 |
Hocutt discusses Texas Tech's
broadcasting plans |
Texas Tech Univ. has spent "months seeking a broadcast partner for its third-tier sports programming and assessing how much and what type of Red Raiders to produce and distribute," according to Don Williams of the Lubbock AVALANCHE-JOURNAL. Texas Tech AD Kirby Hocutt discussed the progress being made in a Q&A with the newspaper. Excerpts of the conversation can be found here (
Lubbock AVALANCHE-JOURNAL, 5/2).
Q: What’s new regarding Texas Tech’s plans for its third-tier programming?
Hocutt: We continue to work through the process and have had numerous conversations with Learfield Communications, and it remains our goal to have our plan in place by the beginning of the new academic year, so fall of 2012.
Q: What are the odds of having something in place by fall?
Hocutt: I believe very good. I remain optimistic. There are certain elements that have got to be worked through, which I’m not at liberty to go into detail on at this time. It would be our goal to broadly distribute the content that we’re able to beginning with the next academic year. I’m optimistic.
Q: What form might it take?
Hocutt: At the current time, it looks like the most feasible option and approach for us would be to secure ‘x’ number of block hours over the course of a given year that we could take our one football game, five or six basketball games, five or six baseball games ... to distribute within this certain block of hours. That looks like the appropriate approach for us, given the information we have at this time and the conversations we’ve had this time. We would be, in a 24-7 channel, occupying x-hundred number of hours over the course of a given year. When that content is being aired, it would be branded as "Texas Tech Athletic Productions," "Texas Tech Athletic Channel" or however we determined to brand it at that particular time.
Q: Is this venture sort of the great unknown?
Hocutt: It’s new territory for us, and I think it’s a tremendous opportunity. It’s an opportunity for us to really distribute content with sports other than football that maybe don’t get the distribution they deserve.
Q: What’s the timeline? What are key dates that must be met to launch by fall?
Hocutt: Our goal is to find a broadcast partner to allow us to reach a television audience in this five-state region that we focus on.
Q: Those five states being?
Hocutt: Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, New Mexico, Arkansas.
