Babe Ruth World Series simulcast a success

MOSES LAKE - In a history-making moment, the Columbia Basin Herald, and iFiber Communications successfully simulcast the Babe Ruth World Series in Ephrata.

Broadcasting video on TV and internet was significant because the northern Columbia Basin lacks its own TV station.

The nearest TV station is in Kennewick, about 70 miles away.

The games were seen by paying customers across the country on the Herald's website and locally on a prelaunch of the Ephrata-based iFiber Communication's channel one TV from Aug. 6-13.

Via the Herald's website, footage of the games reached players' parents in Indiana, New York, Texas, Iowa, Puget Sound, Wash. and Portland, Ore.

On TV, iFiber's customers included viewers in Grant County, Douglas County, and as far north as Bridgeport, Wash.

The Columbia Basin Herald's production team pulled in play-by-plays from KULE Radio in Ephrata.

"It was incredibly popular," said Kody Johnson, the Herald's manager of internet business development.

There was a total of 5,471 website hits during the eight days of broadcast, he said.

The paper set new records for internet traffic for the last two weeks with about 56,518 views.

He credited the Herald's interns for helping with the broadcast.

The interns are comprised of a group of high school and college students. Some had no video experience, but were familiar with baseball.

They are Spencer King, Spencer Plate, Sean Wilkinson, Sean McLanahan, Kayla Barclay, Tyler Janasz, Allie Damitio and Douglas Gorden. They worked behind the cameras or in production.

The interns pulled together to do a "terrific job" when Johnson missed a day and a half of the series because of a kidney stone.

"It went so smooth, we were all very impressed," Johnson said. "The interns were so professional. It's really a testament to how our internship program has grown in this department."

Johnson learned Saturday morning the series selected Ephrata to host the 2013 event.

The experience was also rewarding because of the parents who thanked him.

Some couldn't afford to spend thousands of dollars to fly to the event, but were able to pay $24.99 to watch the games online.

iFiber Communications CEO Kelly Ryan said the company wasn't ready to officially launch channel one until Sept. 1, but the opportunity became available.

"It was too unique," he said. "It was kind of a prelaunch for us."

It was originally planned to have another production team shoot the series with their equipment, but scheduling conflicts arose and prevented that from happening.

Time ran out and they had to go live with a system that hadn't been beta tested, Ryan explained.

He also pulled cameras out of storage that hadn't been used for 10 years.

"Certainly, there were moments of sheer terror," he said. "We didn't have a lot of time to pull it together."

There were moments when audio was lost seconds before broadcast and the ability to load commercials was temporarily gone.

He commended the Herald's Johnson for his professional demeanor during the stressful situations.

"It's a real test of a man," Ryan said. "He never lost his cool and was completely calm when we were troubleshooting. I was extremely proud to work with him."

The Herald's publisher, Harlan Beagley, said he was stopped many times at the Grant County Fair this week by people who knew him as publisher.

They asked him if he was worried about the internet making the newspaper obsolete.

"I have to remind them the local internet powerhouse is the Columbia Basin Herald," he said. "We are the internet in this area and are very proud of that. Having the Columbia Basin Herald broadcast over the internet is a natural. It also gives us the ability to eventually broadcast news as well."