At 11:54 AM -0800 11/14/96, Klein, Steve wrote:
> It was no halluncination.
> As I posted earlier, USA TODAY Online lobbied one of its major content
> providers, SportsTicker, to provide real-time college hockey scores. Perhaps
> others clients asked, too (I don't know if any that did).
 
I know Steve knows this, but I just wanted to explain the way this works:
 
At the beginning of the season, SportsTicker sent around a letter to all
the hockey SIDs asking them to call the ticker with score updates.  Thus
Merrimack has someone on the phone at home games and every time the score
changes, that person calls the ticker and gives them the update.  It's
pretty easy to do, you just have to make sure someone knows to do it -
preferably someone dedicated to getting/giving scores on the phone.  I'd
guess that after we call, the person from the Ticker punches in the update
and voila, it is available on Headline News, USA Today, and anyplace else
that subscribes to the Ticker.
 
I have not seen the scores on Headline News before, but I did see them on
local access cable a couple of weeks ago when we were in New York.  We were
staying with friends in Clifton Park after Merrimack's game at Union, and I
was flipping through the channels and came upon one of those local cable
information channels that runs ads, sports scores, news headlines, etc. in
block letters.  Well, one of the screens had NCAA Hockey scores.  I was
amazed.  There is still a ways to go, but these things are signs of how far
we have come already.
 
And thanks to Steve and his folks for lobbying to get scores on the Ticker.
It is going to go a long ways towards establishing credibility for the
game.  Think about what this means for the non-DivI schools in
particular...they would otherwise never be mentioned on Headline News
because they do not have DivI football or basketball teams.  Hockey is a
way for them to get a little publicity on one of the largest cable channels
available.
 
---                                                                   ---
Mike Machnik                [log in to unmask]               *HMM* 11/13/93
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