We've sort of beaten this one to death. The main complaint was that there was too much drama/special interest and not enough race coverage. I don't need to see 90 minutes of stroke analysis but maybe as a fan of the sport, I wouldn't mind seeing some of the other pros doing their thing. You sure wouldn't know it from that broadcast but Lisa Bentley ran like a superstar to come from waaaaay back and place 6th (you didn't even get to see the results displayed for anyone outside of the top 5). This is typical American broadcasting though. Look at the Olympics when in a 200m or 400m final they follow the winners across the line so you don't know where anyone else placed if they didn't get a medal. Frustrating for fans of the sport, not so much if you are a casual observer tuning in for mindless entertainment. The NBC program was entertaining but not good SPORTS event coverage.

One word: Ratings.

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Tom Demerly
The Tri Shop.com

And the ratings are soooooooooooooo good with that format that many affiliates opted to pre-empt the coverage.

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"Remember: a bicycle is an elegant and efficient tool designed for seeking out and defeating people who aren't as good as you."

--BikeSnobNYC

The first poster of the thread had it right: It's not sports or race coverage, it's a TV SHOW about Ironman Hawaii. It's well produced and choregraphed. Get's good ratings. Wins Emmy awards and sometimes inspires the odd coach potato to give the wacky sport of triathlon a try. All good things.

NBC gave-up covering the event and race in more detail a long time ago. If you think Lisa Bentley was over-looked, in 1992 Julieanne White finished second in the woman's race and received NO coverage!

The BEST race coverage available, with way more detail than you would ever get on TV, even a net work broadcast, is available right now via the online coverage provided by Ironmanlive.com, slowtwitch.com and a number of other Web sites.

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

I actually liked the coverage for inspirational value...
the problem is that what the slowtwitch readers want is race coverage not a show about the race...

The biggest problem is that there are no other avenues of good (video) coverage of the day. Ironman live felll straight on their faces... their coverage stinks, unless you like staring at the transition area for 2 hours at a time.

I think that this is an area for the enterepeneuring fellow out there. If someone was willing (able) to get a lot of good video footage and put together a 2 or 3 hour tape and sold it on the tri websites there would be a ton of people out there what would buy it

You could say we've beaten this one to death, but we've gotten nowhere near the number of posts we've accumulated on, say, Powercranks or bike position, or simien intelligence, so here goes...

The argument isn't that the current coverage isn't good--after all, it wins Emmy's and gets "good" ratings. But for an organization and event like Ironman, I think you could achieve something better than what we've got now. Although a little sarcastic, one of the earlier posters got it right when he noted that the coverage was so good that it was preempted in a number of nationwide markets for things like Gershwin on Ice or infomercials.

Look at two other media that we thought were good until someone came along and gave us better: Tour de France coverage and the Slowtwitch Forum. In the case of the first, we all thirsted after the weekend network "coverage" of TdF, thinking it was good, won awards, and--for professional cycling--got "good" ratings. Then, OLN came along and blew their doors off. Same common race footage provided by the Societe, but a whole different way of packaging and presenting it to the audience. The result--better ratings and more awards (and more sponsors and spectators brought in). In the case of the latter, we all thought that the Slowtwitch Forum was "good," until Dan Empfield sprung the new format on us. In both cases, who would really want to go back?

Some have argued that triathlon, if you're not participating, is relatively boring to watch. If you're stuck with sitting in one point on a triathlon race course, or watching a fixed webcam, that might be right. I don't think that's right, however, if the technology is used correctly. Why? Because the same could be said about bicycle racing. If you stand in one place along the TdF course, you get a few seconds of excitement as the peleton races by. you don't see the drama played out over the course of a day unless it's a crit. If, however, you get feed from cameras all over the course, you get to see the different struggles going on, like some guy from Texas "bagging it" all day, only to rip his competitors legs off after a rearward "are you coming" glance. The fact that you can do what OLN does with TdF coverage shows that there is something more that can be done with IMH coverage--resulting in a product that includes features and human interest stories in addition to all of the great racing that occurs not only on the professional level but on the age-group levels as well.

In the end, we and NBC got exactly what we expected. A slickly polished TV show relatively short on triathlon and long on human interest stories. I don't mean to denigrate Herriman's or any other of the other human interest story subjects' performances--they were inspiring (or som I'm told since I got Gershwin on Ice instead). We could, however, have gotten so much more--and that's the point of much of the "whining."

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Ben H

Christian, Husband, Father, Ranger, Triathlete