Cable giants Comcast, Time Warner Cable and others are going long on high school sports, with live and taped game telecasts, as well as advanced media services like on-demand and streaming video of local games.

The aggressive plays, such as Cablevision’s MSG Varsity channel, are designed to solidify their presence within local communities, while serving as retention and acquisition tools. “When you know that a classmate, your son, or a friend or neighbor’s kid is on television, you’re going to tune in,” said Don Buckley, athletic director of St. Anthony’s High School in South Huntington, N.Y., on Long Island.

National sports networks, from the ESPN suite of services to CBS College Sports Network, have also upped their game with increased coverage of contests and the college recruitment scene, while various regional sports networks have jumped in with competitions and stories of more local interest.

Just like the pro teams did with the regional sports networks and Big Ten Network and SEC deals in college, high school sports could really become big in some areas like Texas and the southeast,” said Comcast senior vice president of sports content Mike Sheehey.

According to the National Federation of State High School Associations, participation for the 2008-09 school year reached all-time highs with some 4.42 million boys and 3.11 million girls.

Why watch coach Norman Dale and star player Jimmy Chitwood in Hoosiers, when you can see the game that inspired the movie? Teaming with the Indiana High School Athletic Association, Comcast and Bright House Networks are making the top high school basketball games in state history available to their subscribers on demand, including contests featuring Oscar Robertson, Damon Bailey and Greg Oden.

The on-demand package also includes the 1954 state final on which Hoosiers is based. Small-school Milan (Hickory in the Hollywood version) defeated Muncie Central when Bobby Plump drained the game-winner with three seconds left. From largely the same spot on the floor, Plump’s Hoosiers alter ego, Chitwood (Maris Varainis), hit the jumper that slayed fictional South Bend Central High after guaranteeing coach Dale (Gene Hackman), “I’ll make it!”

The on-demand action is a prelude to the 100th boys tournament March 27 at Conseco Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, whose games are made available to other cable operators in the state, including Bright House, Insight Communications, Mediacom Communciations and Avenue Broadband.

“This is our fifth year with live tournament games,” said Brett Hatch, local programming manager for Comcast’s Indianapolis region, noting games from the 2010 tournament are available on-demand for up to four weeks. “Naturally, the players and their families watch, but in March around here there are a lot of people interested in high school basketball. This helps give us a real presence on the ground.”

Hoops-crazy Indiana isn’t the only hotbed for high school sports. Time Warner Cable in North Carolina just produced eight boys’ and girls’ North Carolina High School Athletic Association state championship games, two of which were telecast live on News 14 Carolina across the state, while all of the contests were streamed live and are now available on Carolina on Demand.

“Many of the communities we serve support and rally around highschool athletic teams,” said Alan Mason, vice president and general manager of News 14 Carolina. “Our marketing brings more visibility to the state high school championship events than ever before, and our production of the games on multiple platforms allows more people to see the games than could attend in person.”

For Cablevision subscribers in the New York area, the category has graduated to a higher level with a dedicated channel, MSG Varsity, that has four feeds around the DMA, plus digital teammates in the form of MSGVarsity.com, an interactive channel and VOD programming.

Launched last September, MSG Varsity has 120 full-time staff ers and has already partnered with some 250 schools in the tri-state area. By the end of this school year, it will have professionally produced more than 400 live-to-tape games under its “High School Sports Showcase” banner. A crawl, a la ESPN’s “BottomLine,” updates scores from throughout the area. Th e network presents an hour-long news show, High School SportsDesk, that features action from 200 schools over the course of a week.

The curriculum goes beyond just sports, as MSG Varsity, which retains some 40 production contractors and media trainers, also puts a focus on clubs and activities by equipping students and faculty with cameras to create their own TV and Web-video segments.

The MSG Varsity Web site has four subsections for each geographic region, as well as dedicated areas for partner schools. Meanwhile, MSG Varsity Interactive collates the fare on the Web site and serves it up to digital-cable customers on interactive channel 614.

“We’ve only been around for six months, and we’re just starting to hit our stride,” said general manager Theresa Chillianis. “This helps position MSG Varsity as becoming more hyper-local.”

Bigger, more established sports networks such as the ESPN family — including the flagship, ESPN2 and 70 million-home college network ESPNU — and CBS College Sports, continue to increase their high-school game presentations and recruitment programming, especially around national signing days. Unlike the local efforts of most cable operators and most regional networks, ESPN counts Under Armour, Nike, Old Spice, the U.S. Marines and Gatorade among the companies that sponsor tournaments and competitions.

