2023 NYC Marathon Broadcast Feedback Thread

The coverage was absolutely horrible and boring. Way too much blah, blah, and human interest stories. The first hour of the race was hardly covered. I kept switching channels because it was painful to watch. They really only covered the last 10 miles of each race. They need to do a much better job of reporting elapsed time, mile splits, etc. No follow up on any of the runners out of the lead pack. Showing top 10 results versus top 5 would be more helpful. When they finally got the technical glitches fixed and could talk to Rupp, he was good. Under utilized for sure. Barrios doesn't speak English well enough to commentate on an English language broadcast. He came across as knowledgeable but couldn't articulate it in English.

The first half of the race, they're going to spend a lot of time on the wheelchairs which personally I wish they wouldn't do, but that is a battle I'm going to lose and a lot of people don't like mentioning as they come across as jerks.

Not a ton happens in the first half of a marathon but in NY there are interesting stories they can tell with the course. The big story lines (men going for course record and women going really slow) can be told.

I wish they would talk a little more about difficult portions of the course. "This upcoming mile is very hard," etc.

You are in luck, we have plenty of "jerks" around LRC who will gladly tell the NYRR and TCS to knock it off with the wheelchairs. They don't belong in footraces.

This was one of the least inspiring marathon broadcasts that I can remember.

The male winner broke the Course record and there was almost zero color to that commentary.

The women's race was a jogfest (no fault to the broadcast), but when the racing started, the commentary lacked any emotion.

There are plenty of knowledgeable people out there that could also bring personality to a broadcast while elevating each moment to build it up until the finish. Even if the women were running 6:00 pace, the announcer should be able to build the hype and anticipation. This was completely absent this year.

I get that the TV contracts have to break for interviews with sponsors and local TV has their neighborhood bits, but the only human interest story should be the race or racers. No one spending three hours watching the broadcast tuned in for the fluff pieces. "Oh yea! The ABC7 news team has a relay. I'm so glad they spent time showing me that!"

I think we all agree that it would not be that difficult to dramatically improve the broadcast, since the starting point is so low. I'll add my two cents on how this could be easily accomplished:

They need to better prepare the play by play / John Anderson role since he clearly isn't a runner and can't come up with two and a half hours of insightful commentary on the spot. It should be relatively easy to prepare, in advance, for the most likely few race scenarios and give Anderson mile by mile talking points for each of those scenarios. For example, if it is a jog fest, talk about X during the first 5k, Y at halfway, Z during mile 20, etc. XYZ can be things about the course at this particular point in the race, how the splits compare to last year, how they compare to other years when it was a jog fest and when the race broke open in those races, why these particular athletes are employing the jog fest strategy, etc. Same for an early break by one or two athletes and a large pack pushing the pace from the beginning. It should be relatively easy for anyone who knows about competitive distance running to prepare this outline of talking points. Or have anyone on the production team read some LetsRun major marathon recaps to get up to speed!

Then during the race, they should have a running nerd as part of the production team who is behind the scenes and updating a mile-by-mile spreadsheet or other document with the mile splits and brief commentary about what they mean. All the commentators can use this to provide race updates and it will help the color commentators provide better insight. I am sure it is difficult / impossible for them to do splits analysis, while listening to Anderson yammer on about who knows what, while also trying to think of things to say and then actually saying those things. But if someone feeds them better information on the situation unfolding in the race, they should be able to then provide insight into what that information means (assuming their English is acceptable). As others have said, they need to incorporate the splits/projected finish time into graphics on the screen. This feels like something that can be designed once by a running / data nerd and then used repeatedly so it shouldn't be that hard for ESPN to implement. And of course the broadcast should rely more on reports from the lead truck. If they can't get reliable connections for more voice / video commentary, they should have someone on the truck who is typing into a shared document and giving updates that might not be obvious to the studio announcers from the video feed. Also, have a drone or 2nd truck that provides video on the athletes who have fallen off the pace, or at least check in on their splits and provide updates. This should not be that difficult to accomplish technologically in 2023.

Wheelchairs - show the finish on the main broadcast because enough people like the human interest element, but otherwise just make it available as an online stream and don't take up time on the running broadcast. This is probably wishful thinking.

I wish the coverage focused more on the top 10 overall male/female, or even top eight or so. Once the winners crossed the line the coverage effectively ended. Once the men's race was blown completely open, it'd be interesting to see some of the other battles taking place.

