Grand Slam Track is a disaster - The general premise of Grand Slam Track was bad

McRunnin wrote:

Kickers usually win wrote:

But what’s the story? Elite athletes are special while they’re competing and just regular people when they’re not. What would be the background stories for Nuguse, Hocker or Fisher that would bring in the casual fan?

Copying and pasting what I shared in the thread linked below:

With Fisher, the casual viewer can be told about his high school success, what he did in college, and his steady rise as a pro. They can be informed about him breaking the American records, his disappointments in his first few global championship finals, and how he finally broke through in last year's Olympics after betting on himself by taking the risk to leave Bowerman and move to Utah. They can talk about what it means for him as an American to medal in two distance events last year and his ongoing quest for gold. There's so much to cover. And that's just one competitor!

Most people will never understand what it's like to be one of the best runners in the world. But they can connect to universal human themes like struggle, disappointment, resilience, taking chances, and overcoming obstacles. And if they also learn a few personal tidbits about an athlete's personal life like where they're from, their family (we joke about it, but the Allyson Felix mom stuff resonated with mothers), what they studied in college, or hobbies they have outside of track, the casual viewer might find they have more things in common with that athlete than they realize. Then they might want to root for that athlete and most importantly, watch that athlete compete.

Just showing name, country, SB, and PB will not work for the casual audience. They need a reason to care about the athletes as humans.

Link:www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?th...

McRunnin wrote:

Just Another Hobby Jogger wrote:

DL had low viewership in US because of the time differences. Most meets take place at inconvenient time for US audience, and most people are not interested in tape-delayed coverage.

GST has lower viewership than most USATF GP meets in recent years, let alone Pre Classic. The format is not appealing to most viewers.

We don’t have complete information on GST’s viewership. We know the CW numbers, but not the Peacock numbers. It’s very possible, and maybe even likely, that more people watched it on Peacock than on CW.

Additionally, the CW is not a major network, so you can’t really compare CW ratings to NBC ratings.

It’s also premature to draw conclusions about whether a new track concept will catch on after just two meets. Give it time. More CW viewers watched the second GST meet than the first one. That’s a win.