“We’ll do it live!!!”
    
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Apologies to Bill O’Reilly for the inspiration.
If you don’t know what I mean, click here (language NSFW).
My video crew and I laugh about it everytime we go live, mostly because we know how off the rails it could go at any moment.
NewsOK does 6-8 live streams a week: the daily energy update on CleanSkies.tv at 2 pm, the sports segment “Press Row” on Thursdays at 11:30 am, and each at OU home game, a segment called “The Oklahoman’s Pre-Game Show.”
This past Saturday, Campus Corner was a little more pumped than usual. Maybe it was the best football weather imaginable, or the combined enthusiasm of the Nebraska fans who stayed to watch and participate.
Thousands of people pack Campus Corner on game days to watch the Sports Animal’s always good pre-game show, to drink a few beers and to eat and browse the local merchants. This weekend was no exception. And the weather was really great, if not a little warm.
We set up at the corner of Boyd and Asp, between the Starbucks and Louie’s. We stream live on NewsOK.com, thanks to the Internet access from Barrett Williamson Architects, located just above Starbucks. Yes, Barrett tosses us a lengthy ethernet cable that we use to connect to the Internet to stream. That’s how you do live on a budget, people.
From the stage I use the AT&T wifi from Starbucks, $3.99 for a two hour window. I monitor the chat room and field the questions for Berry Tramel and Jake Trotter, who usually sit alongside to talk about that day’s Sooner football game.
We use one of our field cams to shoot, connecting to a Sony converter box. A small PC laptop with Adobe flash encoder. And my MacBook Pro with CoverItLive.com‘s software to make it happen. David Jones shoots and directs. Brad Belyeu mans the live stream and set up of the software. Often, Mike Koehler is somewhere in cyberspace regulating the live chat. Probably while multitasking five other duties.
We have more live coverage planned Tuesday night to cover the elections. We’ll go live at 7, 8, 9 and 10 pm at the top of the hour for 10-15 minutes. Thanks to our friends at Saxum PR, we have guests to provide analysis, including Renzi Stone himself. Ed Kelley and Angi Bruss will join me in the studio to provide updates from The Oklahoman’s newsroom and field reporters. We’ll have live updates from the DC Boys – Chris Casteel and Mark Green – in Washington DC. And we’ll try to go live via iChat with our videographers from the watch parties. Should be fun.
OU Pre-Game Football show
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