Xterra on CBS vs. IMH on NBC

Triathlon Forum
1

Having seen the coverage for both, I enjoyed the Xterra coverage more, and thought it was worlds better. Why? A few reasons…

  1. At the end, they showed all the age group winners. While the pro race could be considered ‘the main event’, there are still more age groupers than pro’s in this sport.
  2. More focus on the actual race. They actually showed the swim, and talked about the placing of the big names in the swim, etc. They showed us Stolz breaking down on the bike, and some good coverage of people other than the pro’s trying to ride across the difficult conditions in Maui.
  3. Fewer ‘human interest’ stories. Not to take anything away from the Hoyts, or the other ‘human interest’ stories that they showed for IMH, because those are interesting and show part of why we all do this, I’m primarily interested in the race, and seeing what goes on during the race.

Well, mainly reasons 1 & 2 made it much more interesting for me than the IMH coverage on NBC. I think this is a lot more like what NBC should be trying to do with their coverage.

Discuss.

Andrew

3

Make no mistake, watching the really fast folks with the buttery smooth strides, etc is what most of us are most interested in. It was just good to see who the AG winners were, and pay some recognition to them. The AG winners were all just flashed on the screen for about 15 seconds each at the very end of the coverage, while the bulk of the coverage was the pro race (and predominantly the men’s pro race at that… a bit more time on the women’s race would have been nice).

But, it does bring up an area they could improve on. They showed the name, age group, but not the time. Since many of us are competitive at heart, it might be nice to know what the various AG winning times were. Granted, we could all find that out, but just a thought for improvement.

Someone in another thread made a comment about shameless self-promotion, and there was some promotional material there, but I didn’t feel that it really took away from the coverage and could be ignored relatively easily.

Andrew