nationally televised high school games NEW television concept

There was an article in Forbes about a guy with a brilliant idea to scale out high schools sports by creating libraries of athlete footage from their high school years and broadcasting high school games on a national level.  Here's the link. 

Unfortunately, this idea is idealistic at best. Even though the intent is good, it seems as though he has not done any of the homework necessary to find out how feasible this is and it wouldn't have hurt if the writer of the piece had asked any of the hard questions.  Here's why I wouldn't put stock into

Most major high school districts have very lucrative local cable contracts - in our district, we just negotiated a three (3) year deal where we receive $18,000 per year for the rights and pay $1,000 per football game that they choose to broadcast. The cable agreement also gives the cable network ownership of the footage so when you do catch lightning in a bottle and send a kid to the pro's, they can get some of their money back by selling the footage to larger groups that own rights to those teams and leagues. 

We've also already done "made for tv" basketball for ESPN2 facilitated by Paragon Marketing out of Illinois and set up a game with Austin Rivers (now playing for Duke) got on the same court with Michael Gilchrest (now playing for Kentucky) and made another 10k off that to help support our athletic programs.  At the time, they were the #1 and #2 ranked players in the country.

Of course, ego can get into play and some people will turn on high school games but unless you are a serious die-hard and/or have a connection to the school, athlete or programs, this isn't an area where you are going to attract enough viewers to justify the outlay of costs.  For example, the ESPN2 game I referenced above (with easily two of the best high school players in the country last year) had less than 300,000 viewers nationwide.

There is also no mention on the fact how they'll pay crews to make these games watchable. We've talked about school video departments and students handling the film shoots but the quality wouldn't work for mass distribution of game footage and the truth is that mass audiences don't watch "sports" - they watch elite athletes play sports. That's why minor leagues can't attract crowds and few D3 colleges get media contracts.

The video equipment most high schools have isn't top-of-the-line equipment and many schools haven't ordered new video equipment with all the budget cuts so the footage would look second-tier anywhere outside of a local school broadcast.  Are you telling me I'd be watching ESPN's 30 for 30 series on my Hi-Def and suddenly not notice a high school girls volleyball game being shot on an iPhone? 

High school sports has it's role and we've seen many other areas turn into money-making machines.  Disney turned the League World Series into a cash cow creating an event worthy of the $3.7 million they paid to give ESPN broadcast rights in 2009 in order to air the summer event. 

I just believe, even in that situation, you are watching the best of the best.  Heck, I love the olympics but I just don't know if I'd sit through a local gymnastics competition watching 14-year olds on a pommel horse.