Public Access TV Crew Hopes for Live Broadcast of San Marin Basketball on Thursday

The Game of the Week crew from Novato Public Access TV is raising its game just when the San Marin High boys basketball team is doing the same. The result will be what NPAT hopes is a historic first for the station: a live broadcast of a sporting event.

NPAT sportscaster Kevin Conklin said the Game of the Week team is working hard to set up a live broadcast of Thursday’s Northern California championship tournament game between San Marin and a team to be named Tuesday night. The live airing, if all the technical details are secured, will start at 7 p.m. out of San Marin’s Hank Moroski Gymnasium.

The announcement game Monday, just before tapings of San Marin’s March 5 victory over El Cerrito in the North Coast Section championship game were to be aired at 7:30 p.m. and approximately 9:15 p.m.

“It’s perfect timing because San Marin has such a great following right now,” Conklin said. “We’ve done over 300 Games of the Week, but this will be the first time doing it live.”

Conklin said the broadcast will be the culmination of a huge effort by NPAT Executive Director Rick Tucker and videographer/editor Niko Burgueno. He said the team is “still working out all the tricky parts” by borrowing equipment and bringing in professionals to help in technical areas. Conklin said NPAT received permission to air the game live from Comcast Sports Net, which has the rights to all live high school game coverage in the Bay Area.

“We are excited about this,” said Conklin, who works for the city of Novato’s parks department. “We’ve had so many people asking us if we could cover things live, but we just don’t have the equipment on our own yet. We’re hoping for someday to have it.”

Tucker said there is some “really cool technology” behind the live broadcast effort and a lot of coordination with the , which is where NPAT is based. In a nutshell, the crew will use “video over IP,” which involves taking the output from the video cameras, plugging it into a very expensive box, changing the video into an Internet stream, running it through a virtual network uninterrupted by other school district Internet traffic, and into a second very expensive box at the NPAT studio.

“This is a big effort on the school district’s part,” Tucker said. “I’m still borrowing equipment from the county and working out other details, and we haven’t tested this yet.”

If it doesn’t work out, Thursday’s game will be broadcast Friday.

Conklin said the NCS title game airings Monday were back-to-back on NPAT because the San Marin High winter sports banquet also was scheduled for Monday night and the NPAT crew wanted to give the maximum amount of viewers a chance to see the broadcast. San Marin, seeded No. 5, knocked off No. 2 El Cerrito 47-44 at St. Mary’s College in front of a crowd of about 2,500, including at least half from San Marin.

For more information about the Game of the Week, check www.cityofnovato/gotw.