The North Carolina High School Athletic Association has been a bastion over the years about live TV coverage of high school events by saying no. You can't turn on a TV now days that ESPN or any of the upstart sports cable channels don't have some high school sports on to fill their 24 hour a day schedule. Around ten years ago the NCHSAA gave Time Warner Cable the exclusive rights to all the football and basketball state championship games.
I am sure many people stayed home during the 3-A state championship football game last December and watched the Gryphons bring home the glory. Both the 2010 and 2012 basketball titles could be watched on Time Warner if you lived within their cable area or go on line and Stream the games.
The NCHSAA has not allowed a live coverage of a regular season sporting event but the money trail is too tempting and starting this year there will be a High School Game Of The Week live on Thursday nights this football season. Now just like the NFL games do, there is a chance that you might hear that say the Rocky Mount at Southern Nash game may get flexed and moved to Thursday night because TV deems it to be an important game from around the state. I am not saying it is going to be a state wide TV but that is an example of what might happen.
Charter/Time Warner have the rights and will be picking the games to be seen. I have not seen a schedule and don't know at this point how they plan on picking the games from around the state. You will of course need to be on the Charter/Time Warner systems to see these games or live stream.
The old question of does carrying a game live on radio or TV hurt attendance at any game. There use to be a day when AM radio was the only source of any high school sporting event. Many AM radio stations through out North Carolina are day time station which means they sign off at sunset or reduce power. Many recorded football on Friday night and played the game back on tape Saturday mornings. The early 70's when FM stations came along and had no restriction of signing off it was then possible to carry high school games on the radio live.
I think what high school athletic directors learned was the better the team the better the attendance. When your team from what they heard through radio was good fans tend to come watch live. Games with threat of rain were the games hit by low attendance. I think that is true whether you have radio coverage or not.
You may have noticed to soften the throng of high schools that might protest live TV on Friday night the games will be on Thursday. Do you remember several years ago when ECU had the first Friday night college game on TV and coaches and administration bellowed to ECU from stealing potential patrons to high school games? Least for now Thursday night TV football has a path to least resistance. Wait to they try to expand to Friday's.
Rocky Mount High School will be hosting a football scrimmage on August 11th. Details will follow later.
Rowan County wins the NC American Legion state tournament beating Union County 3-2 to go unbeaten in the tournament. It is their 9th state title tying Gastonia and one behind Wilmington with 10 titles.
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