Get your brackets ready and hope your team doesn’t get upset! VITAC is captioning the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament on truTV, TBS and TNT!
The tournament kicked off with our captions on truTV on St. Patrick’s Day when Hampton defeated Manhattan and Ole Miss advanced over BYU. Coverage continued Wednesday night when Dayton knocked off Boise State to move into the tournament and Robert Morris beat North Florida to advance for a game against number 1 seed, Â Duke.
The round of 64 tips off this afternoon. You can catch our realtime captions starting at 12:40 PM on truTV when Iowa State takes on UAB, 1:40 PM when Baylor plays Georgia State on TBS, and at 2:10 PM when Texas Southern will try to upset the number 2 seed, Arizona on TNT.
Our realtime department is busy “warming up” for the tournament. Our realtime steno captioners are vigorously preparing and researching each team’s roster, stats, and practicing writing names of the various announcers. If they’re scheduled to caption a game, they’re ready for anything to happen!
The sports supervisors and realtime coordinators are getting pumped up for their setups of each game: Testing with each captioner 20 minutes before the start of the pre-game, ensuring all of the correct connections to each network and the web, and being ready to troubleshoot at a moment’s notice! They also have to keep track of the game clock. A lot of these games run longer than scheduled and are supposed to be immediately followed with another match-up!
And let’s not forget about our realtime schedulers who are responsible for assigning a captioner to each and every game! They’re true team players!
If you’re watching any of the 24 March Madness games on truTV, TBS or TNT in this first week of the tournament, turn on the captions while keeping up with your bracket and hoping it doesn’t get busted early!
By Brittany Bender