BAYSIDE, CALIFORNIA, August 25, 2008 – Floydada, Texas-based Paramount Broadcasting is preparing for its second successful season of broadcasting their hugely popular “West Texas Friday Night Scoreboard Show” using StreamGuys low-latency (BRTP) internet distribution service with Barix Audio over IP hardware devices. The joint solution has been deployed to deliver the show over the IP-based solution to 35 affiliates in 33 markets. The end-to-end IP architecture provides a reliable, high-quality audio solution that reduces operational costs compared to the company’s previous reliance on satellite technology for program distribution. The West Texas Friday Night Scoreboard Show is entering its tenth year on the air. The weekly show reports highlights and scores of as many as 150 Friday night high school football games, and is a highly popular program throughout the state of Texas.
Paramount Director of Affiliate Relations Steven Orr says the popularity of the scoreboard show happened almost by accident, but continues its mission to deliver local content to a captivated audience. “Another radio station host called in to get a score one night and was put on hold. As he listened to the content he decided to carry the show as a phone feed and did so for the remainder of the season. Even we were surprised at the time with how quickly the show’s popularity grew, but the key to smaller market radio is filling niches and staying true to that.”
After that first season, KFLP chose to use satellite technology to distribute the show. During that time occasional conflicts with other syndicated sporting events and a shortage of receivers presented problems. These scheduling conflicts often made it difficult for affiliates to receive consistent programming.
When Paramount decided to implement the Barix/StreamGuys solution, Orr says they were looking for something would be both cost-effective and easy to operate, while retaining ownership of the end-to-end system.
“Ownership was a huge factor for us,” said Orr. “When all was said and done, this new system established a plug-and-play arrangement with identical technology and workflow at all stations. StreamGuys provides an exceptional service for point-to-multipoint transmission from a central studio to multiple affiliates.”
The workflow begins at KFLP studios where a live feed is sent from a Barix Instreamer-100 audio encoder over the Internet where an aggregated server infrastructure from StreamGuys receives the feeds and transports them over a robust, cost-effective, streaming network to the 35 affiliates including the flagship station, KFLP.
The Barix and StreamGuys solution maintains outstanding quality throughout the transport architecture, with built-in redundancy at every level to ensure the stream is playing out live at all times. The solution also takes advantage of Barix and StreamGuys RTP (real-time protocol) solution to ensure consistent ultra-low latency of live signals at the receive sites.
Establishing the system in every station took some of what Orr calls “sweat equity” but overall saw the investment as worthwhile. “We stream to 35 stations over 12 weeks which adds up to 420 opportunities for problems. Last season we had minimal technical challenges — and our automated affiliates had no problems whatsoever.”