Lindenwood’s communications program new media network, the Roar Network, is preparing to fully develop and produce a live sports broadcast this Saturday for the first time.
The group, largely made up of students in the Sports Production class, will run the broadcast for the men’s rugby game against Arkansas State University on Nov. 2 at 7 p.m in conjunction with The Rugby Network. The rugby team enters the match nearly perfect on the season, with a 10-1 record, allowing the network to assign the matchup as a game of the week broadcast.
The production will be entirely student run, from camera and control room operators, to broadcasters and sideline reporters. The class, taught by new Lindenwood professor Morgan Butler, has been hard at work for the last few weeks preparing for Saturday evening’s broadcast.
“The network reached out to us, and we saw it as an opportunity to be able to push students into doing a live production,” Butler said. “We are really building everything from the ground up, so we’ve been working a lot in the coordination side of things, building out graphics, and the students are working on putting together a basics of rugby story that will air during halftime,”
Outside of standard class meeting time, those involved in the broadcast have endured a number of pre-production meetings with each other, the network, and the rugby team as a whole. The meeting with the network, specifically, was one to give expectations from the network on what the broadcast should look like. One of the bigger obstacles was designing graphics, with the network didn’t supply to the production like ESPN+ does for Mane Media broadcasts of other sports. A number of students involved have experience working for Mane Media, but haven’t had quite the full, hands on experience of running the broadcast top to bottom that Saturday’s game offers.
“I’ve never designed graphics before, and I think they look good, but I’m not sure how they are going to function,” show producer James Zugmaier said. “We have a lot of people who have never done a broadcast like this before, and we’ve never covered rugby on Mane Media, and thats where most of my experience comes from. So, I’m guiding a lot of people who have never done it before, while still learning and keeping the show going,”
Another student who has experience with Mane Media before filing into this production is Jack Garner, who will fill out the role of director for Saturday evening’s match. Garner’s role as a director involves him putting cameras on the screen, instructing them on what shots to get, and giving instruction to the control room around him.
“I’ve watched Dan and Mike a couple times, and how they do things but I’d always like to be in there a little bit more,” Garner said. “I’ve talked to the Mane Media guys, and they’ve told me what I need to work on and look for, just to know the story of the game. It’s tough, because not many of us know the game of rugby, but I just hope to follow the ball and show whats going on that way. It’ll be fun, it’ll be a cool experience. It’s not often you get to be a sports director,”
Currently, the production is searching one more position to fill, preferably someone with production experience. That position is a field runner, which is a position to fix cameras, answer talent questions, or step in to any other role if need be throughout the broadcast. If interested in that role, reach out to either Andrew Millians or Morgan Butler for more information.
“I’m very excited to see what the students are able to accomplish,” Butler added. “I think they are really poised for success here, and I’m really thrilled we’ve been able to give them this opportunity to run the entire broadcast.”
The broadcast of the game can be found live online Saturday evening, by visiting the https://www.therugbynetwork.com/. A subscription to the service is needed to watch the game, at the cost of $6.99 a month, but they also offer a free trial of the service.
