Anyone else thought about the people working @ NBC who have likely been working for weeks on the IM Hawaii broadcast? Their award winning little production no doubt takes weeks to put together in order to air in December - and I’m sure they started production as soon as they got back with film in hand from the Islands of Aloha…
So my question is this - how do you think they might handle the Nina Kraft “situation”? It’s very obvious when you watch the broadcast each year that there is some amount of foreshadowing thrown in when they show clips of the (eventual) winner. So do they do that again this year, and then have our friend, gymnastics officianado Al Trautwig, do a voiceover at the end that says “Oh, by the way, Nina Kraft was jacked up on EPO so she wasn’t really our winner here today, but rather second place finisher N. Badmann.” - and leave it at that…
OR… Do they scrap part of the work that they have undoubtedly already done in production, and shift the foreshadowing over to Badmann and redo the entire ending to portray her as the winner?
This may be a stupid question because we all know that much of the media thrives on scandal - but NBC always seems to bend over backwards to make the IM broadcast “magical” in its presentation and judging by the human interest story angles, is intended to tug at the heartstrings of all that watch.
Simple. NBC will edit out most of Nina’s performance and let Nascar run an extra 30 minutes, thus cutting off the first 30 minutes of the Ironman broadcast.
I’m being sarcastic here, but I was not real happy to see that when NBC announced the Ironman Hawaii special would broadcast on November 20th, they included a disclaimer that they would join the Hawaii IM, already in progress, only after the conclusion of the Nascar event.
As someone who works in televison here’s my two cents, spend it how you will:
My guess is that the producers are currently debating this very issue. NBC has a love affair with Ironman and they have two options (at least) open to them.
While taping the event they most likely concentrated on several contenders and have plently of tape on Natasha. The biggest problem that they now face is that they have finished the edit and they have to work some serious magic.
My bet is that they will touch on the scandal but focus on the “human interest” stories that make Ironman events so thrilling.
I was there watching from a balcony of the King K as that athlete (sorry I am realllly bad with names) carried his bike into T2 after RUNNING with it for NINE miles!
Chances are they will concentrate on Stadler’s amazing lead, add an extra “human interest” story and skirt around the women’s race. This way they can continue promoting a great event, briefly mention the scandal, slam home the age group greats…
We will see Natasha cross the finish line, cut to crowd shot and the tape announcer will declare her the winner.
In a perfect world we’d see tape of Nina Kraft turning over the winner’s medal to Natasha and publicly apologizing for stealing that moment of glory. It’d make great TV, but is it worth the salt in the wound?
I will bet that A LOT more people tune in next week to see how it gets handled.
My guess - they will play out the show as it happened, and then have an epilogue that mentions the failed drug test, and the new finish order.
As for the Nascar / IM issue, demographics demand that they wouldn’t cut away from Nascar to the tri, as much as we would like them to. If they did, they would have another “Heidi” on their hands. I presume if a significant amount gets missed this time around, they will stuff it in after New Years as a filler.
Thanks for the insight. I had not heard that they were running the IM broadcast that early - otherwise I would have had more sympathy for those guys putting this thing together.
You’re probably right - they likely had the thing all the way to the final cut by now - but possibly the producers were privy to some info about Kraft that the general public did not know. I’m sure the WTC would get into hot water if they knew weeks ago about the failed test and said nothing to NBC.
Will definitely be interesting to watch. Thanks for entertaining my question.
I would be that with new technology, production time on the broadcast is now quite short (it’s a matter of creativity, not production, which they could probably produce in a weekend if they already have the human interest stories filmed). My guess is that it simply falls back on the production schedule because of other events, and they have a general time of year they have released it in the past, so they just schedule accordingly.
Also, while their actual “race” coverage seems to continue to dwindle (bring back the 2 hour show - which only equated to about 1:20 of actual showtime), they have become quite adept at missing the compelling RACE moments (reference: the 15 second clip of Lori Bowden passing Nina last year - which missed the entire cat & mouse game of Nina not wanting to give up her #1 position during the race). Their creativity is now exemplified by the overall production of the program (some very vivid images, whether it’s cinematography, color correction, compositing, editing, whatever…), and the stories they tell to the masses.
It will be interesting to see how much footage they have of people other than Nina, and how they will handle to subsequent positive test (if they do at all). My guess is they say something to the effect of “even winners come under pressure, as those who place high come under suspicion of illegal drug use” (as they show the photo of Nina crossing the finish line). No need to fuel resentment by actually doing some hardcore journalism on an award winning program
The tri mags may have to scamble a bit as well.
I’m sure the people at Triathlete Magazine are currently thinking about what they will do when they cover Kona… by next August.
It will be interesting to see how they deal with this.
The thing to keep in mind is that what NBC does with Ironman Hawaii is more of a TV Show and less of a coverage of the actual race it’s always been that way. The challenge for the editors/producers is that they will have the most footage of Kraft, less so for Badmann, and even less for the other podium placers. The have always tended to focus, sometimes exclusivly on the absolute front runner and/or the race winner to the exclusion of all others. I recall a few years ago that if you watched the NBC coverage of the race, Paula Newby-Fraser was the only woman racing that year!
Of course all of this could be avoided, if the testing and result announcments happened closer to the completion of the event. I know that there are protocols that must be followed, but does anyone know why this has taken almost a month to become public?
I’m guessing we won’t hear much of it at all. Heck, ironmanlive still won’t name her, or that it was the winner. This might be the biggest news to hit our sport, but here’s what their “top story” is:
"A-Sample Drug Test Comes Back Positive For Kona Pro By Staff for Ironmanlive.com on Wed, Nov 10th 2004 (4:14 PM).
WTC will take the appropriate action once additional test results are complete
Today, World Triathlon Corporation (WTC) was informed that a professional athlete’s drug test results from the 2004 Ironman Triathlon World Championships returned a positive A-sample. The athlete’s governing body has been notified and is expected to proceed with testing of the B-sample, should the athlete wish to have it tested. WTC will wait for all test results to be finalized, including this athlete’s B-sample, before distributing prize money. Once the governing body announces B- sample test results, WTC will take the appropriate action to finalized the professional athlete standings."
We know who won, we know who failed her drug test, we know who DNF’d, we know who walked his bike 9 miles to T2. We’ve read all the race reports, we’ve seen the photos on the web, we’ve discussed it here, there, and everywhere. Some of us were in Kona, either at the finish line or out in the lava.
Why not just let NBC bag their 52-minute recrap (or less if NASCAR goes long), let Ironmanlive, Inside Tri or Triathlete build a nice DVD (with a 2-hour race profile and ironmanlive’s streaming broadcast of all the finishers) available in time for Xmas???
“The thing to keep in mind is that what NBC does with Ironman Hawaii is more of a TV Show and less of a coverage of the actual race it’s always been that way.”
And that’s exactly why it always sucks. It’s almost exactly the same piss-ass coverage they give the Olympics too. I don’t get cable, but does the coverage of other IM events suck as much as NBC?
