IAAF World TV Seminar

[MJR]

Less than five months before the start of the Olympic Games, Athens will host the IAAF World Television Seminar, a two day forum for TV professionals to meet and exchange ideas of how to provide the best possible coverage of the number 1 Olympic sport on television.

http://www.iaaf.org/news/Kind=512/newsId=23781.html

**Simple solution to this in 3 parts:
1. Show all the events, completely.
2. Shut up in the booth.
3. Repeat as necessary.

[hjsteve1.97]

Re: IAAF World TV Seminar

memo to Bob Hersh:

Bob, please try to have some input on all this with our US "TV professionals" before they go to this seminar.

[Guest]

Re: IAAF World TV Seminar

Afraid you've got it backwards. Check the IAAF release again. If you read between the lines you'll see it's aimed at people they consider new to the business. Also note that the chair of meeting is Alex Gilady, who just happens to be a vice-president of.... NBC!

In other words, they'll be teaching people from around the world how to do Olympic broadcasting the American way.

[Powell]

Re: IAAF World TV Seminar

>In other words, they'll be teaching
>people from around the world how to do Olympic broadcasting the American way.

Gee, I hope the participants aren't paying attention during the seminar ! :-o

[Conor Dary]

Re: IAAF World TV Seminar

Frankly, it is misdirected and pointless to blame NBC for their woeful coverage of Olympic tandf. The real culprit is the IOC which prostitutes themselves to the highest bidder with no control over what they do with their product. The opposite of this approach is the Masters coverage on CBS. Augusta National could get far more money, but don't because they want to control their 'product' (some would say over-control, but that is another story).

[Guest]

Re: IAAF World TV Seminar

If you want to generate interest in the SPORT, refrain from these insipid personal interest (at the expense of actual coverage) blatherings.
Because of the excitement conveyed by the play-by-play announcers, with few exceptions, no one gives a damn what is going on in the starting quarterback's life because they are too busy playing attention to what he is DOING on the field!
In other words, call it as the BBC does!

[Guest]

Re: IAAF World TV Seminar

TV (American TV, at least, but I bet the Continent follows) has no interest in generating interest in the sport, and why should they? They want to generate ratings, period.

And if you can entice people who don't normally watch sports to watch your Olympic coverage by making it all warm & fuzzy, and at the same time not lose an eqaul or larger amount of "real fans," then it's up-close-and-personal you're going to get rammed down your throat.

Besides, the number of REAL fans of any sport, not just track, are too few to be catered to anyway. There's always a lower-common-denominator effect in play.

[Guest]

Re: IAAF World TV Seminar

Yo, Canadians out there. Is CBC (or whatever the Canadian Broadcasting xxx is) better about this? I remember reading that Sydney coverage was live. Does that translate into more complete? A friend was on vacation in the UK in '80 and saw the BBC coverage (it actually may have been one of the indies) and raved about the coverage. The best I have seen here, is the triple cast in '92.

At any rate, I was thinking about going up to Vancouver for the OG, if the coverage would be worth the trip.

[trackhead]

Re: IAAF World TV Seminar

The CBC has been top notch. Their coverage of World XC was great in 2003 (imagine ESPN or NBC covering WXC!) and this past WC in Paris was fantastic. Steve Ovett did a great job as commentary over the 3000mSC and 5000m.

[Guest]

Re: IAAF World TV Seminar

Yeah, and we get Larry Rawson. Ugh!