IHSA Announcements

September 25, 2001

IHSA Television Network Package Set

The Illinois High School Association Television Network will be in operation again during the 2001-02 school term with a reduced package of events and more live coverage than ever in the 51-year history of IHSA telecasts.

Telecasts in the 2001-02 schedule include 41 live events. Scheduled for live coverage will be:

  1. Football Playoff Pairings Show live from 7:00-9:00 p.m. (Saturday, Oct. 20)
  2. All eight championship games in the Football Playoffs live (Nov. 23-24)
  3. All eight games in the Class A Girls Basketball State Tournament live (Feb. 22-23)
  4. All eight games in the Class AA Girls Basketball State Tournament live (March 1-2)
  5. All eight games in the Class A Boys Basketball State Tournament live (March 8-9)
  6. All eight games in the Class AA Boys Basketball State Tournament live (March 15-16)

Scheduled for tape delayed coverage in two-hour programs each will be:

  1. Highlights of the semifinal matches and the championship match of the Class A Girls Volleyball State Tournament
  2. Highlights of the semifinal matches and the championship match of the Class AA Girls Volleyball State Tournament

Volleyball and football will be the only events to be telecast in the fall. Winter sports other than basketball and all spring sports are not scheduled to be part of the 2001-02 package at this time. Last year the IHSA Television Network carried telecasts of all sports except golf, bowling and badminton.

Last fall, IHSA created its own network and produced its own telecasts for the first time in history. The first IHSA event ever telecast was aired was on March 22, 1952, when Hebron beat Quincy (Sr.), 64-59 in overtime in the championship game of the boys state basketball tournament. Every year since, IHSA events have been telecast.

This year there will be 82 hours of programming, 78 of it live. Last year there were 92.5 hours of programming, 52 of it live.

The reduced number of events reflects the downturn in the economy, and the effort by the IHSA to provide live coverage of four sports that have been popular with viewers over the years.

"We are providing viewers with a smaller package simply because the costs of televising our events are greater than the sponsorship revenue we anticipate," said Executive Director Dave Fry. "We’d love to be able to televise every one of our state final events. If we can generate sponsorship dollars to add events during the year we will. Football and basketball have large numbers of viewers. We are giving our viewers live telecasts of what they have asked us to give them. The volleyball telecasts give us another girls sport where the majority of our member schools field teams in the state series. It also gives us a girls sport in the fall along with boys football."

Programming of the two girls volleyball events will be tape delayed and will be shown by stations on the network as two different two-hour shows. Coverage in each show will increase the exposure of girls on two more teams than ever before. Previously, volleyball telecasts involved only the teams playing in the championship game.

The expanded eight-class format in football will feature doubleheader live telecasts. There will be four sessions over the two days on Thanksgiving weekend. The games will be played in order from Class 1A-8A, two games per session. Following is the schedule of live telecasts:

The live telecast schedule for the four basketball tournaments will be identical. March Madness will be televised as follows:

Other winter and/or spring sport state final events may be added to the package as the school term progresses.