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Our Story

It all started with just an idea.

Simply stated, the Minnesota Sports Broadcast Network was created to bring live broadcast coverage of high school athletic events into the Twin Cities metro area. The idea of creating a business broadcasting high school sports in the metro area goes back to my college days at the U of M in the early 90’s. Being from a small town where local radio covered all of our high school athletic events, I found it odd that schools in the metro area, who were significantly larger than the school I attended, in communities that had 10 times the population, did not have live audio coverage of their athletic events. “It’s just not something that’s done in big cities” I was told. At the time the internet was just in its infancy and audio streaming was not yet available, so while the idea was there, the technology to bring it to life was not.

After graduation from college and stints working in minor league baseball, advertising, and radio I revisited the idea of broadcasting high school sports in the metro area in the late fall of 2004. By now internet technology had advanced significantly and I felt the time was right to pursue my idea from ten years earlier. The preliminary reaction I had was positive, but skeptical. Is there enough interest in this, would anybody listen, and would the technology work were some of the many questions I fielded in those early days. I also needed announcers to make this work and I was very fortunate to meet up with Nick Walsh and Joe Michaels in the summer of 2005. They were both broadcasting minor league baseball at the time and I convinced them to come on board with me and give this internet broadcasting idea a try that fall. I also created an intership program with Brown College that summer and MSBN had it’s first staff of broadcasters. On August 31st 2005 MSBN went live with coverage of three high school football games-Eden Prarie at Apple Valley, Eagan at Rosemount, and Chaska at Bloomington Kennedy. The idea had now become a reality.

We had more than our share of bumps in the road that first year but we worked hard at learning from our mistakes, kept trying new things, and most importantly we never gave up. When you want to do something you just have to do find a way to get it done, and we did. Over time all aspects of our operation have improved and I am proud to say that MSBN is well on its way to becoming the success I knew it could be. Along the way we have had some great games, worked with some great people, and have had a lot of fun bringing you the fans live coverage of your school’s athletic events. My promise is that we will work hard to continue to produce professional, quality broadcasts for our listeners. We appreciate you taking the time to tune in to MSBN and we are always looking for feedback from you. Please e-mail MSBN anytime with your thoughts, suggestions, and comments at MSBN@Meridix.com. Thanks again.

Jon Wekkin
President/CEO
Minnesota Sports Broadcast Network