NPT to Broadcast TSSAA BlueCross Bowl High School Football Championships

Blue Cross BowlSixteen of the best high school football teams in Tennessee will take the field December 2 – 4 in the 2010 BlueCross Bowl, the TSSAA’s Football state championships in Cookeville, Tennessee, and Nashville Public Television, together with all of Tennessee’s public television stations, will bring you all of the action live.

The games will  be broadcast LIVE from Tennessee Tech University on the  Tennessee Public Television Council stations, serving Chattanooga, Cookeville, Martin, Jackson, Tri-Cities, Knoxville, Memphis and Nashville.  The stations and over-the-air broadcast channel numbers are provided below, but check local listings for the channel number on your cable or satellite provider.

WTCI–TV Chattanooga  |  Channel 45

WCTE–TV Cookeville  |  Channel 22

WLJT–TV Martin/Jackson  | Channel 11

WETP–TV Tri-Cities  |  Channel 2

WKOP–TV Knoxville  |  Channel 15

WKNO–TV Memphis  |  Channel 10

WNPT–TV Nashville  |  Channel 8

The matchups and broadcast times for the 2010 BlueCross Bowl (with viewing market in parentheses) are:

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 2, 2010
Division II, Class 1A   –  3:30pm CT | 4:30pm ET –  Knoxville Webb (Knoxville) vs St. George’s (Memphis)

Division II, Class 2A   –  7:00pm CT | 8:00pm ET –  Baylor (Chattanooga) vs Ensworth (Nashville)

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2010

Division I, Class 1A   –  12:00pm CT | 1:00pm ET –  South Pittsburg (Chattanooga) vs Jo Byrns (Nashville)

Division I, Class 3A   –  3:30pm CT | 4:30pm ET  –  Alcoa (Knoxville) vs Goodpasture (Nashville)

Division I, Class 5A   –  7:00pm CT | 8:00pm ET –  Hendersonville (Nashville) vs Columbia (Nashville)

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 4, 2010

Division I, Class 2A   – 12:00pm CT | 1:00pm ET –  Signal Mountain (Chattanooga) vs Trinity Christian (Jackson)

Division I, Class 4A   –  3:30pm CT | 4:30pm ET –  Greeneville (Tri Cities) vs Trezevant (Jackson)

Division I, Class 6A   –  7:00pm CT | 8:00pm ET –  Maryville (Knoxville) vs Smyrna (Nashville)

The 2010 BlueCross Bowl championship games are presented by the Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association (TSSAA), BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee, the Tennessee Governor’s Highway Safety Office, the Cookeville-Putnam County Chamber of Commerce, Tennessee Tech University and the TSSAA Network.

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33 Comments

I cannot BELIEVE you guys have done this! Football on PBS? Are you nuts? Newshour and BBC news dropped for THIS? No more donations from me, I will follow my PBS shows online in future. NPT, you have let your community down.

…and you have let your english teacher down.
Get over yourself.

Its only for a couple of hours.
Its not every friday, or everyday, the rest of your crappy life.
These young men have accomplished quite a bit. Shut up.

Who cares about high school football??? NOT ME!!
Why is this on an “educational” channel?

Should be on ESPN2, if anywhere.

I wish Nashville had a decent public broadcasting station — maybe one that would show actual intelligent programming instead of a useless generation of imbeciles giving each other concussions for a crowd of drunks.

….How exactly are they “a useless generation of imbeciles”?
I am sure somebody could say the same thing, about your ‘useless’ generation.
You are probably some old hag, that used to walk up hill both ways, in snow “up to here”.

Get over yourself.

Wow….tough crowd.
Get over it people. Its only for a couple hours a day, for a couple of days.
Geez.
Go to Fox news if you can’t stand it….

Wow….tough crowd.
Get over it people. Its only for a couple hours a day, for a couple of days.
Geez.
Go to Fox news if you can’t stand it….

I don’t pay money to Fox News to get “quality programming”. I do pay money to WNPT and get football instead of something worth watching.

You defenders of football on a so-called “educational” station should check your TV listings. It’s not just a “couple of hours for a couple of days”. It’s on from noon to 10:30 PM today and noon to 10:30 PM tomorrow. (plus several hours yesterday)
What a waste…

I really look forward to the News Hour so was disappointed/perplexed when I discovered high school football in it’s place. I understand that you are working to broaden the base of support for Nashville Public Television and my support will certainly continue. However, I hope you will revisit your decision when the time comes next year.

I LIKE football and when my son was in high school, he was captain of his basketball team, so I understand the passionate interest of those who have young people in high school. Couldn’t you at least replay the News Hour later in the evening and include a running note to that effect during the football games? I kept expecting you to cut away for the News Hour because it is such a core program.

High school football ? I can’t believe this takes the place of the news hour. I’ve had enough of football on regular tv and dont care to see it on PBS.
Very disapointed
AB

I don’t care for high school football one bit. That being said, thank you NPT for supporting the local community. I imagine for those football players this means a lot. We often overlook and devalue local accomplishments. It is of utmost importance to recognize local life and affirm the value of the community. Not all of us can expect to live the “dream” life: Ivy league degree, triple digit income, and big city dwelling. Who says this life is better? Thank you for recognizing Tennessee!
SW

As a follow up: The programming replaced by the football games is being aired on NPT2. I just changed the channel to watch News Hour. Not so much of an inconvenience.
SW

Thanks for that follow up.
It must be an inconvenience to some of the lazy people on this forum.

Just change the channel, jerks.
Geez.

I read the previous comment just in time to hear the closing music for Newshour. Why can’t they put the real programming on the regular channel and football on the “backup” system?

Why does John Smith have such a nasty attitude? “lazy” – “jerks” How about keeping the personal insults to yourself?

