It took Teya Ryan, who has been running Georgia Public Broadcasting for only 11 months, just a few days to realize how important high school athletics is in the state of Georgia. Her statewide network Friday night will begin 22 hours of live broadcasts of girls and boys state basketball championships from both Gwinnett Arena and the Macon Coliseum.
Throw on top of it the 12 hours GPB did for the football championships back in December, and the public network’s commitment to sports matches any around the country.
“It’s an important thing to do,” said Ryan, a former CNN veteran and Emmy Award-winner and now the president and executive director of GPB. “I don’t think it’s a luxury. I think it’s a responsibility. Clearly in Georgia we love sports and we love high school sports. There are a variety of reasons to like high school sports. It’s exciting, it helps create terrific citizens, it’s a wonderful way to bring communities together, and it’s a wonderful exercise; high school sports are just a win-win. It’s a win for the kids, it’s a win for the schools, it’s a win for the parents, and it’s a win for the spectators. I think that because public media’s sole purpose is community involvement, having an involvement with high school sports is right up our alley.”
GPB, working together with the Georgia High School Association, began airing high school semifinal football games back in 1997. For many years, the state football semifinals were played at the Dome and all 10 games over two days were televised. The next weekend, GPB would air two of the title games. The GHSA decided to move the semifinals back to the high school stadiums and the finals to the Georgia Dome two years ago, and all five classification finals are now on GPB. The 10 boys and girls basketball finals have been televised live since 1998.
When Ryan walked into GPB, a deal with the GHSA was already in place. She said, “My first reaction was, who is the smart person that made this happen? That certainly was my predecessor Nancy Hall. And I think it was a very smart move because the goal of public media is to reach out into the community and reflect that community back in on itself and support what’s happening in that community. It’s the one kind of media that can support the community.”
The ratings have been strong. GPB was the most-watched public station in the country in prime time and full day during both days of the football championships back in December. GPB had a 42 percent increase in ratings from its coverage a year ago, with an estimated 428,600 Georgia households watching the live games.
The production of the games is similar to what ESPN brings to college campuses on GameDay. It is a high-quality production, led by veteran producer Tom Vardase and a group of experienced directors, cameramen, engineers and announcers.
Said Ryan, “I was impressed by the resources I found that we gave to it. I would like to increase that. We are certainly going to continue to make a big commitment to putting the right resources in place. For one, audiences are sophisticated these days. They’re used to seeing sports in a certain way, whether it’s high school or college or professional. Just because we’re public media doesn’t mean we don’t want to work in a different level. We want to be at that professional level. We want people to love coming to us and make it look like they’re used to seeing.”
Ryan’s approach will eventually mean covering championships in other sports, and she added, “I would like to cover as many championships in as many sports as possible throughout the state. I think that we want to recognize that different kids love different sports. We don’t want to restrict ourselves.”
Already, GPB is moving towards a stronger multimedia platform when it comes to covering sports and the championships. A mainstay at the network has been the high school show Prep Sports Plus, born in 1991, but for the second straight year they have been webcasting live football and basketball games as well as hosting web chats during games, and have increased reports on the radio network. At these championships, you will be able to sit and watch the games with a computer on your lap, chatting about the game on GPB.org as well as getting updated scores. GPB handling the high school games is a natural due to their statewide coverage.
“Because Georgia is such a large state, the largest east of the Mississippi, it makes us, GPB, a powerhouse because we can reach all corners of the state with our television and/or radio, and then online,” Ryan said. “We’ve become the powerhouse just by the nature of how large Georgia is. I think it becomes an interesting public media system because of the variety of the state, meaning the state is so different from top to bottom and east to west. There is such a diversity in the state as far as land, people and sensibilities that I think it makes it not only a challenge, but certainly an exciting opportunity. There are really terrific state public media groups around the country but they are in smaller states.”
GPB is also changing the way they do business. While they are state-supported, they have to become more entrepreneurial. The company is becoming more streamlined, more mainstream when compared to the GPB of old.
“As much as we are a state authority, we are a media company,” Ryan said. “I think that we have to first and foremost look at GPB as a significant, and maybe the most significant, media company for Georgians because of our reach and because of really what I call the inheritance of purpose. And I think the inheritance of purpose gets at the heart of what public media is. In other words, we’ve inherited responsibility to the community and we take that very seriously. During a legislative season, GPB has a strong sense because some of our budget, not all of it by any means, is dependent on the state, but at the same time the truth is we are a media company. We have to have that same entrepreneurial sensibility that any media company has. We have to look for new ways of doing things. We have to look for efficiencies. We have to listen to our audience and make sure we’re delivering what they’re interested in and what will help them in their lives. The good news about this media company is in a way it doesn’t have a margin of pressure. It doesn’t have shareholders. It has a community. I don’t have to do things because they make money, I have to do things to make sure that I’m responding to the community and helping the community out. That doesn’t mean that I can be sloppy and I can waste money. It just means that I have a whole different set of purposes and goals with what I do.”
So what are we going to see from GPB for next six months?
“You’re going to see an overall rise of quality in all that we do,” Ryan said. “I think significantly we will see our entire focus on original programming. That means cross-platform radio, road television, web, is all about localism, meaning all about Georgia. I think that the right model is to cover Georgia. Whether we’re doing that in sports or education or in our history, whatever it is, it’s about us. It’s about the people of Georgia. I think that what you’ll begin to see is that much more programming on all of our platforms relate to and are about the people of Georgia.”
And of course, more high school sports.
“High school sports is about the whole state,” Ryan said. “That what’s so wonderful about it. We don’t just play football in Atlanta. That’s what I love about high school sports. We can reach deep into all the communities … I think it’s also more about our kids. It’s not just about the competition. It’s about how they grow as human beings. It’s how they learn, how to work as a team. It’s how they learn how to overcome certain challenges. It’s how they reach higher. It’s how they become their personal best. I think that’s why high school sports is so important because we’re watching kids literally before our eyes develop and change and grow. In a way, high school sports becomes more than just the sport. It becomes about the human beings we’re developing and we’re sending off the world. That kind of story, that kind of full story is really part of the mission of public media to relay out.”
And GPB will be there to tell those stories, whether it’s a championship game, a segment on Prep Sports Plus, or a story or blog on GPB.org.
Said Ryan, “That’s what’s so wonderful is that we can encompass all of this. And you know what, frankly, sports is fun. Sports are part of why you get up in the morning. You want to root for your team. You want to root for your kid. It’s exciting. It’s fun.”
By Score Atlanta’s I.J. Rosenberg (ijrosenberg@scoreatl.com)
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