Also, did the coverage even really show the top Americans finishing? I know the US didn't have a strong presence in the race as it's so close to the trials, but it's still interesting to keep tabs on the top Americans in an American race.

Weldon stop trying to be so nice. I wrote "a nice" column a couple of years ago.

letsrun.com

The 2021 New York City Marathon ESPN2 Broadcast Was Very Frustrating To Watch At Times -- 5 Ideas To Improve All Marathon Broadcasts The 2021 New York City Marathon ESPN2 Broadcast Was Very Frustrating To Watch - 5 Ideas To Improve All Marathon Broadcasts

Robert JohnsonNovember 10

Broadcasting two live sporting events on the same channel at the same time is very difficult. Robert Johnson offers some ideas on how to make marathon broadcasts better moving forward. *MB: To grow the sport, we need better c...

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The fact that the NYRR hired a guy w ho struggles to speak English as their lead commentator says all we need to know. They don't care about quality.

I turned it on during the first mile and when I heard Barrios speak 4 words, I was so mad I turned it off for 20 minutes.

On Friday, during our podcast, when Jon Gault told me Barrios was on the broadcast initially, I thought, "Wow that's an odd choice. He must be really polished and come with amazing recommendations and must have blown them away."

When I realized he couldn't speak English at a level necessary for the broadcast, the only conclusion I could make was, "They don't care about covering this properly as an elite, major sports event."

After that, I barely paid attention but my biggest gripes are in that piece from a few years ago. But what always bothers me is there is no sense of pace. The mile by mile splits don't show up on the screen. And yesterday, there really was no contrast yesterday of the men's / women's paces.

"Wow, these guys are GETTING AFFTER it. This is a super day to run fast and they are doing. Might the course record go down?"

vs

"Wow these women are CRAWLING. When will it pick up? How fast might the last mile be? Might they get caught by Tola?"

And once Tola got ahead - I assume they missed the break - there was little very talk of "Might he get caught, is the lead growing. It seemed to just be a foregone conclusion he'd win."

OK. As I'm typing this I decided to go back and watch the race. Did they catch the men's break when Tola dropped Yimer? Did they go gaga and hype it up?

NO they did not. They crazy thing is they were showing the men's race from the 1:29:30-1:31:30 mark when Tola started to go and Barrios to his credit - said this is the move - what did they do?

Let me remind you, the viewer has been waiting for almost exactly 2 hours for something of real important to happen (As nothing has happened in the women's race). Tola, who has gone out in legendary bold/risk taking fashion, is finally dropping Yimer. And what SHOULD A MARATHON BROADCAST BE FOCUSED ON - "WHEN IS THE BREAK? "

But what do they do? They cut away and do an interview with the head of TCS with no runners being shown. THEY LITERALLY MISSED IT. Then when they came back they went to some commentator standing in the Bronx. The break is happening as he's talking - you see Tola run by behind him - and they largely ignore it and then they start talking about the women.

Jon Anderson tried to talk about it a little and then Rupp eventually saved the day at 1:40.

But we never were told how much the lead had grown to (yes the graphic was at the top), it was just assumed he was going to win. Barrios provided some dumb comment about how his brother won Dubai and how he was on close to PR shape. How about "He's on 2:03:59 pace at 35k!!! Could we break 2:05 and 2;04 in the same race?"

Now some of this problem was they needed to talk about the women's race, but again they are almost always guaranteed to have a problem every year as the women's race is almost bound to end right when the men's break is happening, etc.

And then they focused on the "Volvo last mile" but the graphic didn't work and we never heard what the final mile was. If you are going to focus on it, be prepared to talk about. I was stunned it was only 4:52 but I had John Kellogg guess what it might be (he didn't know about the finish) and he said 4:48.

In his book, Meb does a really great play-by-play of what's happening during the NYC marathon. He does a great job describing the idiosyncrasies of the NYC course and how they play into race strategy, including elevation changes, cheering sections where runners go too early, etc. It'd be interesting to hear some of that during the race -- at least at the important sections.

Yesterday was harder to follow because it jumped from wheelchair to women's coverage to men's coverage to the random relay team to men's coverage to women's coverage to wheelchair. There was no flow, and a lot of the important elements that make the NYC Marathon interesting from a racing prospective were glossed over or completely ignored.

I ended up switching back and forth between the ESPN and British feed. In both cases the feed was jerky and would stop occasionally. I really could care less about the commentary and the top screen splits were in 5k increments, too wide.

