Category Archives: Learfield

Children’s Trust Fund relaunches website on Typepad

Posted on by

ctf4kids.orgChildren’s Trust Fund of Missouri is one of our clients and, for the last few months, I’ve been helping them with a make-over of their website.

Their previous site was classic Web 1.0. It was designed by a company in St. Louis and any changes or updates had to be emailed to the developer who would, in time, make the change. Most of the “current” content was PDF news releases that weren’t very “new. The site was hosted on state servers. The CTF guys just were not happy with their site.

I persuaded them to try Typepad and incorporate a blog as their primary content element.

They took the site public at the first of the month and, although still tweaking some of the content, it looks and works great. And the best part… they are now in control. Paula and Alicia know how to add pages, maintain links, and manage the site top to bottom.

Kirk, the executive director, is finding his blogging feet and posting regularly. From his fingers…to the world. Boom.

We’ve shown them how to use Flickr, Google Calendar and YouTube. And all of this for a fraction of what they paid for their previous site, which simply wasn’t meeting their needs.

Helping folks like Kirk, Paula and Alicia tell their story is extremely gratifying. If Web 1.0 was selling fish, Web 2.0 is using great new tools for helping people learn how to fish.

Learfield Sports Operations: Then and Now

Posted on by

The Learfield Sports Operations Center is a real thing of beauty. Great equipment, well designed. A really nice place to produce sports broadcasts. It wasn’t always so. My recent photo spelunk turned up this shot taken in the basement of Learfield’s former headquarters, an old house on McCarty Street. Kim Steiner (the guy in the photo) was about 5′ 7″.

In 1984, we began producing the broadcasts for Iowa State, Oklahoma State and Kansas. We already had the rights to Missouri and were producing those broadcasts in a studio shared with The Missourinet. Because there was absolutely no more room for studios, the engineers jammed some small mixing consoles into a corner space in the basement (where the engineers also lived).

Cramped, dusty and… dangerous. You could always recognize the new guys by the contusions and lacerations on their foreheads.

“Introducing the Missourinet”

Posted on by

A lot of our company’s history is jammed into cardboard boxes and I stumbled upon a little piece this afternoon. This is a copy of an ad [larger image] that ran in Missouri Life Magazine, sometime in the early ’70’s.

Now Missourians from border to border know what their neighbors are doing.

They know what is going on in Jefferson City… in the major metropolitan areas… in the arts… in science… business.

They’re listening to their local radio station… an affiliate of the Missourinet.

The Missourinet is a statewide news network… very similar in operation to the national news networks. Some 40 radio stations carry its hourly newscasts. It has the state Capitol’s largest full-time news bureau. And each week its programs feature hundreds of on-the-scene reports from correspondents and newsmakers over the state.

Missouri + net? Get it? The official name of our company was “Missouri Network, Inc.” back then.

23 Year Pin

Posted on by

My first official day at Learfield Communications was June 4, 1984. I’ve posted on enough anniversaries that I don’t have anything fresh to add, but didn’t want the day to slip by without note.

Learfield PinA surprising number of people who were there on my first day are still with the company: Clyde, Roger, Charlie, Bob Priddy, Derry (no longer technically part of Learfield but always in my head and my heart), Greg, Clarice, Joyce… who am I missing?

The company has grown so rapidly in recent years, it bears little resemblance to the company I started with. But that is as it should be. Like that old Saturday Night Live bit… “Learfield has been berry, berry good to me.”