If You Watched the Reebok Boston Indoor Games on TV Posts Your Comments Here

Don't feel that track has been singled-out to recieve shitty TV coverage. Most sports coverage (in the US, certainly) sucks. Some of the stuff commentators say during football? Unthinkably stupid.

And American TV always zooms the camera in on a few individuals, rather than the whole field, in much the same way that the commentators focus on the individual rather than the compitition.

Overall, seemed like it was a good broadcast. The thing I still don't understand is why they can't show an entire 3k. In the women's race the showed the first two laps with Defar off the front with Flanagan trailing 20 meters back. Come back after the commercial, Flanagan is on Defar, it would be nice to see those moments in the race.

Rawson said that Mottram was the only non-African to win a major championship 5K or 10K medal since 1987. At least one other has, Dieter Baumann's gold in 1992.

step up wrote:

Thought showing the false start in the men's 60 hurdles was peculiar. Later in the open 60 they just noted a couple runners had already been DQ'd.

that was because it was merritt who was DQ'd. kind of important.

The interview playing screen in screen while the race was going on was way better that a standalone "up close warm and fuzzy"- the Huff and Puff interview is useless but the Flannagan interview after she got her breath and was in her sweats is the way to do them. Showing the finish line and not following the winner would be nice but old ideas die hard. In print photojournalism they always wanted the start,in flight and the tapebreasting-those were the money shots...second place is not newsworthy it seems.

All and all a good meet.

northern boy wrote:

Rawson said that Mottram was the only non-African to win a major championship 5K or 10K medal since 1987. At least one other has, Dieter Baumann's gold in 1992.

Was that stripped after he was busted for being a drug cheat (his imfamous spiked toothpaste)?

they don't usually strip medals for positives seven years after the medal was earned.

that whole episode was so odd.

I think it would be interesting to see the breakdown of people who watch track and field on tv. It seems like more distance runners watch these meets than anyone else. If that's true then they should show the full distance races.

Also Rawson had said how Mottram ran an equivalent to a 4:08 mile for his first track race ever. Does anyone know if that's true? If it is he should've just said his 1500m time.

ESPN had very weak coverage, indoors is so boring, they should just drop indoors and spend the money on better outdoor coverage. Most of the elites don't run indoors, they take the winter off. ESPN should skip indoor track.

Nothing Else To Watch wrote:

ESPN had very weak coverage, indoors is so boring, they should just drop indoors and spend the money on better outdoor coverage. Most of the elites don't run indoors, they take the winter off. ESPN should skip indoor track.

Wow...that was rambling.

coverage was ok at best, but up from dismal. the boys HS mile was a single camera that just followed the runners around the track; pretty lame. also they should have mentioned the new AR broke as drug cheat's record.

What a waste of resources. We only get so many ESPN track meets a year. It's 60-70 in Florida now, why don't they hold the meet down there at an outdoor venue where people would be interested. Indoor track has no audience. They keep holding it for nostalgia's sake. Back in the day there was no TV and no airlines, so they had to have indoor track meets. Now it's a total bore. Most NCAA schools don't run indoors or have it optional.

indoor track is better than no track and mile is still THE BEST RACE , 5 K is too long for tv, I like a 600 for men and the hj.broadcast was ok but should cut for commercial and then have interview so athlete can catch their breath.

Lame but sadly even better than coverage of the girls race. Just showed excerpts of the race, made little to no attempt to identify who participants were, and then wasted time babbling about the girls matching black outfits provided to them by Reebok. I think they successfully identified the pacesetter/race winner, and her high school teammate and one other girl from Canada, but that was it. Commentary was roughly equivalent to saying "hey look it's a bunch of girls running"!One announcer made a comment about not being able to identify runners due to the matching outfits. WTF? Maybe if he'd done a little pre-race research about the participants, or hired someone with binoculars to spot numbers, he could have figured out who the different girls were. Or maybe next time he could try watching the race without having his head up his ass.

jackson devens wrote:

the boys HS mile was a single camera that just followed the runners around the track; pretty lame.

In this digital age, they should be able to show just a part a race on tv and then advertise to go to their website to see the full race and extras.

Even if it cost money to watch it online, I'd definitely pay about $10 a month for a service like this.

Personally, some of the outfits those young girls were wearing were inappropriate. It's one thing for an elite pro athlete to wear a "tight" outfit, but some of those HS girls had on way too little. Since Reebok provided all the outfits I'm sure the girls picked them out themselves at the race, so I'm not blaming anyone. Obviously there were several styles available to them. I'd have been less than happy if my daughter had picked some of those outfits.

Some ramblings....

At some point they did mention that Flanagan broke Regina's AR

I do think showing the false start in the mens 60 hurdles was weird - but they had the interview segment on the DQ guy, so maybe they went ahead with it and thus had to show what happened to him.

why does the scrolling ticker have to cover up info being shown on the current program? Either move the ticker to the top or remove it when there is something else in the same screen real estate. figuring that out can't be hard.

the picture-in-picture interview during a race is generally good. Far better than the abysmal cut away during the coverage of the NCAA outdoor mile last season.

Overall commentating wasn't too annoying. Mentioning Flanagan's mom's mane would have been nice. Even though lots of "fastest time in the world this year" comments, several of "it is early" or "it is mid summer in Australia, so they are in well into the season" comments too.

I agree it would be awesome to have more camera angles (boys mile last lap here) and show more than just the winner in some races. Also showing the move Flanagan made up to Defar would have been sweet. I think I would have rather seen that than the victory jogs of Dibaba and Mottram.

Overall, better than the coverage last year, I think.

The same old cookie-cutter approach they have used for years. But I'll take a cookie any way I can get it-- as long as I can get it.

And, well, at least Rawson didn't use his "human hydroplane" East-African analogy, or his ubiquitous "go on down to your local high-school track..." to establish relevance to the current race pace. (Just kill me now-- before outdoor season!)

Other posts made great points about the bland "out of breath" interviews and holding the race finish close-ups too long and missing the action. These are probably the results of limited manpower and technical/logistical issues-- too few cameras and producing the show "live to tape." Give these athletes a few minutes to regain their composure--better for them and the viewer. (Only requires a quick edit in post-production.)

Must be tough-- your heart-rate is still pounding at 195+ BPM, you've have been swimming in an anaerobic/lactic acid hell for what seemed like an eternity, may have got nipped at the finish after months of training-- and someone is poking a micophone in your sweaty, drool crusted face and expecting coherent thoughts and concise analysis-- that even the interviewer could not deliver... with 7 days of prep-time and only having to run a few feet from the infield to the finish-line area.

Sometime you just want to slap the on-air "talent" for their inane, thoughtless-- and, often, goading questions.

Symmonds in the 8