Trib HSSN celebrates 25th anniversary of broadcasting high school football

By: Bill Hartlep
Thursday, August 22, 2024 | 5:15 PM

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Student-athletes across Western Pennsylvania have made countless memories over the past quarter-century, and the TribLive High School Sports Network has helped chronicle those moments and performances.

Trib HSSN is celebrating 25 years of broadcasting high school sports, looking back at what shaped the network’s beginning and ahead for what comes next.

“Trib HSSN has undoubtedly significantly impacted the local high school sports landscape in Western Pennsylvania,” said Jennifer Bertetto, president and CEO of Trib Total Media. “By providing live video streaming of hundreds of high school sporting events each year, we have played a vital role in enhancing the local high school sports landscape in Western Pennsylvania. By increasing accessibility, fostering community engagement, elevating athlete profiles and contributing to the local economy, we have significantly impacted the region.”

Radio has always been a major part of the high school sports culture in Western Pennsylvania. Local stations carry games for the town’s high school team.

“It’s unique. It wasn’t like that everywhere in the country,” said Don Rebel, the voice of Trib HSSN and a 2023 WPIAL Hall of Fame inductee. “But these were small radio stations that didn’t have much of a signal.”

Rebel worked with Alex Panormios, director of sports broadcasting at Scholastic Sports Network, in the late 1990s. Their focus on high school football grew into an idea of using the internet to broadcast high school football games via the radio affiliates.

“He had the idea to allow more people to listen to broadcasts outside of a limited radio signal,” Rebel said. “(He said) let’s do these games on the internet.”

Nauticom Sports Network launched in 1998 and began broadcasting in ’99, providing audio streams to dozens of games online each Friday night.

“That was really the birth of it,” Rebel said. “I thought it was a great idea. I thought it had a chance to be very successful, and it has.

“I thought it was something special, and I was thrilled to be part of it. But I don’t know if I can say 25 years later I would be doing a retrospective on what we were able to accomplish.”

Nauticom expressed interest in expanding on a nationwide scale. When other areas of the country didn’t share Western Pennsylvania’s love of high school football, Nauticom decided to end the network.

But in May 2001, Management Science Associates stepped in and formed the MSA Sports Network. It broadcast games from more than 30 affiliates in and around the Pittsburgh region.

The network, under Rebel’s leadership, covered more than 2,000 live sporting events each year across 10 counties. After 16 years, MSA pulled the plug and put the network up for sale.

Trib Total Media purchased the network in 2017 and created the TribLive High School Sports Network.

“The acquisition of MSA Sports by TribLive was a strategic move we felt could benefit our company in terms of revenue diversification, audience engagement, community building and future growth potential,” Bertetto said. “In Western Pennsylvania, there is nothing more local than high school sports. And at TribLive, we focus on providing top-notch hyper-local coverage to the communities we proudly serve.”

Rebel added: “We were thrilled that they decided to add us to their high school sports coverage, and so far, so good.”

The network has grown drastically in the past seven years, moving nearly all broadcasts to video streams and upgrading to the latest technology.

“My first goal was to make everything video first,” HSSN general manager Justin LaBar said. “Within six months we did that, and we found ourselves producing some of the highest-quality video around. Whether it was at high school stadiums or at Acrisure Stadium for championships, we really increased the value of our broadcasts to the audience.

“Within that upgrade, we’ve had clips from our video broadcasts featured on ESPN SportsCenter’s top 10 plays and accumulated millions of views from our broadcasts.”

As the 2024-25 school year begins, Trib HSSN has plans to broadcast hundreds of sporting events over the next nine months, providing digital memories that student-athletes can look back on in years to come.

“Over the next 25 years, I’m sure there are things we can’t even fathom right now from a technology standpoint,” Rebel said. “It would be great if this thing is kept going on and on and on because I think there is a great appreciation for what we do. For it to go on for another 25 years, that would be awesome.”

Bill Hartlep is the TribLive sports editor. A Pittsburgh native and Point Park graduate, he joined the Trib in 2004, covering high school sports. He held various editing roles before assuming his current position in 2019. He can be reached at bhartlep@triblive.com.