The 5 ideas to improve marathon coverage are good.
Not sure if mentioning something about every runner when first mentioning their name would work. This is never done in other sports coverage. You never hear a football broadcast state anything like "Tackle by Roscoe Boom, who grew up on a cattle ranch". Showing a quick list of the top 20 contenders with their accomplishments might be better, but that will not attract any attention from the casual viewer because they do not know the difference between a top finish at Boston as opposed to a top finish at the marathon project.
People might understand personal best times, which is something that running has that other sports struggle with. But only followers of the sport would know the difference between a 2:04 pr and a 2:12 pr. Does everyone watching an NBA game care about the difference between averaging 19 points per game compared to 12 points per game?
Other TV sports use the college/university a player attended to draw casual fans in. I guess some people will feel a personal connection with a player and their team because they both attended the same school or that school was in their state. This does not work with a WMM, where most of the top runners are from another country.
The following statement is not politically correct it is just my opinion. Wheelchair racers in marathons get an inordinate amount of quality TV coverage and attention when one considers the relatively small number of wheelchair racers participating.
It is great that these athletes have this opportunity to challenge themselves and compete.
NYRR results list 32 wheelchair division finishers in 2021, with times ranging from 1;31 to 11:17. A tiny percentage when compared to 24948 running finishers.
There were more (38) finishers in the handcycle division this year, with times ranging from 3:30 to 6:37.
Why did this division receive zero TV coverage and attention?
Road cycling is a very different sport than marathon running and I would argue that it is easier to cover on TV.
Catching the few critical breaks in running is important, But a cycling race is much more dynamic with many more breaks, or attempted breaks, than the average running race. Typically there is always someone trying to sprint off the front of the pack in cycling, and this makes for interesting TV. People sprinting off the front in a marathon rarely occurs.
There corporate sponsors in cycling are mentioned frequently in TV coverage. This provides tons of exposure for sponsors and helps bring money into the sport.
The team and sponsor associations with running are never mentioned on TV, Pro runners depend upon corporate sponsors (primarily shoe companies) to train and live. We rarely or never get TV shots of runners where you can tell who their sponsor is. When cameras zoom into individual runners from the front close enough to read their singlet, it seems like the view is framed to exclude any lettering that would identify their sponsor. If runner sponsors got more coverage on TV there would be more money in the sport.
Maybe this is a USA thing, where the networks do not want to promote businesses unless they buy commercials. Maybe its different in other countries. For example, the Comrades Marathon (actually an ultramarathon) in S Africa gets live virtually uninterrupted coverage by multiple networks. There are numerous head on shots of runners in the lead pack with their sponsor names on their singlets visible for hours on end. That sort of exposure attracts sponsorship more similar to road cycling.
For long cycling races, it is customary for live TV coverage to begin at the 2 hour mark of 4+ hour races. They will show replays of highlights of the start and anything significant that occurred before live TV coverage began. They could do this with running by joining marathons at the 10 mile mark.