Joel;

Perhaps John Smith is tired of reading all of the whiny comments from the poor babies that can’t figure out how to look on WNPT’s second channel… If the Newshour is the high moment in anyone’s life, that is a sad state of affairs. And the clown that complained about football being on an’educational’ channel; educational?? Most of the pablum that is fed to this starving nation over the PBS airwaves is useless rehashed, unsubstantiated drival. Perhaps someone should note for our pompous, self loving, highly educated PBS viewers that TSSAA stands for Tennessee SECONDARY SCHOOL Athletic Association. Note the word SCHOOLS. And Athletics. That’s part of education that our liberal feelgooders have cut out from the youth of our society by doing away with PE and recess, in order to keep the children in the classroom, getting their heads filled with leftist propoganda. AND THEN, they complain that the kids are too fat and try to control what food any of us can eat. Some of the programs on PBS (WNPT) are excellent. Many weeks a good many of them are missed because of the fund drives. These poor pathetic people must go insane when that happens. Football is part of our public education system, and, in case you windbags haven’t noticed, PUBLIC is part of the name (PUBLIC broadcasting…) I applaud NPT for doing such a fantastic job, along with the other PBS stations across the state, in providing coverage of our STUDENT athletes.

**”I wish Nashville had a decent public broadcasting station — maybe one that would show actual intelligent programming instead of a useless generation of imbeciles giving each other concussions for a crowd of drunks”***…………..I have the attitude? How about you freaks that just called a bunch of highschool STUDENT-Athletes “a useless generation of imbeciles”, and the people that watch the games a “crowd of drunks”…?

-Piss off Joel, and the rest of you heartless freaks.
Here is a link to your precious little news hour: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/

FYI, you didn’t miss much news yesterday or today….Unemployment still sucks, WIKI links guy is close to being caught, and our lousy Pres. traveled to Afghanistan.

It would be of interest to know approximately how many contributors to PBS one might find among the passionate supporters of these high school football games.

Even if the intent (to show games) was an effort to expand PBS viewerhip and support, I have three observations: 1) if that effort (also) has effect of alienating some of most faithful PBS supporters, then perhaps this decision should be re-thought; 2) it certainly was unfortunate timing, given that NPT was in midst of funding drive — the shift in programming stopped my contribution cold;

3) those who suggested that the football games could have been shifted either in time or to second PBS stations or that regular programming could have been shown later, offered reasonable alternatives that NPT (and other state public channels) should have been smart enough to consider.

Finally, the most distressing aspect of this debate — and one that Public Television management may also wish to take into account — is the tone and absolute incivility of many of those responding to complaints about the programming change. If, by any wild chance, those intemperate responders ever watch PBS (except for high school football), they certainly have gained nothing from it.

Dark days indeed, when NPT thinks that HS football is “television worth watching” yes, there is a second NPT channel, but this has always been a bonus, to allow users to watch an alternative. Football is not an alternative, it can be found on every station out there. If sports fans really want to support high school football, go to a local game, sponsor a local school. I am not a sports fan, I am a fan of quality television. Educational, inspiring, enlightening television. Football is none of those things. Now….perhaps a documentary about how dangerous football is for young high school bodies, knee injuries, head injuries, etc…
NPT will not be getting a year end gift from me.

I think it is a GREAT idea. One time a year a true service to the community. Comercial tv cannot afford to cary this. The coverage and such is really good and football with no comercials is a very unique experience. And what about those announcers?????? I say Thanks to Channel 8

We at Nashville Public Television would like to first thank all of you for visiting the blog and for offering your comments. We appreciate and understand your passion for public television, though as someone noted, regret some of the incivility. But we also understand the nature of public discourse on the internet. We wouldn’t have put this post up, and left the comments open, if we didn’t want to hear from you.

We’ve been following the comments here and felt it was time to weigh in and clear up a few things. As to our reasoning, and that of our fellow public television stations in Tennessee, to air the BlueCross Bowl live on our main channel, it’s really quite simple. There was no grand design to broaden our viewership or appeal to a different segment of the population in order to increase support, or on the flip side, of course, to isolate our dedicated viewers and current supporters. Last year, new technology made it possible for us to connect all of the public television stations in Tennessee, enabling us to share content and jointly broadcast programs at the same time. It’s why we’re able to offer the TN Channel on NPT 2 on Saturday evenings and Sunday afternoon, when all Tennessee stations air the same four-hour block of programming. We can also jointly broadcast events such as the State-of-the-State address. When the TSSAA and WCTE in Cookeville offered TN stations the opportunity to broadcast the BlueCross Bowl we all agreed it would provide a great community service to the state and to the communities where the schools in the championship originated. We knew our regular viewers would be inconvenienced for three days, but hoped they would understand. Could we have done a better job communicating this? In retrospect, yes. But we hoped the crawl running during the game and directing viewers to NPT2 would help.

Whether you’re a high school football fan or not, or have children who play high school football, there is no denying that these kids work extremely hard, and that their families make significant sacrifices so that they have opportunities to play. They deserve recognition for what they do. There is also no denying the large role that high school football plays in our culture, especially in Tennessee and the South, and all around the nation. While it may have been jarring for loyal viewers to turn on NPT and find football, it’s not uncommon for public television stations throughout the nation to regularly air sports programs as part of their service. Public television stations traditionally air a variety of programming, from our children’s shows in the morning, to news, public affairs and documentaries at night, antiques shows, travel shows, cooking and home shows, to special entertainment programming we air during our membership drives. We know everything is not for everyone, and not everyone watches everything.

So again, thank you for weighing in, and for your passion for public television. We apologize to those of you missing our regular programming, and welcome those of you joining us for these games. And we congratulate the students, families and schools of those teams playing.

Thank you,
Joe Pagetta
Director of Media Relations and Online Strategies
NPT

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