More than 600,000 Georgians engaged with GPB Sports' live coverage of the 2016 GHSA Football Championships through its broadcast and digital platforms.

GPB Television's live broadcasts of the games from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. Friday, December 9 and Saturday, December 10 held at Atlanta's Georgia Dome helped rank it as the highest-rated PBS station in the nation for those two days. Additionally, total ratings for the broadcast were up by 17 percent for Friday's games and 30 percent for Saturday.

GPB also streamed the games live via GPB.org and its App GPB Sports: Football, inviting enthusiastic Georgia high school football fans in locations including Indonesia, Zimbabwe, Israel, Russia, Bahrain, Japan and the United Kingdom to enjoy the games and voice their support on Twitter and Facebook.

Friday's stream of the coverage helped shatter previous usage at GPB.org surpassing a previous record set during the Saturday game coverage in 2015.  Over the two-day period GPB.org saw a 27 percent increase in total site traffic and a 58 percent increase in page views compared to the 2015 GHSA Championship broadcasts. Additionally, the GPB Sports: Football App, with more than 10,000 users, also garnered an increased number of downloads, ranking at number 34 for iPhones and number 23 for iPads among free sports apps in the iTunes store.

"GPB is bringing something unique to its audience through its broadcast and digital platforms that no other PBS station is doing," said GPB President and CEO Teya Ryan. "At its heart, our high school sports programming is a community initiative that highlights the achievements of the schools, students and educators represented by the teams. Our job is to listen to the community, and if you're listening to the Georgia community, you must do football.  Clearly, we are accomplishing our mission as evidenced by the number of people using our various platforms to watch the games and express their pride in their home teams."