Really there is only one answer, if you are producing a big marathon broadcast in the US, get your a$$ over to Japan to see how it's done. A couple weeks back when Yuki was going for it the odometer was turning over every 10 METERS, with the clock right next to it, split screens, quick overhead map of progress, and to note the presenters were super excited even though I couldn't understand them. The technology, even if it is 20-30 years old is available, use it.

Physiologically, what the elite wheelchair racers do is not the same as what the elite runners are doing.

Marcel Hug won every WMM this year, every single one.

NAILED IT very succinctly. Next thread. There was little passion/ energy/appreciation for what was happening.

My wife and I had no trouble at all understanding Barrios. I don’t think he was an amazing commentator, but I’ve heard way worse. Anybody remember the guy reading from the Half Marathon Wikipedia article during the Istanbul half?

Since MLB has A-Roid and the NFL has Peyton "That's my wife's GH delivery" Manning on commentary, why not Rupp?

Watching world’s this year I believe it was Kara and Lee commenting. Kara especially could not be any less enthused if a non white American was leading. She obviously has her favorites and loves to plug the “mom” aspect. So yeah. You have to have people that aren’t just broadcasters, but actually take interest in the sport and can give objective analysis if the person isn’t from your country or *gasp* your skin color.

The problem with the marathon as a televised spectator sport is that there isn’t enough tension. In most televised sports, there are several moments in a game/match that have the potential to really affect the outcome. Those moments create tension and then get resolved (the putt goes in, the goalie makes the save, etc) over and over which keeps the event exciting. With things like Tour De France and auto racing, the tension is in the speed/risk of crash so that any move within the pack is exciting. These moments are too infrequent in a marathon.
In a normal marathon, what happens in the first hour doesn’t typically impact the result in a major way unless there is an injury. From hour one to two, there may be a few moves and a winnowing down of the legitimate lead pack, which is interesting to knowledgeable running fans but doesn’t provide much drama for the average viewer unless there is some obvious fan favorite making the move. Then there may or may not be an interesting race for the final 10 or so minutes. Even if there is an interesting race, unless there is a good storyline (underdog hanging with favorites, hometown hero, etc) the a average person still isn’t going to care.
No amount of “Picture in Picture” coverage, reduction of commercials, expert analysis or anything else that may appeal to hardcore running fans is going to move the needle for total viewership. The only way you’re going to see an uptick in viewership in the USA is if two or more Americans come along that can hang in the front pack and also have the charisma to become tv/social media stars.

All that said, I think Netflix could produce an awesome series about the Majors where they follow around some Americans and some East Africans during their training and then film the races in a more cinematic, edited-for-drama way.

running is a legitimate sport guys, its really embarrasing when they don't cover it like it is guys, watching people run marathons is actually really fun, ESPN2 needs to do better #problematic, no hablas la spanish

Watched the international feed on Eurosport here in Norway. The lack of graphics was infuriating. No splits and no distance tracker. Just a top 10 crawler on the top of the screen that I guess was universal? That the local commentator is useless is of course no concern to you.

A lot of good comments except for the jerk who thinks people don't have the right to not want to watch wheelchair racers.

There was some reporter standing at the 20 mile mark talking about the 20 mile mark when the leader ran by behind him and he didn't even acknowledge him.

I understand the human interest stories but they have to time them better- in the beginning like one person suggested. And try to keep them short and succinct- some of the reporters just want to hear themselves talk.

I agree with the Barios thing- I felt sorry for him- it was just a poor choice.

I wish the powers that be would listen to us.

My experience was probably unique.

I’m out camping remotely, but still have a Roku TV out here. Never had an issue turning on ESPN and watching. Until the NYC Marathon morning. SUDDENLY ESPN wanted me to link to my home Internet account, right then I was blocked! How was I supposed to do that? I’m out CAMPING! I pay a monthly fee directly to ESPN, so I was frustrated that I couldn’t even get into my account to watch the race.

So, I switched to ABC7NY.com…. What a waste. In trying to figure out through the myriad of options they had available, I never actually saw any actual race coverage on ABC7NY! UGH!

So, I downloaded the TCS app. WHEW! Thank goodness for that! I was able to specifically switch back and forth to watch the Pro Men, or the Pro Women. Utilizing that, as well as the marathon’s website to track the leaders, and CITIUSMAG doing a live watch party, I was able to know what was going on the whole time.

So, it turned out alright.

TOTALLY upset w/ ESPN though. Monthly fee and not even able to access it suddenly. UGH. Hopefully by NCAA’s I’ll have it figured out!