ESPN PLEASE READ THIS - how to broadcast a track and field meet

Other than getting some halfway competent announcers, the vast majority of complaints could be resolved with two easy measures: show entire races by going to split screen during commercials, and show everyone finishing instead of following the winners as they bend over to catch their breath and then turn and wave to the crowd before coming back to congratulate those they beat. Another great split screen application. They do it for auto racing, soccer games, and countless other sports, this is not rocket science, just poor production.

Dwight Stones is not a lead announcer. Rewatch the men’s 4x1. He ruined it. Talking about Texas Tech dropping the baton while the race is going on. He is not prepared. Does he not have a spotter? He seems so unprepared and scared.

Polar opposite wrote:

For all the whining about ESPNs production of the NCAA championships, I’ll take Dwight Stones, Jill Montgomery, Dan O’Brien, and Larra Overton AND their production team any day over FlotRack.

Do you want FlotRack to produce the NCAA track & field championships the way they produced the garbage known as the NCAA cross country championships? The only thing that saved FlotRack was a great race.

Do you really want Gordon Mack, Ryan Fenton & Joanna Gertchel as your meet on air talents? Do you want to pay whatever their yearly subscription rate is for “prime “ content just to watch the NCAAs and a boatload of garbage regular season meets that are unwatchable?

Nope.

Double nope.

Polar opposite wrote:

For all the whining about ESPNs production of the NCAA championships, I’ll take Dwight Stones, Jill Montgomery, Dan O’Brien, and Larra Overton AND their production team any day over FlotRack.

Do you want FlotRack to produce the NCAA track & field championships the way they produced the garbage known as the NCAA cross country championships? The only thing that saved FlotRack was a great race.

Do you really want Gordon Mack, Ryan Fenton & Joanna Gertchel as your meet on air talents? Do you want to pay whatever their yearly subscription rate is for “prime “ content just to watch the NCAAs and a boatload of garbage regular season meets that are unwatchable?

Nope.

I hate flotrack but I can easily just turn the sound off and watch the race. I can mute ESPN too but I miss half of the race because of the dumb video feeds.

Hobby Yogging wrote:

This thread essentially is people complaining about the coverage, but not offering any actual improvements. You don't want any cut aways during races, that's fine. Then how do you suggest making the first 8 laps of a 5k entertaining? The last mile is where that race gets interesting to watch.

The first 8 laps are more important because more runners are in contention. That's why we make sure to show the first part of the race. Then we show something in the middle, and we show the winner. This formula has been tried and tested for decades.

And American people are not interested in who finishes 2nd, 3rd and so forth. Only the winner matters. That's why we focus on him after the race.

Look at this video. We miss the leaders going over a barrier because the damn camera is zoomed on on the stupid bell. it's the dumbest thing ever. Barraza fell on the very next barrier, it very well could have been this one.

https://youtu.be/qf5BQfTCriw?t=297

ESPN production team wrote:

Hobby Yogging wrote:

This thread essentially is people complaining about the coverage, but not offering any actual improvements. You don't want any cut aways during races, that's fine. Then how do you suggest making the first 8 laps of a 5k entertaining? The last mile is where that race gets interesting to watch.

The first 8 laps are more important because more runners are in contention. That's why we make sure to show the first part of the race. Then we show something in the middle, and we show the winner. This formula has been tried and tested for decades.

And American people are not interested in who finishes 2nd, 3rd and so forth. Only the winner matters. That's why we focus on him after the race.

Lol. That’s what makes him/her a Hobby Yogger. The first 8 laps of the race dictate how the last 4 are run.

Should tv networks dispense with the first 6 innings of baseball games or the first three quarters of football or basketball?

I would put a GoPro camera on one of the runners and show a live feed of what the race looks like from that perspective

The best coverage of any distance event was Thursday nights 10K on ESPN3! Complete coverage, great camera work and no announcers! Hearing the stadium announcer was a plus. Hearing Jill Montgomery announcing the women's 10 K was painful. She Dan and Dwight are much better with the technical events and sprints. Dwight could of used a spotter or perhaps been better prepared for the relays.

The ESPN announcers are constantly talking down to their audience as if the viewers don't understand what their watching. As mentioned before at least 3/4 of the audience are track people!

For those you complaining about the Flotrack, they at least show the entire event and bring excitement to races. Flotrack is getting better and I'm a thankful subscriber!

Exposed as a Hobby Yogger wrote:

ESPN production team wrote:

The first 8 laps are more important because more runners are in contention. That's why we make sure to show the first part of the race. Then we show something in the middle, and we show the winner. This formula has been tried and tested for decades.

And American people are not interested in who finishes 2nd, 3rd and so forth. Only the winner matters. That's why we focus on him after the race.

Lol. That’s what makes him/her a Hobby Yogger. The first 8 laps of the race dictate how the last 4 are run.

Should tv networks dispense with the first 6 innings of baseball games or the first three quarters of football or basketball?

So I'm assuming you know that baseball and football broadcasts have the majority of their cut aways in the first 6 innings or three quarters, right? Because production teams understand that what happens at the end is more important to the viewer 95% of the time. That's why in baseball, they have flashbacks around the 7th inning to highlight what's happened so far. That 5% tends to be the blow put games, but for close games viewers would rather see the end in its entirety.

The first 8 laps are important to the runners, but they have less interest then a potential sprint finish like we saw yesterday. And it wouldn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that Grant and Morgan would battle for the title, seeing as their two of the best distance runners in the NCAA. I certainly wouldn't have needed to see eight laps to know that was going to happen.

Tv shows every pitch of every inning, cutting away only for in between inning breaks. Also show every football down, and every second of every basketball game cutting away only for timeouts.

TnF doesn’t have the benefit of timeouts, which poses challenges for any race > 3k (approx 9 minutes). But no reason why they couldn’t limit interruptions to one for 5k or two 10k races

soccer games get 45 minutes at a time without a commercial break. There's no reason why track can't get 15 for a 5k.

There should be a live stream online that shows the entirety of the 5k and 10k races. just set another camera up. they set a camera up for each of the field events and they even get replays.

there are no excuses

Clearly you don't watch much baseball or football because you'd know there are cuts early on.

This is what we wrote in our 10k recap.

What happened to Larry Rawson? He wasn't great, but at least he understood distance events.

Please please don't bring back Larry. ESPN should require that all the voices read LetsRun no less than 4 hours a week.

I'll be honest. the best broadcast was the 10,000m. No commentators, consistent coverage of the entire field...

Is it me, or is there a way to ask a question in a post race interview without starting "Take us through _____ of the race?"

Larra Overton is starting to kill me by starting the interview with this.

-maybe hire someone like Bob Kennedy or Paul McMullen for the distance events

-ESPN ..needs to understand their track viewership are probably hobbyists who run 5k - marathons ..who have disposable income to buy Nike and travel to locations which require deep pockets. Serve up the events of interest...