The men's Atlantic Coast Conference basketball tournament to be held next month in Tampa, Fla., will be broadcast in HD on a syndicated network formed by Raycom/Lincoln Financial. Technical problems have kept the network from switching to HD in previous years (namely a lack of receiving equipment by local stations).
Raycom said broadcast affiliates have not been able to retrieve and air syndicated programming in HD as they do with their respective network-fed programming, according to the Charlotte Observer in North Carolina.
Raycom/Lincoln Financial's HD initiative will make it one of the first syndicated college sports networks in the U.S. to offer live coverage in HD. The ACC tourney in Florida starts on March 8. Still, only about a third of the 35 stations hooked into the syndication network will be equipped to receive HD content.
Raycom also said while it costs more to produce sports in HD, it has yet to find any advertisers willing to pay higher rates for inclusion in the HD broadcasts.
