WEST DES MOINES, Iowa — The Iowa High School Sports Network (IHSSN), in conjunction with the Iowa High School Athletic Association (IHSAA), is pleased to announce a new distribution plan that will allow boys state events to be viewed by a much larger statewide audience.
The new network will be an over-the-air broadcast on six affiliates throughout the state for the IHSAA’s state football finals, state wrestling finals and state basketball finals. Those events also will be streamed live for free on the IHSSN website, ihssn.com.
“We are giving the viewers what they want, many platforms to deliver the IHSSN product into their homes,” IHSSN President Ken Krogman said. “It will be up to each individual household to decide how to best access the content.”
The broadcasts will be available on the stations’ digital channels, which are their dot-2 or dot-3 channels. Those channels are accessed by subscribing to a local cable company that provides access to the digital channels or by having a television antenna (attic, wall mount or tabletop) in your home. Those six affiliates are KDSM 17.3 in Des Moines, KFXA 28.2 in Cedar Rapids, NPTM 42.2 in Omaha (southwest Iowa), NPTH 44.2 in Sioux City, KXLT 47.2 in Rochester (north-central Iowa) and WQAD 8.3 in the Quad Cities.
“I think the expanded coverage for more Iowans to be able to view our state events, that’s obviously the big thing,” IHSAA executive director Tom Keating said. “Ken and his group have worked very hard to get their organization to the point where they can combine coverage throughout the state for these events. We’re very, very happy about that.”
The football, wrestling and basketball semifinals will be streamed live on the IHSSN website. Other championship events will also be streamed live, and the schedule is available on ihssn.com.
“The live streaming part is another great piece of this that we really, really are looking forward to,” Keating said. “It’s the direction that a lot of media is going, so it makes sense that streaming is a part of this.”
All 95 IHSSN events that are either streamed or broadcast will be digitally archived at archives.ihssn.com and available at no charge.
For those who want to own their favorite games, digital downloads of all 95 IHSSN events will be available at shop.ihssn.com for $9.95 per download.
