ESPN made the right decision

There was no decision to be made. As part of ESPN's contract with MLB, they are obligated to cut into a no-hitter in progress regardless of what is being shown at the time.

Oh ok that makes sense

Could've waited 2 minutes and done away with the ESPN commercial and the Baseball Tonight guys introducing themselves.

28 seconds from leaving the 5000 with 875 to go for the ESPN Baseball Tonight promo to end. Another minute and change until the first pitch of the inning was thrown. The first guy struck out about 2:21 from when they cut away. They could have shown the end of the race and still gotten to the first batter striking out.

As others have said, the Men's 100 final also got cut. At least five full minutes of pre-race posturing, flexing and general badass behavior, looking mean, etc. was missed. Those guys have to be really pissed.

Timbo7 wrote:

As an avid fanatic of track and cross country, i must say ESPN did the right thing by cutting to the no-hitter. We should not ask the question "what is best for me"? We should ask "what is best for the entire nation"? And the honest answer is not some meaningless 5,000 race that has zero implication and qualifies for nada in a year where nothing matters in track and field unless you are going to the European Championships. I wish all of us would asked the pointed question in 2008 of "what is best for our country", instead of "Hope and change, this feels so nice".

Stop getting duped fellas and Jane.

Yes because the entire nation gives a sh*t about some meaningless summer baseball game...honestly no one the fu*k cares.

Amen to that. Baseball is as boring as watching a bunch of guys stand around in some dirt and grass for a few hours, and occasionally one of them bursts out sprinting in some direction for about three seconds...oh wait a second now....But seriously, it's mostly just standing around.And then imagine there are hundreds of games played each season in this same "exciting" and "athletic" manner. Sounds like a ball.Let me ask you all this:What if you were watching baseball and there was a 5000m world record setting race in progress (or even just an American record for that matter)...would they show it? I can sure as h3ll guarantee you they wouldn't cut away from ANY OTHER SPORT to show it.Takeaway: Baseball is boring. But we already knew that.

baseball's boring anyway wrote:

Yes because the entire nation gives a sh*t about some meaningless summer baseball game...honestly no one the fu*k cares.

The sad thing about it is that the "average" sports fan was not watching ESPN cut away. With track on they were watching ESPN2 or some other station. Track fans were the only ones watching when the dastardly deed occurred.

ESPN cut away because there was 20,000+ people who thought the baseball game was important enough to go watch it and even more would have gone if they suspected a no-hitter would happen, but only 1,000 people (if that) cared enough to attend the Track Nationals. Blame USATF for holding them in Des Moines. At least Eugene fills the stands and makes ESPN think there are people who care.

The USATF's supposed purpose for holding the championships in Des Moines is getting track out to other areas of the country. This way doesn't work. Not many people live in Iowa and those tuning in on ESPN saw that no one seems to care about T&F from the empty stands.

USATF only seems to market track and field to those who are already fans. Thats preaching to the choir but we need some converts and they are clueless as to how to make that happen.

I'll give them a hint..... there are only a few thousand people who are active sprinters or jumpers or thowers in this country yet there are millions of people who run road races. Those distance runners are prospective new T&F fans. But we have a USATF President and CEO both of whom aren't distance runners and know little or nothing about distance running.

I was at the Diamond League Meet on NYC and 35% of the fans in attendance where Jamacian and came to watch the sprints, 60% were distance runners and 5% came by mistake thinking a baseball game was happening.

Note to ESPN: read the paragraph above - hint, hint, hint, get a freakin announcer who can actually talk intelligably about distance races because 75% of your audiance are distance runners. Dwight Stones does a good job with field events but there isn't alot of interest there and he's pathetic at distance races (don't ask him to go there), Ato Boldon is excellent at sprint races but doesn't know squat about distance running (don't ask him to go there). That Johnson guy doesn't seem to know anything about anything.... can him. Call up Todd Williams or some other good former good distance runner (Liquori, Shorter, somebody) and get them to do the distance races. ESPN drops the ball on the events that have the most potential to gain them more viewers.

Other helpful hint for ESPN. If you have a distance race going on and you want to use the time to recap the results of other events, instead of a stale picture of the stands as your background show the race in the background. Have you guys ever done TV before??????

Another Note: For God's Sake stop having a finishing tape for the sprint races. That is absurd. How long before someone gets tangled up and falls and hurts themselves.

