NBC coverage today = perfect...almost

Agreed. This has been the best track broadcast of the year. Especially considering how they showed the entire Steeple, only cutting away for just a brief seconds. They've done well!

... Man they just gave Nick Symmonds his own intro music there before the commercial. This broadcast is officially good.

Except for Carol Lewis I agree it has been pretty good coverage.

Very displeased, no coverage in Cleveland, Ohio. Indians game instead. I am a Tribe fan but I really wanted to watch the finals...

I remember threads after meets earlier in the year calling for people to email stations to express their frustration with the coverage. Does anyone have the email for NBC (customer service or something?) so we could send emails thanking them for a well produced track meet? I doubt either the positive or negative email actually matter, but it should go both ways.

It's Cleveland dude :-0

Must be Ato Bolden working his magic with the producers.

This broadcast was pretty solid ALL the way around!

Props!

I think carol lewis should be given the performance of the meet...really...she has been so shrill when excited but today she was mostly calm ( once during the 800 she got a bit too close to shrill) and with the 110 hurdles final without a false start i can really say the coverage and meet itself was better...so bash carol all you want if you feel that improves your life but i will happily stand on the side that saw improvement..and it was great to hear my whine of false starts get validated by the announcers especially ato and lewis j

Tom Hammond is a big reason why things are going so smooth. Not that he is great at announcing track and field ... but he is smooth---and knows how to keep the conversation going in the right direction.

Between Hammond and Ato Bolden .... they have really improved the overall product.

I liked Ato. Two hours of coverage was nice. The first 30 minutes or so were wonderful without Carol Lewis, then WHAM!, there she was. But I agree that she was less annoying than usual. Still annoying, but less annoying. And shrill...when isn't she shrill? It's really a matter of decible level and not whether she is shrill or not.

Also liked that they spent more time on events and less time doing those horrific human interest stories.

And they actually showed large chunks or all of distance races! Great races too!!! Tactics and exciting close finishes! Hopefully that builds interest in showing full distance races in the future.

Too bad we can't see track like this every week or two on TV.

bonner.b wrote:

I remember threads after meets earlier in the year calling for people to email stations to express their frustration with the coverage. Does anyone have the email for NBC (customer service or something?) so we could send emails thanking them for a well produced track meet? I doubt either the positive or negative email actually matter, but it should go both ways.

Got to agree: the coverage was quite good. We love to bash the networks when they do an awful job, so it is only fair to give out some praise (and thanks) when it's good.

Thanks, I sent a quick e-mail telling them they were doing a much better job and looking forward to the World Championships broadcast.

I just e-mailed them this thread, so lets leave some nice things to say.

Now if we could just get them to show T&F in HD...

Just got a bounce back that the mailbox is full! Guess they received our feedback this time!

On the subject of TV coverage in general, I happened to be standing next to Larry Rawson today, and asked him how he felt about all the bashing he gets here and on T&FN board. His response was, " I never look at any of them."

YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING??? If you only want to see the highlights of races, yes it was a great telecast. But if you want to see races, how they unfold, what runners are actually doing in the races (especially the distances) this one sucked almost as much as my Kirby. (vaccuum cleaner).

Seeing someone come down the final stretch in the 5000m is like kissing your sister.

Did you watch today? They showed the men's steeple, both 800s, and the men's 1500 in their entirety (with a few breaks to high jump attempts during the steeple). I honestly don't expect to see a 5k straight through and don't think most people outside of letsrun.com posters want to see that. They also didn't show runners getting in their blocks for hours, playing clips from other events instead.

The men's 1500 final today was awesome! No cuts, straight through! Although it sounded like the announcers early on didn't have a lot of faith in Webb's finishing ability vs. Lagat... I guess Alan showed them.