Flames Sports Network recognized

Liberty University became officially recognized by the secular sports entertainment industry as a major player in collegiate athletic coverage when the Flames Sports Network was recently awarded two bronze Telly Awards.

The awards, which were earned for FSN’s coverage of the Big South Championship football game against Stony Brook University and the weekly “Flames Sports Desk” program, are the first such awards for FSN.

“I’ve submitted games over the last seven years that we’ve done — broadcasts that I thought were very well done but we hadn’t received an award for whatever reason,” Athletic TV Producer Bruce Carey said. “So this year to submit two, the football game and the sports desk show, and win in both of those categories was pretty amazing.”

The Telly Awards are not like the Academy Awards, which judges entertainment productions in a head-to-head competition, but rather an affiliation that brings authority and credibility to an organization.

“They don’t judge you against other videos or programs or shows,” Carey said. “What they do is they have a standard of excellence and you have to reach a certain level, and if you reach that level there are two categories. There’s a silver and a bronze. We were able to win two bronze Telly’s – one for our Stony Brook football game that we did in New York … and the other one was for the brand new show we started this year called the Flames Sports Desk.”

The Telly Awards, which are given by a group of industry leaders, covers many different kinds of media.

“There’s everything from broadcast games to commercials, to films, to websites,” Carey said. “Sports are just a category in the organization. People that have won the Silver Telly award, which is the highest award possible, from the judges. It has companies like ESPN and ABC.”

The awards are a testament to the hard work put in by the large staff of professionals it takes to put together so much programming.

“If you don’t have the right people, it makes it very difficult to pull one of these games off, and I’ve been pretty fortunate that most of the guys on the crew are people that have years of experience,” Carey said.

“There are 45 or 50 people that are involved in a broadcast but certainly there’s a core of about six to eight people,” Associate Athletic Director of External Operations Kevin Keys said. “Bruce (Carey) is at the top of that list. He’s been there since the beginning.”

Carey and Keys collaborate on FSN to produce both the games and the studio show. As the head of athletics marketing, Keys bridges the gap between athletics and the media.

“He and I work together probably more than anybody else in athletics other than the SID’s (Sports Information Directors),” Carey said. “If I have a question or something or I need help with a broadcast, whether it be with facilities or talking to the affiliates, Kevin usually steps in.”

“Each year we make incremental changes. Bruce works hard to get the programming where it needs to be,” Keys said. “One of the awards was for the magazine style show that we’ve been looking to do for five years and this year we finally did it. We cast the vision and Bruce followed through and made it work. It’ll be done at the end of April. We’ve done about 34 shows so far this year.”

Two key components of the Flames Sports Desk program are the co-hosts Alan York and Erin McKeown. Oddly enough, neither of the on-camera talents had experience in TV prior to their work on the show.

“Alan is young, he’s energetic, he’s ambitious,” Carey said. “His background is in radio so, basically, he came in as a new person into the field of television and he picked it up and ran with it and has done a great job. Erin McKeown has been working in the athletic department for years now as the compliance officer, and she’s a former athlete herself, a star volleyball player.”

Despite the array of talent represented in the staff of both productions, the broadcast team is unable and uninterested in producing anything without God.

“It’s not me that is pulling these games off,” Carey said. “It’s not really the crew. If the Lord doesn’t get the glory, I’m wasting my time. We pray before each game. We want to make sure that God gets glorified in every broadcast that we do, and if that’s not the case then I really don’t want to be a part of it.”