Razorback Hockey Makes TV Debut
By Zane Myers
Lemke Ledger Staff
Graduating senior and broadcast major Kyle Kleber spent the past winter hard at work promoting and broadcasting the Razorback hockey team.
This was the second year for the UA squad, but the first year for home games. Upon hearing the team would be playing at home, Kleber made his move. He had the idea to record the games at the Jones Center in Springdale and broadcast them on UATV and Jones TV.
“It was a great opportunity for me and to get people excited about the team,” Kleber said.
The university informed Kleber that he could get internship credit for the endeavor because games were to be broadcast on Jones TV, a 24-hour station of the Jones Center, with which he would be working directly. By the end of the season, Kleber had logged 450.5 hours doing the internship, a number that is nearly three times the minimum amount required for credit.
“I basically headed my own internship,” he said.
Kleber’s first step was to get in touch with the team to find out who owned the rights. When he found out that the team did, it made the process a lot easier, Kleber said. He then set out to find sponsors. Best Buy, Intramural Recreational Sports and the UA all jumped on board.
The crew, led by Kleber, consisted of about eight people. They had three cameras to do all of their filming. The roles of broadcaster, director, and marketer were all played by Kleber, who said the hardest job was editing. Editing would sometimes take all day, and it was hard to stay focused, especially on the weekends. Long hours and little became the norm. The games didn’t schedule timeouts or breaks in the action for TV broadcast, which made finding time to credit sponsors difficult.
Kleber said he didn’t let the difficulties prevent him and his crew from producing the best broadcast possible. Each broadcast was complete with pregame and postgame analysis as well as graphics.
“We did everything we wanted to from Day One,” he said
Eventually, Kleber and the crew soon saw their hard work paying off. He said players and the coaching staff were excited, impressed and willing to help. Interest in hockey games grew around campus as students and local fans began attending the games. Kleber thinks the support showed Northwest Arkansas is ready to embrace the sport of hockey.
“I think all of the people learned something about a sport they may not have known a lot about before,” Kleber said. “Definitely a success.”
In the future he would like to see live broadcasts for hockey and maybe even games played at Barnhill Arena.
While he is not sure what he will be doing next year during the season, Kleber said he would definitely help out again if he is in the area.
Throughout the spring semester, Razorback hockey games were replayed from 10 a.m. and 7 p.m. Saturday on UATV at 6 p.m. Sunday on Jones TV.