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The Tufts Daily
Where you read it first | Friday, March 29, 2024

After revamp, JumboCast is back in the game and ready to boost sports coverage

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Tufts JumboCast, an organization and website that webcasts Tufts athletics events, upgraded its 10-year-old equipment this summer, bringing new cameras, new software and new programs to its live stream.

The previous equipment was outdated, and put a strain on JumboCast's already-tight funding and its relationship with the Athletics Department. The site that the group had used to host the broadcasts, AudioVideoweb, was costing hundreds of dollars per month and streaming poor quality broadcasts. As a result, the Athletics Department hired an outside company to cover most games, leaving only the football team's four home games for JumboCast to cover, according to junior and General Manager of JumboCast Jake Hellman.

“We were basically told at the end of last year, ‘You guys have football but that’s it,’ and so my worry at the start of this year was that we would do the four football games and then not exist as a club for the rest of the year,” Hellman said.

Director of Sports Information Paul Sweeney explained that the Athletics Department needed consistent, high-quality broadcasts of all games -- something that JumboCast wasn’t able to provide.

“We sort of became dissatisfied with the amount of webcasts that JumboCast was producing," Sweeney said. "This is over the last two or three years. Last year we started contracting with Pack Network … they are a professional company that webcasts games for universities, so they did hockey for us, and then they did all our spring sports. It was [high-definition] broadcasting, and the quality of JumboCast wasn’t as good as the Pack quality.”

Sophomore and Programming Director Bernie Birnbaum  also commented that the group's technology limited its capabilities.

“We were using a computer that was probably as old as JumboCast,”  he said. “It was one computer that was only used to do broadcasting, and it was very limited in what it could do. It was very difficult for us to even put a scoreboard on the screen, and we had a crappy camera and we were using outdated technology to stream it online."

JumboCast’s main updates include a new camera and an editing and streaming program called Wirecast. This change in technology will not only simplify the broadcasting process, but also make it look more professional, according to Hellman. Since the introduction of the new equipment, feedback after the end of the football season has been very positive.

Pack doesn’t always have commentators, and they don’t have halftime shows, so we like to think that our product is nicer," Hellman said. "At the end of the football season, we were able to show that, yeah, it is work for [the Athletics Department] to coordinate with Pack and us, but we can offer what we think is a higher quality product.”

After JumboCast's success in covering the home football games, Hellman and Sweeney reentered the discussion about the opportunity to cover more games throughout the year. JumboCast is now planning to cover 11 out of 20 home basketball games during the winter season, and potentially some baseball games in the spring, Hellman said.

Coordinating with both Pack Network and the Athletics Department has been a challenge for JumboCast, according to Hellman. Because Pack requires a contract at the beginning of every season, JumboCast has to predict which games it will be able to cover months in advance.

“That was extremely challenging for us because we had never before had to predict through February what everyone’s schedule was going to be,” Hellman said. “The thing that I am personally nervous about is if we default if someone becomes busy … we tried to make sure we were very confident in our plans, but no one even knew when they would have class next semester."

Hellman added that this uncertainty could potentially create tensions with the Athletics Department.

"My worry is that if we fail to do a broadcast, then the Athletics Department will be upset, so we need to make sure we come through on all of our commitments,” he said.

Despite the frequent broadcasting changes, football Coach Jay Civetti has remained a proponent of JumboCast.

“It’s always something that I try to be as supportive of as I can of any student run organization," he said. "It is such an important connection for the alumni, for parents who can’t be here, for people who bleed brown and blue.”

In terms of its budget, JumboCast’s switch from AudioVideoweb to YouTube will help keep spending down, Hellman said. Hosting through AudioVideoweb cost close to $300 per month, according to Hellman. YouTube allows users to enable their accounts to live stream for free, cutting thousands of dollars of spending out of their budget.

The new physical equipment will also help cut expenses.

“Basically, 10 years ago what you needed was a computer that was specifically dedicated to broadcasting, and a ton of very expensive stuff, but now if you have a laptop you can do it all," Hellman said. "So now we broadcast straight from my laptop.”

Despite this change in spending, JumboCast still deals with a tight budget.

“Unfortunately, we are running off my laptop because we can’t buy one,” Hellman said, “We just applied for supplementary funding from TCU for over five grand. We are hoping to get a new computer so I don’t have to be at every broadcast, and the program will be able to continue after I graduate.”

The new camera and switch to YouTube will allow JumboCast to broadcast its program in HD.

“Our old camera was standard definition, so in terms of videos that [people] watch, standard definition ... doesn’t exist anymore," Hellman said. "Everybody watches things in HD.”

Wirecast, the new editing program, will allow the group to increase the professionalism of their broadcast. According to Hellman, they will now be able to include scoreboards on all of their live streams, and Hellman hopes they will soon be able to add a clock.

A major change in JumboCast’s programming because of the new technology has been the incorporation of a halftime show, according to Birnbaum.

“I always thought it was kind of goofy when it would be halftime and we’d put up a graphic, and for 15 minutes it would just be that graphic and dead silence," Birnbaum said. "I figured, 'Why not turn the camera back around and do something fun with it?'”

So far, Birnbaum has included interviews, updates on the new technology, a "fun facts" section, a highlight reel and a Twitter poll during halftime.

“It’s like eight to nine minutes of programming [per show], but it’s better than a blank screen,” he said.

The halftime shows also create an opportunity for the audience to interact with JumboCast. Birnbaum asked viewers to tweet questions at JumboCast during the first half of the first home game, which would then be answered during the halftime show.

“We got a couple of tweets, which was a nice way to interact with our audience that we hadn’t been able to do before,” Hellman said.

This year, JumboCast’s first basketball broadcast will air on Nov. 21.

“The idea is that [broadcasts] will become even better," Hellman said. "By the end of the basketball season, if we don’t fail on any games, we are hoping that we will have really impressed the Athletics Department.”