Timbo7 wrote:

As an avid fanatic of track and cross country, i must say ESPN did the right thing by cutting to the no-hitter. We should not ask the question "what is best for me"? We should ask "what is best for the entire nation"? And the honest answer is not some meaningless 5,000 race that has zero implication and qualifies for nada in a year where nothing matters in track and field unless you are going to the European Championships. I wish all of us would asked the pointed question in 2008 of "what is best for our country", instead of "Hope and change, this feels so nice".

Stop getting duped fellas and Jane.

If situations like this happen...no one is going to care...

I'd like to see all Track events be covered by Versus, they would do a really good job. How about an Endurance Sports channel that covers all sports not involving balls? Don't get me wrong I love football and junk but Track has no place on ESPN.

ESPN has other channels besides its main ESPN. It should have either (1) cut-out the 2 minutes of blather from the guys in the booth and finished the 5000, (2) put the 5000 on ESPN2, ESPNU or ESPN360 or (3) removed the blackout of the online coverage. This isn't rocket science.

You've got it backwards my friend. Baseball packs 40,000+ seat stadiums nationwide for 6 months a year. Hundreds of millions in merchandise, concessions, television contracts and the like are taken in as well. To say that "noone cares" about a baseball game, and that they would want to watch Brenard Lagat run laps around a track is naive. Noone knows who Lagat is....but ask them who ARod is, or Manny, or Ichiro....or any number of big leaguers. Look, I've been a huge fan a track and field for over 30 years and watch every event I can. However, I'm realistic enough to understand that baseball is a national pastime deeply ingrained in American culture and has a HUGE audience. Road racing and track meets have a niche audience. Hopefully, track and field will continue to grow in popularity. To say noone cares, and that baseball is meaningless, is to be 180 degrees from reality. It's the other way around I'm afraid. Of course ESPN did the right thing. If Lagat ran an American (even world) record, you could go around today and ask average folks and noone would have a freakin clue. But ask about that no-hitter, and you'll have plenty of responses. True.

I totally agree with all of this which is why Track has no place on ESPN. With all the billions of useless channels out there, why not have one that caters to a niche sports audience...

What about a split screen? They have done it before? They did not have to fully cut away!

atownrunnin wrote:

There was no decision to be made. As part of ESPN's contract with MLB, they are obligated to cut into a no-hitter in progress regardless of what is being shown at the time.

You are full of sh*t. I e-mailed ESPN for further clarification on their agreement with Major League Baseball and below was the reply:

Re: USA Track Championships [ ref:00D480H6.5004ArkQW:ref ]

Sent By:

"ESPN Customer Care" On: Jun 06/25/10 9:00 PM

Dear Jim,

Thank you for contacting us.

Although no such agreement is in place between ESPN and MLB, ESPN took advantage of an opportunity to show bonus coverage of a no-hitter. Results of what was missed during the Track & Field Championships will be aired in an update within Baseball Tonight.

For live assistance with any other issue, please call Customer Care at 1-888-549-3776 (ESPN) between 8:00 a.m. and 1:00 a.m. EST.

Regards,

Kristi

ESPN.com Customer Care

From my perspective, the problem goes beyond ESPN cutting away from the 5000. Those of you that feel ESPN made the "right" decision have valid opinions. However, the real issue is ESPN's exclusive rights to the Championships combined with the decision to cut away created a media vacuum. The last three laps of the 5000 don't exist on film, anywhere. Media coverage of the events last night was pre-empted by ESPN cameras and the limited but relatively amazing coverage we get from Flotrack, Runnerspace, etc.

To the point, if the "right decision" is to cut away from track to appease a slightly larger viewing audience at the prime time hour of 10pm, then that's the way it is. They could allow other outlets to share coverage if they don't want to cover live events... or they could use ESPN3, ESPN2, Espn Classic not to mention the Ocho. I mean, just think about it.

I'm not that concerned about 'missing' the end of that 5000. I mean, really, it was basically a foregone conclusion. Lagat out-kicked everyone for the win. Who didn't see that coming and who really needed to see that happen yet again? On the other hand, the no-hitter contained a lot of suspense and drama, it was exciting to see greatness unfold, a guy performing at the very peak of his ability. We weren't seeing that in the 5000, no matter what you want to imagine could've happened. If ESPN had missed that no-hitter finish to stick with that ho-hum 5000, their advertisers would've been furious. I don't even like baseball (outside of the playoffs, and even then not so much) and I love track and distance running yet from that perspective even I found the no-hitter finish to be a hell of a lot more compelling than how that 5000 was clearly playing out.

What about? wrote:

What about a split screen? They have done it before? They did not have to fully cut away!

or espn3.com Like they did with the marathon tennis match at Wimbledon

So was the 5000 on the web? I had obligations and couldn't watch but that's where I watched the 10.