning composer,...
14/06/2025
NEW YORK Pluto TV and the All Womens Sports Network have launched a free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) AWSN channel in the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and the Nor...
14/06/2025
NEW YORK and CINCINNATI E.W. Scripps has announced a new, multiyear agreement with the WNBA that will continue Ions regular-season coverage of the league on Fri...
14/06/2025
WASHINGTON The National Association of Broadcasters highlighted the hidden importance of spectrum in the production of major sporting events and described wha...
14/06/2025
WASHINGTON Sunsetting ATSC 1.0, expanding business opportunities for NextGen Broadcast and increasing international adoption of the ATSC 3.0 standard were top o...
14/06/2025
SAN FRANCISCO Samba TV and Acxiom have announced that they will dramatically expand their longstanding relationship....
14/06/2025
July 2025 in Dublin, Berlin, Amsterdam & London
Photo: Thea Martre
Music Production for Women (MPW) have announced that they will be running a series of fo...
14/06/2025
San Francisco State University's School of Cinema Uses Blackmagic Design
Brie Clayton June 13, 2025
0 Comments
More than 40 Blackmagic Design came...
14/06/2025
Boris FX Mocha Pro Adds New AI Tools To Tackle VFX Tasks Fast
Jessie Electa Petrov June 13, 2025
0 Comments
The 2025.5 release helps artists work more...
14/06/2025
AJA Debuts DRM2-Plus Mini-Converter Frame at InfoComm 2025
Brie Clayton June 13, 2025
0 Comments
Next-gen frame addresses diverse rackmount needs wit...
13/06/2025
(L-R) Lindsay Utz, Michelle Walshe, and The Right Honourable Dame Jacinda Ardern attend the 2025 Sundance Film Festival premiere of Prime Minister at Eccles T...
13/06/2025
Photo credit: Atsushi Nishijima
If you're a true lover of rom-coms, chances...
13/06/2025
Pure Drama and Fierce Rivalries set to dominate the world's most iconic spor...
13/06/2025
Johannesburg, 12 June 2025 - The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an a...
13/06/2025
ABILENE. Texas A severe storm knocked down the tower and severely damaged the news studio and main facility of Sinclair-owned KTXS here on Sunday, June 8....
13/06/2025
Berklee's Music Business/Management Department Recognized by the Music Biz A...
13/06/2025
WASHINGTON The ATSC, the Broadcast Standards Association, honored veteran technologist Aldo Cugnini and Clarence Hau, Senior Vice President of Standards, Policy...
13/06/2025
(Editor's note: The 2025 UFL Championship Game between the D.C. Defenders and Michigan Panthers kicks off Saturday, June 14, at 8 p.m. Eastern. The game wil...
13/06/2025
New iPad/iPhone synth App announced
Following on from last year's release of Gradient Synth - which reached #6 on the App Store's Paid Music charts ...
13/06/2025
LONDON Warner Bros. Discovery has announced that HBO Max will launch direct-to-consumer in multiple new countries this July as the streamer becomes available in...
13/06/2025
AI voice transcription and captioning platform Verbit has added a new feature to its Captivate ASR solution the ability to identify specific features in automat...
13/06/2025
WASHINGTON Federal Communications Commission member Anna Gomez has wrapped up two weeks in California visiting broadcasters, television studio executives, enter...
13/06/2025
WASHINGTON The U.S. House of Representatives voted mostly along party lines to approve a rescission package that would cancel $9.4 billion in previously approve...
13/06/2025
At InfoComm 2025, AJA Video Systems announced DRM2-Plus, an intuitive, high-capacity 3RU frame that can neatly house up to 24 AJA Mini-Converters. Tailored to s...
13/06/2025
Cinema advertising leader to leverage AOS and suite of AI-enabled solutions to optimize forecasting, yield management, and streamlined ad sales and operations a...
13/06/2025
Manfrotto has launched the ONE Hybrid Tripod, a new support system designed specifically for professional content creators working with mirrorless cameras acros...
13/06/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that its Media Edge Gateway (MEG), an ATSC 3.0 software-based IRD, now supports Device Security requ...
13/06/2025
LiveU, the global leader in live IP-video contribution, production and distribution solutions, is deepening its commitment to the German-speaking market with th...
13/06/2025
Chaos, the leader in architectural visualisation software, today announces Chaos Corona 13, giving archviz designers new ways to add eye-catching style and flai...
13/06/2025
PALI's Nena Music Video Shot with Blackmagic Design
Brie Clayton June 12, 2025
0 Comments
Blackmagic Cinema Camera 6K and DaVinci Resolve Studio b...
13/06/2025
OddBeast Powers Up iRobot's Newest Roombas with Suite of CGI Launch Assets
Brie Clayton June 12, 2025
0 Comments
The motion design and production ...
13/06/2025
On Chick Coreas Birthday, a Newly Uncovered Archival Release The Visitors, composed by Corea and performed by vibraphonist Gary Burton and pianist Kirill Gers...
13/06/2025
In fulfilment of a recommendation by the Government's Expert Advisory Commit...
13/06/2025
SVG Sit-Down: Backblaze's Gleb Budman Talks Products, Partnerships, and the ...
13/06/2025
SVG Sit-Down: DAZN's Walker Jacobs Calls Streaming the FIFA Club World Cup ...
13/06/2025
New Sponsor Spotlight: Vecima Networks' Paul Strickland on How Improving QoE...
13/06/2025
Pitch Perspective: Where's Next for Specialty Cameras in Soccer? Leaders from Sky Austria and ACS discuss the possibilities of camera placement pitchside B...
13/06/2025
Premiership Rugby Final 2025: Vintage clash between Bath and Leicester gets full...
13/06/2025
Premiership Rugby Final 2025: TNT Sports gears up for Bath vs Leicester battle w...
13/06/2025
NCAA Men's College World Series: ESPN Adds Two-Point SupraCam, Invests in Ne...
13/06/2025
New FSWX signal and spectrum analyzer with novel architecture overcomes limits o...
13/06/2025
Apple today announced the addition of iPad to Self Service Repair, providing iPad owners with access to repair manuals, genuine Apple parts, Apple Diagnostics t...
13/06/2025
CUPERTINO, CALIFORNIA Apple today previewed iOS 26, a major update that brings a beautiful new design, intelligent experiences, and improvements to the apps use...
13/06/2025
At Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), Apple unveiled Apple Games, an all-new destination designed to help players jump back into the games they...
13/06/2025
Industrial AI isn't slowing down. Germany is ready.
Following London Tech Week and GTC Paris at VivaTech, NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang's Europea...
12/06/2025
In 2018, Spotify launched Heart & Soul, a mental health initiative developed to ...
12/06/2025
50 Years Strong: SBS and NITV Supercharge NAIDOC Week 2025 in a joint 50th celeb...