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Re: TV coverage of Kona - post your review here [EnderWiggan] [ In reply to ]
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i am seriously sick of Welchy ... time for them to retire him
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Re: TV coverage of Kona - post your review here [somers515] [ In reply to ]
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Pretty lame they had no rewind button to start the race from the beginning if you came in late

Mark Kolding - Rookie Pro 2019 Blog
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Re: TV coverage of Kona - post your review here [somers515] [ In reply to ]
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I would have enjoyed a two-screen option. One would be the very good produced coverage of the pro race as we saw with the Red Bull/Ironman broadcast. But I'd also like to also have the static cameras live-streaming the age groupers on the swim, bike out and in, run out and finish.

Sharon McN
@IronCharo
#TeamZoot
Clif Bar Pace Team 2003-2018
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Re: TV coverage of Kona - post your review here [sylvius] [ In reply to ]
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As far as that crusty age grouper jamming into Ryf's race space, I kinda wish she had thrown an elbow. Wait, that's me. Never mind.

Sharon McN
@IronCharo
#TeamZoot
Clif Bar Pace Team 2003-2018
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Re: TV coverage of Kona - post your review here [somers515] [ In reply to ]
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In my opinion, the good:

- watched on Red Bull TV via TV app'. Much better quality, no dodgy streaming / casting.
- Charlie Webster; a professional presenter & it showed - if you're going to do lame & off the cuff interviews with sponsors then she was perfect to improvise.
- Camera work / shots excellent I thought.

The Crap:

- adverts, maybe their frequency was acceptable to US audiences (?) but they were really invasive & their timing sucked (in fact, after the first few hours I'd already vowed never to buy a Ventum, urghh, & that healthcare provider?!). By the end I was numbed by them, especially at 2am my time. Why do WTC still need this level of ads given their corporate $$$?
- obvious that the commenters had little clue of what was happening in the race.
- did they miss one of the most iconic scenes in sports, the mass AG start? (I may have just missed it?). If they did miss it, then thats abysmal.


Overall, the actual race commentary etc looked to be tons better on the german feed last year (didn't find a link this time) - they had reporters / cameras out on the course, e.g. in/out of Energy Lab, and were analysing the splits.

Typical WTC approach - lets gouge on the financials first, quality of user experience second, or so it seems to me.
Last edited by: endoverend: Oct 16, 17 3:31
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Re: TV coverage of Kona - post your review here [somers515] [ In reply to ]
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I thought the Red Bull coverage was pretty good. I’m still amazed how I can watch the race live streaming from the other side of the world.
For me, being able to see 8hrs of live coverage of the race was all I asked for and it delivered. Anything else like a live leaderboard or commentary is a bonus.
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Re: TV coverage of Kona - post your review here [sylvius] [ In reply to ]
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sylvius wrote:
Blee wrote:
One small thing that bothered me was when Ryf was running down the last road before turning onto Ali'i Dr., an AGer happened to be right next to her and so he paced with her for that little stretch. The commentator kept saying statements along the lines of "well he's going to be walking as soon as she turns, there's no way he can maintain this pace, he's way beyond his pace right now" and so on. Said it a couple times.


I actually thought that was both funny and spot on. I did think he made it clear that it was a cool situation for the AGer and wasn’t criticizing him for it but just pointing out that he has a long way to go. If I were in the same situation on the course I would have done the same thing and buried myself.

Did anyone catch the guy’s bib number and look up his run? Would be cool if he had crushed it.

It's going to interesting to see how they edit that for the "Director's Cut" show on NBC

"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin
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Re: TV coverage of Kona - post your review here [somers515] [ In reply to ]
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I thought they gooned it up a bit. The selling pitch was that this was going to be miles better than previously. It started with the multiple technical difficulties interruptions, kept going with the complete miss on the men's AG start, also barely caught the women's AG start, and then kept glitching all day. It was them, not the network or local providers.

They also had really poor camera work on the swim. The images were often far too dark or blown by shooting back into the sun. Their camera equipment coped poorly with that backlit condition. This situation continued onto the bike. Camera angles were really poor for most of the day.

Moto work was not all that great either. At least one of the moto cams was nearly unwatchable due to poor stabilization. Again, the ND filters were a bit too strong and the images were far too dark and grainy when they shot back into the sun. It's almost like they had no lens shade on the cameras and the front elements were taking direct sunlight.

In short, the cinematography sucked. Really. It was not even close to previous years.

Oddly, I really enjoyed the dead air portions where sound dropped and we could only hear the action in front of the camera. That was surely unintentional dead space due to technical audio switching difficulties, but it was really satisfying to listen to the rhythmic swimming of the pack, or the hum of cyclists hauling ass along the Queen K. They should actually plan some extended portions of coverage like that next year. It's a long day and sometimes Welchie and crew struggle to keep the banter moving at an interesting pace.

Basic camera work and sound. Work on it, Red Bull coverage team. Seriously. This year was NOT what you promised.
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Re: TV coverage of Kona - post your review here [somers515] [ In reply to ]
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Well you know where your sport fits in when the biggest event in your sport plays second fiddle to College Hockey.

