Aldershot game on BBC H&W

Trevor Owens, the Sports Editor of BBC Hereford and Worcester, has issued the following statement about the Aldershot game.



BBC Hereford and Worcester are going to attempt to cover that Aldershot Town game on the web tomorrow, but, from the outset, we are warning there could be substantial hurdles to overcome with this one. I am trying to be as up front as I can over this, without boring you all to death with BBC rules, technical issues and broadcast rights etc.



It is FA Cup weekend, and so the vast majority of the normally available BBC webcasting bandwith has been long booked up for this weekend, largely due to a relaxation of the rules allowing the web broadcast of FA Cup ties beyond the third round. This means that even getting on the web at all could be a problem.



On a staffing note, the costs of streaming a Sunday match are largely prohibitive. Radio audiences on Sundays are generally far lower than the rest of the week, so we tend to do shared programming with Radios Shropshire and Stoke in order to keep down the costs. The downside of this is that they are less than happy to take our football (or cricket in the summer) into their shared programmes. Similarly, our listeners do not have to put up with Port Vale updates. For us to buy in a techinical operator (even if we could get one on a Sunday) is also expensive; it can cost more than what we pay a commentator to do the game.



SO?. In order to try and get the game on to the web at all, I am going to try and stream it from home.. I have an ISDN line there for taking match reports etc in the week after games, and our engineer here and myself have been through all the techicalities, and we think it should work. I think I can safely say that this will never have been tried at the BBC before, so, as such it is ground breaking stuff, and so is prone to taking on a pear-shaped outline? The upside is that, if it works, then we may be able to do more games; if it doesn't work, well, it had to be worth our while giving it a go?.



This is why we have not flagged it up until now (late Saturday evening). Please bear with us; I am not looking for any brownie points over this for giving up a chunk of my day off to do all of this (not to mention putting up with the serious grief I am getting from the good Mrs Owens); I would, though, be grateful if the criticisms were it not to work were kept to a dull roar?. It has to be regarded as an experiment



Just in case the broadcast doesn't work BBC Southern Counties Radio are also broadcasting the game on the net.

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