UGA expanding football game radio coverage

• A revamped Web site, georgiadogs.com, that will re-launch later this summer with more emphasis on video, storytelling and inside-the-program access.

• Expanded radio programming on football game days, with a four-hour pregame show (up from three hours) and a total programming window —including pregame, halftime and postgame shows and, oh yes, the actual game — of at least nine hours.

• Possibly an expanded Mark Richt Show, with Georgia having the option to extend the coach's weekly TV show during football season from 30 minutes to 60 starting in 2010.

• More live TV coverage of sporting events beyond football and men's basketball.

• A weekly magazine-style TV show, featuring UGA teams and athletes in all sports, to be distributed by ISP to stations around the state starting this fall.

"The overall deal is a fantastic deal for Georgia," said Alan Thomas, UGA's associate athletics director for external operations, "but the great thing that goes with it, beyond dollars and cents, is the creation of this opportunity to tell more stories. We want at times to be able to control our own messaging but also to be able to tell the whole story of our athletics program."

He acknowledged that football "drives the most eyeballs" but said Georgia also is committed to getting out the word about accomplished athletes in less publicized sports.

A "new-media" department of about eight people — ISP employees — is being put in place for the UGA athletics department. The group will produce content for the Internet, television and other platforms, Thomas said. Mike Bilbow, formerly video production manager at the University of Tulsa, has been hired as executive director of new media for ISP's UGA operation.

"When you do an eight-year deal, you know a lot of technology will change [over time]," Thomas said. "But one thing I know will be the same in eight years, even as the mediums change, is demand for content. And we will be much more in the content game."

There will be no change, Georgia athletics director Damon Evans said, in the atmosphere at Georgia sporting events as a result of the deal, which continues — but does not expand — ISP's rights to sell advertising and sponsorships.

"You're not going to see any increased commercialism [at events]," Evans said. "One thing we stated in this deal is that we wanted to not go beyond what we already have done in sponsorships."