I really did not have high expectations so I really was not disappointed with the coverage. I mean the third place guy had to wait to cross the finish line until they could break away from an interview. It was like they had no idea how close together the first three were. Sad with today's technology.
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Re: TV coverage of Kona - post your review here [somers515] [ In reply to ]
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I watched the redbul coverage. One thing the irked me is how they focused so much on redbull sponspored athletes. I'm surprised nobody mentioned it yet; it was very obvious.
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Re: TV coverage of Kona - post your review here [endoverend] [ In reply to ]
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Commercials were unacceptable really. Coming from a US perspective I felt that they were more common than they are in most televised sporting events. It really broke up the race and made it less exciting. Camera work was terrible, I can't think of any year when they jumped around so much and/or didn't focus on the people actually making moves. Between the two of those I never really got into the race, which was a bummer because I was super excited for it. Real let down IMO
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Re: TV coverage of Kona - post your review here [nchristi] [ In reply to ]
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If the Red Bull athletes weren't the athletes at the front of the race, you might have a point.
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Re: TV coverage of Kona - post your review here [r0bh] [ In reply to ]
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I don't think the coverage was any better than recent years tbh. I agree with most that the commentators weren't great, especially given how long they've had to perfect their game and their accumulated experience in Triathlon; Welch should be way better. Did any of them actually look at the GPS tracker (Ironman site) on the run, it was quite illuminating, and showed a few holes in the commentary team's awareness of the race.

Still, lightyears better than 25 years ago, when you had to read about it in the newspaper or the next month's tri mag.

29 years and counting
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Re: TV coverage of Kona - post your review here [r0bh] [ In reply to ]
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r0bh wrote:
If the Red Bull athletes weren't the athletes at the front of the race, you might have a point.
There were other athletes at the front and we didn't see them nearly as much. When Sanders and Kienle bridged to the main pack and then moved to the front, they were only showing Kienle. They didn't show Sanders once... Actually we did see him one time, that's when the screen was split during a commercial.
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Re: TV coverage of Kona - post your review here [somers515] [ In reply to ]
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I wondered several times if the announcers got a payment for each time they referred to the "Ventum bike course".
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Re: TV coverage of Kona - post your review here [HuffNPuff] [ In reply to ]
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Sure, probably the same as NASCAR guys when they say "Sunoco Race Fuel" when the field comes in for pit stops

"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin
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Re: TV coverage of Kona - post your review here [somers515] [ In reply to ]
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it would be great if they offered online replays.


--------------------------

TEAM HONEY BADGER
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Re: TV coverage of Kona - post your review here [NordicSkier] [ In reply to ]
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NordicSkier wrote:
Get rid of Greg Welch.

At the very least, ask him to kindly stop referring to Daniela Ryf as "Danny". It's kind of creepy frankly. But, he's always been full of the "in joke" stuff, as in the early broadcast years when he and Huddle anchored. Remember all the silly references to Austin Powers' characters? That was just brutal, if not sophomoric. Made those early broadcasts almost unwatchable. If the sport thinks it has hopes of elevating itself it would nix this sort of annoying stuff. Welch would be better just doing the athlete interviews and let Michael Lovato take over the anchor position. ML did a great job.
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Re: TV coverage of Kona - post your review here [somers515] [ In reply to ]
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I thought it was okay... been going through it as I didn't watch live it but my DVR did record it. I like how its focus was on the pros and I agree having some sort of on screen data would be cool... run pace, bike speeds, top 10 leader boards, various splits, etc. Watched the swim part yesterday and Amberger was absolutely on fire and Lucy/Lauren blazing through the men was pretty cool as well. It's a small detail but I like to be able to hear the water and splashing of the swim.

It was good but had room for improvement, hopefully they have a huddle at NBC about what went well, what they can improve, etc.
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Re: TV coverage of Kona - post your review here [somers515] [ In reply to ]
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TV as in actual TV? We don't even have live TV.

Watched the race on ironman.com. I'd give it a 6/10.

They clearly had technical difficulties with the audio connections from commentators on a number of occasions.

Video quality was low from some of the on-course cameras. Excusable 10 years ago, but today there's no reason why we can't get at least 720p video wirelessly from camera to production truck and then streamed over the internet flawlessly.

Finally, the stream didn't show men AG swim start. Pros yes. AG women yes. But at 7 AM when AG men started the live camera was the one on the boat following the pros. If they just panned 10 degrees left we would have been able to see the washing machine by the pier. But they didn't.
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Re: TV coverage of Kona - post your review here [Dilbert] [ In reply to ]
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Its a zero! Same as last year im still waiting on seeing at least an hour highlights package anywhere.

If anyone can suupply me with a link to a decent highlights show of this or last years race it might go up to a 2!

There's no hope for this sport when you can't find highlights of its biggest race! Superleague, ITU and even Islandhouse don't seem to have a problem with this.
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Re: TV coverage of Kona - post your review here [jsfarmer] [ In reply to ]
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jsfarmer wrote:
it would be great if they offered online replays.


http://www.ironman.com/triathlon/coverage/detail.aspx?race=worldchampionship&y=2017#axzz4w4bUM73K

Last edited by: Mark Lemmon: Oct 20, 17 11:14
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Re: TV coverage of Kona - post your review here [pdxjohn] [ In reply to ]
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I've heard Greg Welch provide incredible insights and amazing commentary. He definitely has the ability and it would be great if he could actually do that in these broadcasts. Unfortunately, his statements during this particular broadcast were typically innocuous, uninformative and/or essentially meaningless, uttered, it would seem, to fill the space. In this role, it seems that Greg delivers a muted version of himself and his thoughts choosing instead to concentrate on pronouncing all the sponsor names correctly; you can almost hear the strain and suppressed effort this takes in his veiled attempt to make it all seem so natural.

All the shilling aside, another distraction is his pronunciation of certain names: "Amberger" in particular this year; a few years ago, it was "Stadler". If it is indeed an inside joke, it would be great for him to let us in on it.
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