The Oregon Sports Network (OSN) was formed by the University of Oregon to manage programming content of all U of O sporting programs. Football was the most valued of all sports programming that the University offered. There was a large amount of revenue attached to both television and radio broadcasts for football. The university approached me in the summer of 2005 out of a need to develop a radio affiliate, satellite network to enable distribution of football and basketball games.
The previous season’s technical challenges had cost OSN lost revenue as they considered adding more overhead cost by hiring a production company to manage the operation. OSN needed a stable network for all of their affiliates to receive game broadcasts that also enabled remote triggering for full automation due to the fact that most affiliate radio stations didn’t provide hired labor to manually operate ad-hoc programming such as football and basketball games.
By the fall of 2005 I had designed and built a fully automated distribution network for OSN and its affiliates across Oregon. A lease was signed with Globecast Satellite Services to provide a satellite uplink. I built a portable radio station in a mobile rack utilizing two redundant laptop computers’, automation software and an data connection to Globecast where programming was then disseminate to affiliate radio stations. The entire system broke down into two boxes and was able to be set up in less than an hour, it provided remote triggering of affiliate local commercial breaks simultaneously across Oregon and also enabled the entire show to be produced on site regardless of where Oregon was playing football. OSN saved money by producing shows on site through this system because there wasn’t a third party production house needed to deliver content to Globecast Satellite Services.
After completing and testing the system, OSN asked me to travel with the broadcast team to all of the football games as the Operations Manager. I spent four year traveling with Jerry Allen, Mike Jorgenson, and the rest of the OSN team until ultimately the broadcast rights were sold to IMG World. The system is still used in part for locally generated content although IMG now controls the production.