Regional sports networks are also turning their cameras on younger student athletes. For Sports Time Ohio, whose primary property is MLB’s Cleveland Indians, high-school sports not only makes a local connection, but is vital content. “As a one-pro-sport regional sports network, we need to make sure we have programming past baseball season,” said president Jim Liberatore.

To that end, STO has been the home of the Ohio High School Athletic Association championships since the fall of 2007, producing a minimum of 32 events every year, covering football, boys’ and girls’ basketball, volleyball, softball, ice hockey and boys’ and girls’ bowling, a number in high-definition. In 2009, the RSN added a regular- season “High School Football Game of the Week” franchise.

“It’s a point of differentiation with HD for operators, and we offer Time Warner Cable exclusive VOD full games,” he said.

Liberatore, citing the four-page preview The Cleveland Plain Dealer devoted to the recent scholastic wrestling championships, is eyeing the possibility of a pay-perview package during the week of the top tournaments. STO also is exploring the possibility of offering a mobile news service next season.

While some of the top football championship games generate Nielsen numbers that can match some Indians contests, Liberatore said the ratings are generally “OK.”

“It’s a sum of small of audiences. The people who want to see the telecasts are at the games: the athletes, the parents who watch their kids play and the students who were socializing at the events,” he said.

Comcast’s Sheehey also sees audience limitations. “There are big schools that can draw some attention,” he said. “But a rivalry among Eastern schools in a market doesn’t necessarily generate as much interest in the Western or Southern part of a DMA.”

MaxPreps, the division of CBS Interactive that supplies the latest high school sports news, analysis, ranking and streaming content from around the nation, believes it may have introduced a solution that can help the schools control costs via its partnership with Agile Sports Technologies. The latter has developed a low-cost proprietary Internet-based sports video editing system called Hudl. MaxPreps will market the system to the more than 30,000 high school coaches across 12,523 high school athletic departments who currently load their teams’ info onto MaxPreps.com.

MaxPreps.com president Andy Beal said Hudl not only works by giving coaches access to more content for scouting purposes and to team players for instruction, but will help the Sacramento, Calif.-headquartered company enhance and diversify its offerings to benefit cable operators looking to differentiate themselves with more local content.

Over the course of the 2009-10 school year, MaxPreps, in conjunction with CBS College Sports and ClearLeap, has been creating and delivering some 400 five- to seven-minute segments breaking down high school football, basketball, cross country, wrestling, volleyball, soccer and lacrosse in Houston for Comcast digital customers on a VOD basis.

Anne Stith, director of product management for Comcast’s Houston region, said the shorts include graphics overlays, announcers, cutaways and analysis, plus historical and background information. “Frankly, I thought we would be getting high-school kids with a camcorder, but Max Preps has an executive on the ground working with four or five contractors,” she said.

Since the high school VOD content became available last fall, some 30,000 households have viewed the segments, amounting to more than 40,000 sessions. Stith, who called that performance “phenomenal,” said Comcast has scheduled a meeting with MaxPreps to develop a Best of 2009-10 show that would run on Comcast Sports Southwest and then hit the ondemand menu. That RSN has also has been home to a “Thursday Night Lights” package of football and hoops games that Comcast makes accessible ondemand for up to 90 days.

CBS College Sports vice president of distribution Bob Rose said the channel is nearing another deal for Max Preps to work with a top-5 MSO to launch a similar VOD product in multiple markets. “People want local content, and operators want to deliver it exclusively,” he said.

Other competitors are coming on the field. MSG Varsity could have a new rival in the New York DMA by the fall. New York City’s Public School Athletic League, looking to increase the number of students and teams participating in the five boroughs, issued a request for information to gauge media entities’ interesting in carrying high school sports.

Donald Douglas, the executive director of the PSAL, was pleased with the response, which included Time Warner Cable, Cablevision and MaxPreps, and the school system is now moving forward with a request for proposals, being developed in conjunction with Civic Entertainment Group agency and Octagon Sports.

“We haven’t solidified a time frame yet, but we don’t want to miss a school year,” Douglas said. “Our goal is not necessarily to find one network.”

MSG Varsity, which has already shared some content with Time Warner Cable, is “open for discussions,” but Chillianis won’t speculate in advance of the RFP, which is likely to be drawn in late April or May.

Few cable or high school officials believe there is a big downside to the exposure. “Most of these athletes are regular kids, 17, 18 years old,” Comcast’s Sheehey said. “There are no million-dollar contracts, no CBA issues. Ninety- five percent or more are never going to play past high school, so this is their big moment. They’ll have a DVD to show their kids that mom or dad was on the field back in the day.”