SEC on CBS Cruiser Streams Into the 5th Quarter

This year, CBS Sports’ coverage of Southeastern Conference football each Saturday doesn’t go dark when the game clock hits 0:00. After the conclusion of CBS’s SEC Game of the Week this year, lead analyst Gary Danielson hops aboard the new SEC on CBS Cruiser to host the 5th Quarter With Gary Danielson, a live interactive online show streamed on CBSSports.com.

The 5th Quarter, which debuted last Saturday at the Tennessee-Florida game in Gainesville, is produced out of a mini-studio aboard the newly unveiled SEC on CBS Cruiser. The vehicle is equipped with WiFi and 3G connectivity, as well as four HD televisions and two satellite feeds.

“The premise of getting the bus was started by our digital side of CBS Sports,” says CBS Sports Coordinating Producer Craig Silver. “They wanted to do a show with Gary that would allow him to continue the college-football conversation after we were off the air. But we also didn’t want him to be tied down to the booth, stadium, or hotel. The dominoes lined up, and this was the result.”

5th Quarter allows fans to chat and ask Danielson questions via Twitter (@Danielson) immediately following the SEC Game of the Week as he travels home on the bus. The live video stream runs for about an hour while the Cruiser is still parked in the broadcast compound. After the bus departs, the video stream shuts down, but Danielson continues to chat with fans online using the bus’s WiFi/3G connection.

“For the video stream, we are piggybacking on resources that are being used for the game, including transmission,” says Silver. “Once the bus gets rolling, it won’t have the video stream, but Gary will keep chatting online using the bus’s WiFi and 3G technology.”

5th Quarter is co-hosted by David Moulton, a long-time member of the CBS college-football crew and a local radio host on WWCN Fort Myers, FL. In addition, CBS Sports announcers Verne Lundquist, Tracy Wolfson, and Tony Barnhart will regularly contribute to the show.

The Cruiser will also be parked outside SEC stadiums throughout the season, providing various pregame reports and interviews for CBS Sports, CBS Sports Network, and CBSSports.com. According to Silver, the Cruiser’s role on CBS will expand as the season progresses, and he eventually envisions the bus’s becoming a “true SEC on CBS mobile studio.”

“It will continue to morph throughout the season,” he says. “The things we used [the Cruiser] for when we started last week will not necessarily be the same things we are using it for by [the end of the season] on Dec. 3 and into next year. This will eventually be a regular complement to the CBS Sports programming platforms across the board.”