For fans of Bridgeport High School football who may not be able to get to every road game or who live out of the area or even out of state or the country, there’s some good news. WVFX/WDTV General Manager Tim DeFazio has announced Bridgeport’s Sept. 7 game with East Fairmont will be televised live on the local Fox channel.

 

It marks the first time since the start of last season that the Indians have had a regular season game televised on local television. Last year, the Indians upended Lewis County in the season-opening game at Wayne Jamison Field by a 44-20 score on a Thursday night.

 

This year, the Tribe – or any other team for that matter – were likley not going to have a game televised by WVFX. Then, however, fate stepped in and opened the door for the possibility for the game to be televised.

 

“We like to try and do a game each year, usually on the opening week because coaches are more comfortable with that as opposed to changing their routine after the season starts. There’s a lot that determines if we can televise a game on the logistical and programming front and, this year, we just figured we weren’t going to be able to do it,” said DeFazio.

 

Then, the station found out about a schedule change. Bridgeport’s game with the Bees was originally scheduled for Friday, Sept. 8. However, due to two games being inadvertently scheduled on the same day at East-West Stadium, one game had to be moved to Thursday. That game was the Indians-Bees affair.

 

“Based on the fact this effort takes approximately 20 to 25 people we prefer to do an opening night game on Thursday so when we found out this game was on Thursday it worked in our favor,” said DeFazio. “We cover more than a dozen games on Friday for (highlight show) the 5^th Quarter, which makes it difficult. This just worked out well for us.”

 

Long-time WDTV/WVFX Sports Anchor Joe Brocato will do the play by play. He will be joined by Ryan Petrovich in the booth doing color analysis.

 

The game, like all other games this year, will start at 7 p.m. as opposed to the former standard time of 7:30 p.m. DeFazio said the pregame show is tentatively set to begin at 6:30 p.m. This marks the first time WVFX or WDTV has done a game at East-West Stadium.

 

“We’ll keep doing this because the student-athletes get an opportunity to compete on live television and the feedback we get has always been positive,” said DeFazio. “We’ve had many former players tell us how much they enjoyed it so we plan to continue to do it as we’ve been doing it.”

One thing won’t continue the same. In the past, when WVFX or WDTV did a live broadcast it could only be viewed in standard definition. This time, DeFazio said it will be done in high definition.

 

For those not in the viewing area, it won’t be a problem. DeFazio said the game will be live-streamed on the WVFX and WDTV Web sites, which can be viewed by anyone with internet access around the world.

 

“We’ll have all hands on deck from our sports and news people to our sales and production people and anyone else,” said DeFazio. “Out front, Joe Brocato does a great job leading the way. Behind the scenes, it’s Alan Dye and Esker Davis that are doing the jobs that are so critically important.”

 

DeFazio said the addition of high definition is another step in the progression of occasional live games. He said this will likely be the only live game that will be shown with a WVFX broadcast team this year.

 

“This just fell into our laps and it works out logistically and with our broadcast schedule. Every county in our area is important to us, but we’re only to do games within striking distance that meet the other criteria of time and logistics,” said DeFazio. “This ended up fitting the mold perfectly.”

 

Editor's Note: Top photo shows John Merica and second picture is of Chapin Murphy, two of the Indians' key players for 2017. In the third photo, Joe Brocato, far left, is shown at the B-U game in 2015 with Ben Eshenbaugh and Shelby Cassesse. Bottom photo shows Alan Dye doing the work in the truck for WVFX.