2014 London Marathon TV Coverage Feedback. [Universal]

I don't have Universal Sports so I didn't see the race, but I'm all too familiar with your frustration.

I still don't know why they don't use splits screens or picture-in-a-picture during running races. They can do it on the Home Shopping Network but not with big-time running!?

It was pretty bad but unfortunately more or less par for the course when it comes to distance running coverage on TV. I'm so used to it, that it didn't really occur to me to be outraged. Anyway, a few points/rants:

1) Simultaneous men's, women's, paralympics (IPC world cup) and wheelchair races. Really? It was pretty funny when they showed the IPC winner approaching the finish line and Cox had no idea who it was. "Um, there's another...competitor"

2) If you absolutely have to run multiple races simultaneously, at least use split screens. It makes perfect sense to focus on the women's race as they get past 40k, but include the damn men's feed in the corner! As you indicate, the significant move in the men's race came just as the top women were finishing. When they came back to the men's race, Kipsang and Biwott were briefly shown about 20 meters in front of G. Mutai and then they went straight to commercial. When the broadcast resumed, Kipsang/Biwott were all alone. I have no idea why they wouldn't show a recap.

3) Restrict coverage to the elite athletes. Frequent diversions to the masses, scenery, fans, etc. is a little like breaking away from the middle of a play in an NFL game to show fans barbecuing hot dogs and playing catch in the parking lot. Broadcasters seem to start with the premise that road racing is basically boring and therefore they need to "dress it up" by focusing on incidentals to keep the audience engaged. I can almost understand this in the case of mainstream networks like ABC, but this is Universal Sports and the race is being broadcast when most people in the US are fast asleep. Who do they think is watching?

Who did the coverage on Universal?

The BBC coverage was subpar this year and they missed the move as well. Universal no doubt uses the BBC feed.

Josh Cox is good. The other guy has got to go.

During Rotterdam he said that Kipyego takes a unique approach to training, running just one long run a week and keeping a journal so he could learn from his training.

Cox said, "That's a pretty common practice."

I've watched a number of marathons on Universal, including today's London and Rotterdam races. In my view, the coverage is almost invariably better than coverage provided by other U.S. television networks, since it is focused on the elite race, without the middle-of-the-pack, human-interest, prevailing-over-adversity snippets that litter marathon coverage by other networks. I do, however, have one suggestion: Josh Cox should be told to let up on the stories about his own running career. It seems as though he finds at least one or two times in each marathon program to go off on a tangent about working with Dr. Gabriele Rosa or training in Kenya with Moses Tanui. He's knowledgeable enough about the sport to talk intelligently about the race and its participants without inserting his own limited set of "brushes with greatness" into the commentary.

runn wrote:

The other guy has got to go.

During Rotterdam he said that Kipyego takes a unique approach to training, running just one long run a week and keeping a journal so he could learn from his training.

Cox said, "That's a pretty common practice."

Yes, that was pretty bad. Imagine the responses on letsrun to a comment like that. Josh showed admirable restraint.

I didn't watch that feed, but that kind of commentary is, in Josh's words, "a pretty common practice". :)

I think producers and directors call those kinds of shots, and tell the commentators what they think the bulk of their audience want to hear from them. Some prolly go overboard, but just about every commentator does that.

Cox also corrected him on today's London race. When the other guy said, "Jelian just started preparing for the marathon in January and that isn't long enough", Cox replied that is long enough because Jelian is a 10,000m runner and only needs to make slight adjustments to marathon training.