To grow the sport, we need better coverage than this (NYC marathon broadcast)

In any case...it s 3 min broadcast / 3 min advertisement loop. Nobody watches that anymore when you can skip adds on YouTube.

Agreed that the rest was impossible to follow and very badly designed.

Clearly subpar.

Also NY is not the biggest, whatever that means, marathon in the world. In my view, London, Berlin and now Valencia come before.

And please cut the wheelchair part. Nobody can relate to the level of performance and if anything it is closer to biking than running.

Valencia bigger? Bigger than Steamtown. maybe.

Carrie T was excellent as always. She conveys what makes this race so special for the marathoners.

It's been decided that more viewers are interested in the plight of someone who looks like their overweight neighbor than they are in the elite race. That's why the network had their top interviewer at the eight-mile mark long after the leaders had finished.

The OP and many people on this board care only about the elite race. Maybe more "ordinary folks" would have cared, too, if Molly had stayed in contention longer.

It's at least a 30-year-old complaint at this point, but agents and race directors do NOTHING to make foreign runners media friendly. Interviews with them are worthless. The woman who was talking to Korir gave up after two questions. This may be the only major sport (I'll call it major) in which most of the elites are of no public relations value whatsoever. Imagine if tennis accepted something like this.

I agree with OP that they need to do better coverage of the race itself, the "play by play". It seems that what group they are showing at a given time is planned out in advance and they don't deviate from that plan to react to what's happening in the race, so we miss lead changes, surges, and if someone drops out. They need to react to significant moments in the race and cover it with enthusiasm.

Also, less focus on the wheelers when the runners are out on the course. I respect those athletes, but it is a completely different event. The vast majority of viewers are runners/potential runners/wanna be runners and are interested in the the main mens' and women's races. That's not being mean, it's just a fact.

I watched the international broadcast and it was awful for the first 90 minutes. Way too much of the hand cycle racing. I'm glad those races are included in the event, but they aren't very interesting and not the reason most people are watching. The broadcasters could easily put them on an alternative feed or just cut to them at key moments even if it means commentating over a replay like they have to for most throws and jumps at DL meets.

The sport has grown and declined enough times. The times when it's really bloated aren't the best so I disagree with the goal of trying to "grow" it.

Marathons, even major ones are difficult, at best, to cover very thoroughly and keep a wide audience interested in the process. Most people don't know who the athletes are and the commentators are generally mediocre. I think the best commentator I ever heard doing marathon coverage was Marty Liquori because he was very knowledgeable, extroverted, and interesting to listen to.

I watched the last half hour. It was bad. I agree there should be more cameras on bikes, but the existing cameras are being used badly. There's often no perspective on how far back a chaser is. There's seldom a view from the back of the lead pack. There's no camera on the favorites if they drop off the pace a little. There's no commentary on anyone except the lead pack. Runners care more about the local favorite or their national athletes. They got very little coverage.

Solutions: Use drones. They wouldn't have to cover the entire race, but they could show perspectives from a little overhead to a little more to the side and they could move from the leader to the chase pack to give a better feel for the distance.

Solution: Get better announcers. Fly over some of the announcers from Europe. The announcing was horrible. I remember thinking, "What's is projected finish? How does that compare to previous finishes of that race? How does it compare to his PR? And amazingly, what was his finish time!!! They did not announce a time or show a clock for the first 5 finishers! I think, IIRC, they announced 2:11:something for the 5th placer as he was walking around, but they never announced a time for the leader. As the leader was running alone, they never mentioned the gap to 2nd or to 3rd. Was it 30 seconds or 10 seconds? Was it growing or shrinking? What was that comment about Eddy Merckz and the first African after the finish? I played it back and still don't know what he was talking about.

Finally, marathons are typically boring affairs anyway. Even the clip of the Amsterdam Marathon to illustrate how coverage could be improved MISSED the surge to take the lead. I mean, IT'S THE ONLY SIGNIFICANT MOVE IN THE ENTIRE RACE and they missed it. They almost always miss it.

Cowabunga wrote:

This may be the only major sport (I'll call it major) in which most of the elites are of no public relations value whatsoever. Imagine if tennis accepted something like this.

The LPGA had a similar issue a few years back with the emergence of a host of South Korean golfers who spoke no English and lived in SK half the time.

I think the wheelchair coverage yesterday was not excessive. However, one could argue that the major moments in the men's race were not shown in the broadcast of Chicago or New York.

In Chicago, there was a large pack with Rupp trailing. After a large gap in focus on the mens race, Tura, Rupp, and Kiptanui had broken away.

Yesterday in New York, the coverage totally missed Korir and Kandie reeling in El Aaraby and Faniel.

I can't remember if the coverage in Boston showed the moments before C.J. Albertson was caught by the pack.

I definitely think there needs to be a camera on the American men's pack because this seems to be a predictable feature of the American WMMs.

VPN

It was truly awful. To be sure, marathons are tough to sell but with all of the digital technology you could easily visualize the lead packs to try to sell the play by play. Instead they almost always miss the moves, going away to commercial or some other segment. They have space to scroll that Adrian Peterson wasn't going to be on Dancing with the Stars but miss showing the time for finishers. The Olympics had heart rate monitors for the archery competition but we can't even see if Bekele is fading or kicking? Or that the leaders are being reeled in? It's absurd.

stan the corgi wrote:

Marathons, even major ones are difficult, at best, to cover very thoroughly and keep a wide audience interested in the process. Most people don't know who the athletes are and the commentators are generally mediocre. I think the best commentator I ever heard doing marathon coverage was Marty Liquori because he was very knowledgeable, extroverted, and interesting to listen to.

They're really not. If you know after the race you're going to make a big deal about the top American, the top debut, what happened to Bekele, then you make sure you have cameras to cover them. There should have been a camera dedicated to Seidel, that picked up other runenrs if she dropped out. same with Bekele.

At the finish, they weren't talking about Seidel, because they didn't know where she was. They have one camera angle, and it's all the commentators know, so it's all they talk about. The entire broadcast structure is 'follow whoever is winning and that's all," and it's incredibly lame.

I’ve mostly given up even trying to watch marathons now. It’s just a frustrating pain in the butt trying to find a quality stream (or a stream at all)

I wish they would just all be live streamed on YouTube.

Those marathons only a have a few elites and are 3rd Rate Filler TV shows on back channel cable. The announcers have real jobs in small towns in fly over states. Better than nothing.

They could use electric golf carts thru out race, a drone here and there, actual runners with tiny camera, position people in the crowd in strategic areas and for gods sake less commercials.

People have to be actually watching to be motivated by the coverage to become a fan of the sport. The only effect of bad coverage is that it frustrates people like us that are already fans of distance running.

Ackley wrote:

Yesterday in New York, the coverage totally missed Korir and Kandie reeling in El Aaraby and Faniel.

WMMs.

+1

I was not impressed with the commentating at all. Kastor starting every piece with "Wow!" was annoying. Legat is not a commentator and the guy in the booth at one time called Molly "Molly Huddle".

If i didn't dvr the race to fast forward, i could not watch it.

After watching NBCs Oly marathon coverage, i expected better.

Way too much focus on wheelchair race. How many people ride wheelchair for exercise? And it feels like it belongs more in a bike race than running race.

I turned it off, seemed like a giant commercial.