During the Stadium network’s Facebook Live broadcast of a Wyoming-Texas State football game on Sept. 30, a hashtag started trending in the comments section: #InterviewCheerleaderSidney.
Stadium’s social producer, Greg Shellow, noted its popularity and, though its origin was not immediately obvious, texted the tip to sideline reporter Camryn Irwin, who went to investigate. She approached the Wyoming cheerleader coach to identify Sidney — Sidney Ward, a senior, as viewers (and Irwin) would later learn — and then went to interview her with no idea why, except for the dozens of viewers posting the hashtag. “That is all I knew,” Irwin said.
What followed were a pair of on-air conversations culminating in an incrementally unfolding, unscripted moment of family joy shared internationally. This was the raw power of this new medium of community and connectivity, joining a recent series of social sensations that includes a blind long snapper, a hip-hop gymnastics routine and a scene-stealing mother returning to see her son play following a harrowing cancer battle.
Before that, Irwin had an interview to do. She asked Sidney about her experience as a University of Wyoming student, then asked if she had any idea who started the hashtag. Sidney guessed that her mother was its creator, then gave her a playful shoutout, “Hi Mom, I love you!” Then her cheerleading teammates raced onto the field to perform, leaving Sidney anxiously looking over her shoulder before going to join.
At that point, Irwin received another text from the social producer, informing her that Sidney’s dad initiated the public interview request. “I still don’t really know the context,” Irwin recalled, “but I know I need to talk to her again.” Another clue emerged when the feed kicked back up to the broadcast booth where one of the analysts, who had time to scroll through the comments during the interview, revealed that Sidney’s father, Scott, was serving in the U.S. Army overseas in Germany and then added, “The things we can do when we bring you games on Facebook. It’s a new wave.”
Irwin soon returned to Sidney’s side and informed her — live on air — that her father made the initial petition to see his daughter in the spotlight. Irwin could see Sidney’s expression change immediately as she grew emotional. Irwin put her arm around her shoulder. “It’s amazing,” Sidney said. “It really feels good to know that he gets to see me right now.” Sidney then embraced several of her teammates as an outpouring of well wishes filled the Facebook comments section.
This is the true beauty of Facebook's Stadium: Live College Football broadcasts. It all started with…
Posted by Camryn Irwin on Saturday, September 30, 2017
Scott Ward, a Chief Warrant Officer 4 and Chinook pilot with seven prior combat deployments, was in the midst of a nine-month overseas rotation as part of Operation Atlantic Resolve. “When it comes to his kids, he will do whatever it takes see their faces or just hear their voices especially when he’s so far away,” Sidney’s mother, Shelley, later wrote to Irwin in a Facebook message Shelley permitted be shared publicly.
Scott was watching the live feed with two friends and, upon seeing Sidney’s excited reaction to the news that her father had requested the interview, “They all had tears in their eyes,” Shelley wrote, adding:
“We are no exception and that most military families are going through long separation like this. We are just the super lucky ones who had the right people listening who could make this connection happen 
. Let me tell you Sid will never forget that moment.”
Irwin called her participation in this remote reunion for the Ward family “an honor.”
“I have never felt more a part of a story and a broadcast of a game, and its potential to include a community and have such real-time interaction — there is nothing like it,” she added.
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Her end-of-interview embrace of Sidney was transformative, her role shifting from storyteller to participant and interviewer to supporter. Irwin’s job description on those broadcasts is evolving along with the productions themselves, leaving airtime to discover these hidden human moments embedded in sports. This is Stadium’s first season of exclusive Facebook Live streaming content, with 15 college football games (whose slate ended last weekend) to be followed by 47 men’s basketball games. Stadium also has a more traditional linear broadcast but these social-oriented broadcasts are especially unique.
Irwin, who is also a professional volleyball player, primarily works as an analyst, reporter and host for the Pac-12 Network where she has applied many of the same skills to that channel’s evolving multi-platform distribution. The linear television Pac-12 Network and its corresponding Pac-12 Plus platform feed all manner of social media such as Facebook Live, YouTube, Twitter and Periscope, each of which has shown to attract different demographics and viewing habits.
Ryan Currier, the Pac-12 Network’s vice president of digital business & products, said the utility of these mediums is to engage and target the audience in concerted ways, to drive traffic and also to capture “human connection moments.”
“They are ones that transcend the immediate fans of that team or even that sport,” Currier said.
The Pac-12 Network reported a 74 percent increase year over year in live streaming of events in its mobile app and a 39 percent increase social media video views, which included 15 million views on Facebook.
Some of its recent viral sensations include blind USC long snapper Jake Olson, who successfully snapped an extra-point try; the floor routine of UCLA gymnast Sophina DeJesus, whose performance was seen by few people live but viewed 18 million times after the fact and netted her an appearance on The Ellen Show; and USC football player Adoree Jackson, whose mother, Vianca, joined his postgame interview after seeing her son play for the first time since a breast cancer diagnosis.
.@AdoreeKnows' mom was diagnosed with breast cancer last year and couldn't go to any games.
Today was a good day
pic.twitter.com/oTlyLgicH8
— Pac-12 Network (@Pac12Network) September 10, 2016
These moments are a mix of purely organic moments (much like Irwin’s interview of Sidney Ward) that were recorded as part of standard event coverage and then packaged and promoted well, Currier said the Olson moment included advance reporting from the broadcast team, in which USC outlined the possible scenarios in which Olson would enter the game.
“While I think it came across as fully spontaneous to fans, it actually was the result of quite a bit of preparation,” Currier said, adding: “It allowed us to be camera-ready to capture his preparation on the sideline before the moment when he came in and the reaction from some of the coaches and the other team. It allowed us to be in a position to tell the complete story, not just capture the isolated moment when he actually came into the came and did the snap.”
While speaking on a panel at the SPORTELMonaco conference last month, Rob Shaw, Facebook’s global head of sports media and league partnerships, noted a few of the adaptations being made for these live-streamed broadcasts. Game cameras are zoomed in tighter, with more than 80 percent of the audience watching on mobile phones. Graphics appear bigger than on a standard broadcast for the same reason. Analysts solicit predictions, comments and questions to encourage interaction.
Shaw stressed the importance of delivering “authentic” moments, describing the #InterviewCheerleaderSidney event as “something that can just not happen on television.”
“The concept of the sideline reporter is not about the injury reports, it’s about how does it feel to actually be at the stadium,” Shaw said. “I think that’s the idea — the closer that we can bring people to the action, the more exciting and the more unique. We want it to feel like you’re actually in the arena.”
Irwin’s task on Stadium streams is to fill a five-minute pregame segment, a 20-minute halftime and 14 segments of one and a half minutes that fill the time typically occupied by commercial breaks. She reports to both a broadcast producer and a social producer.
During games, her phone is always open so she can alternately watch the game while listening to the analysts and scrolling through comments. (Those comments, it should be noted, included a lot of fan chatter about Wyoming’s Barrel Man and the correct lyrics to the classic ditty sung at university sporting events, “In Heaven, There Is No Beer.”)
“It’s a very unique position because you are half- a sideline reporter but also a social entertainer,” Irwin said.