Silver Chalice, IMG College Launching New College Sports Website Campus Insiders

Silver Chalice and IMG College are partners on a new college sports-based website called CampusInsiders.com, which will be the platform for a variety of original video and written content. CBS analyst and SI writer Seth Davis will have his own hour-long weekly show on the site beginning in August, and more on-air talent will be added by the start of the college football season, according to Campus Insiders Exec VP & GM Crowley Sullivan. Silver Chalice is a Chicago-based digital media business that is a subsidiary of the White Sox. The company has been working with IMG College to develop the site since last summer and the partners are planning a formal announcement and launch this week. Sullivan describes Campus Insiders as an independent site whose coverage will fall somewhere in between a school’s official website and edgier, cynical sites like Bleacher Report or The Big Lead. Campus Insiders is in the process of developing team and conference pages that will feature exclusive video and written content. Oregon is the first team page that is up and running, while the West Coast Conference is the first league to have a home on the site. There will be some live audio and video programming for conferences like the WCC that do not have exclusive digital outlets. Campus Insiders, as part of its soft launch, already has broadcast 10 WCC games live, using the site’s own production team. These were games that were not picked up by other outlets. Campus Insiders has a staff of 10 on its production team and that will grow to more than 20 by the start of football season. Other games were streamed on the site through agreements with RSNs like Root or carriers like Time Warner Cable, Sullivan said.

ANCHOR PROGRAM AIRS TUESDAYS: The anchor program for the site will be “CI Live,” an hour-long studio show originating from Chicago’s Harpo Studios. The weekly show will run live on Tuesdays at 1:00pm ET and will attempt to capture the lunch-time crowd that is looking for “a quick fix on college sports,” said Sullivan, a former ESPN exec. The fast-paced show will develop a network of “insiders” that it will feature in its quick-hitting reports throughout the hour. Those insiders could be IMG College’s radio talent, local bloggers or newspaper beat reporters in the market. Davis’ show in August will be more of an opinion-based program that focuses on big issues on the college sports landscape. Additionally, Sullivan said that Campus Insiders has acquired College Football News, which in the past has had affiliations with Scout and Fox. Content from CFN will migrate to Campus Insiders this summer and be central to a full rollout of written content and team/conference reports by the start of the college football season.