Case Study: Rockdale Career Academy achieves professional live sports broadcasts and hands-on career training with Telestream Wirecast

How Rockdale Career Academy uses Wirecast to prepare high school students for careers in news and sports production

Rockdale Career Academy (RCA), a public charter school in Conyers, GA, runs the Sports Broadcast Institute (SBI), where about 200 students produce live, multi-camera sports and news programs including a weekly “Game of the Week.” The challenge was to give students hands-on experience while consistently delivering technically flawless, real-time streams to Rockdale-live.com, NFHSNetwork and social platforms under the pressure of live events.

RCA solved this by deploying Telestream Wirecast with a cost-efficient hardware kit (four cameras, capture card, audio mixer, wireless field camera and scoreboard/graphics tools) to handle switching, graphics, replays, recording and streaming from one interface. The result is hundreds of professional-looking live broadcasts per year, expanded graphics and replay capabilities after upgrading to Wirecast 7, more student production roles, and revenue from coaching footage that helps sustain the program.

Rockdale Career Academy

Tom White

Director of the Sports Broadcast Institute