UNH will be doing their games on their flagship station WTSN, Dover, NH.
I'm proud to say that UNH was one of the first schools to do internet
broadcasts and, despite the substantial jump in cost, they will continue to
do.

Greg Ambrose

> From: Mark Lewin <[log in to unmask]>
> Reply-To: [log in to unmask]
> Date: Wed, 18 Sep 2002 22:57:21 -0400
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: let the games begin.....
>
> It’s time to get hockey discussion rolling again.  I’ll start early this year
> for two reasons.
>
> One is to find out who’s still out there on this list.  It’s been shrinking
> yearly.  Either everyone has switched over to USCHO chat boards, lost interest
> in college hockey discussions or died.
>
> The other reason for starting this discussion is a subject near and dear to
> me: college hockey on the internet.  For those unfamiliar with me, I maintain
> a website with links to college hockey on the net. Each year about this time,
> I make my annual plea for information so I can get the website up to date by
> the start of the season.
>
> This year will be especially difficult for hockey broadcasts.  When I first
> started documenting this phenomenon 5 or 6 years ago,  there were very few
> college hockey teams broadcasting over the internet.  Within a few short
> years, there was an explosion with more than 75% of the Division 1 teams on
> the air.  Then came the lawsuit. Two years ago, the RIAA filed suit against
> the federal government to force them to change their regulations which
> governed the rules under which the nation’s radio stations paid artists for
> playing their copyrighted music on the air.  The argument went that the old
> rules which apparently set the rate according to the power of the station and
> the population size that they served, were no longer a valid measure. Radio
> stations on the internet basically had unlimited power and a worldwide
> audience.  They wanted the extra license fees for the poor starving artists.
> They glossed over the fact that more than 90% of this money went to the major
> recording companies; very little went to the artists. Be that as it may, the
> RIAA won their case. The decision had a major effect on both commercial and
> college radio stations who, all of a sudden, were faced with a major
> expenditure if they continued to broadcast on the net.  Note that this did not
> have any cost associated with college hockey. However, a large percentage of
> schools found it easier to set up a server and pump their signal over the
> internet 24 hours a day.  To start up and shut down their servers just for
> sports or local broadcasts was found by many schools to be more labor
> intensive than pumping out their signals 24 by 7.  Commercial stations like
> WTKA in Michigan and WCCO in Minnesota pulled their signals off the air last
> season while this was in court.  After the regulatory decision was made,
> numerous college stations stated their intention to pull the plug also.
>
> Now that it’s over, it’s time to see who the casualties were. I expect to see
> far fewer college hockey games broadcast this year. Those who used to send
> their signal over broadcast.com (now Yahoo sports) may not be affected.
> Broadcastsports.com is gone; several other websites that broadcast both
> professional sports and college sports have switched to pro sports only.
>
> I need help with my website.  If you know of any college broadcasts that have
> been dropped from the web, let me know. If your local school will be
> broadcasting, let me know that too.  For those people who root for their local
> team, this is no big deal.  They’ll hear the game over the air on their local
> station. But think about the alumni. I listen to RPI games on WRPI (when I’m
> not at the games).  If WRPI stopped broadcasting on the net, it wouldn’t
> affect me at all. However, one of my close friends listens to the games at 7AM
> Saturday and Sunday morning from his apartment in Hong Kong. It’s his tie to
> home. He tells me he’d miss it terribly if the broadcasts stopped.  Drop me a
> line and let me know the status of your local college hockey teams broadcasts.
> If you don’t know about internet broadcasts, let me know what radio station
> broadcasts the games over the air. I’ll do the research on the internet
> broadcast and get my website up to date and accurate. Remember some day, you
> may move away from your favorite team. The internet broadcasts may be your
> only tie to home.
>
> Mark Lewin
> RPI '69