“Friday night lights.” That phrase refers to the exciting atmosphere of hometown high school football games, played in communities across the nation on Friday nights.
The sights and sounds of those games are part of the fabric of small town life. Today we’ll meet some innovative Kansans who are finding a way to bring the excitement of those Friday night games to many more people, using the tools of technology.
Cody Liming is the co-founder of Back Roads Broadcasting, which he founded with his friend Cody Roche. Both of them graduated from Rock Creek High School in Pottawatomie County, where Cody Liming had played football, baseball and wrestling. Cody Liming now works for the Kansas Division of Emergency Management and Cody Roche is a systems engineer at K-State.
The two Codys did some video production on the side. Over time, they accumulated more cameras and video production equipment.
“We came to realize that we had an entire set of live video production equipment,” Liming said. “We could use this to benefit the community.”
In the spring of 2020, Covid-19 hit and people were not allowed to gather in person. “The athletic director at Rock Creek reached out to us to see if we could livestream a couple of games so that people could see them,” Liming said. The broadcast was fun and generated positive reaction from the viewers.
When the 2021 football season came around, they decided to livestream the whole season. “Let’s invest in more equipment, get some commentators and go whole hog,” Liming said. Continue reading “Cody Liming, Back Roads Broadcasting”
