Thought re. ESPN2 & ABC Coverage, in general

What did you guys think???

I give an A+ to last night's spectacular telecast...wow, almost FOUR HOURS of pure skating and minimal fluff! We got to see FOURTEEN ladies SPs, for goodness sake! Almost as good as being in St Louis...maybe even better because I saw it all, live, from my Lazy Boy Chair munching on my favorite snack, LOL!

Odd thoughts:

* Smuckers Skycam was much 'better behaved' this time than last year's mess. It was not overused last night.

* KURT ROCKS as commentator. Smooth, soft-voice yet soooo witty when appropriate. I thought that it was nice that ABC subtly gave Kurt the LEAD in the men's commentating. Kurt always started out the comments on each guy's performance...Dick Button merely chimed in & added his wise-old-sage comments. Did y'all notice that?

* The Kurt-and-Kat combo also ROCKS. I love Kat's honesty. Peter - Suzy - Terry....wonderful Dream Team, all of them.

* Peggy - always her lovely self but...Is it just me or did Peggy seem ill or shaky-voiced, a bit? Maybe she just has flu or a cold. I loved her gracious comments for even the weaker skaters out there. It's nice to have someone say something nice about a lower-ranked skater.

* Leave it to ESPN/ABC to nominate Paul Wylie as the 'Team Master-Mathematician' - the only thing missing was a white doctor's jacket and a laser pointer! I thought that, at any moment, he'd be putting CAT Scans up on those plasma screens behind him!!!

* THANK GOODNESS Christine Brennan was nowhere to be found last night (although she made an appearance on Good Morning America's piece on Michele, yesterday morning)

* As much as I love Dick...he sounded as if he was 'eating crow' after trash-talking through Michael Weiss' wonderful skate. Ha-ha!!! Weiss is now in 2nd and with a great chance to make his THIRD Olympic team.

* Nice calm introduction to the show - they've finally done away with the Bring In Da Noise-Bring In Da Funk garbage-can-lid intro! THANK YOU, ESPN/ABC!

Again - the best darn Nationals telecast that I've ever seen. Bravo! Keep it up, ESPN-ABC!!!!!!

I very much enjoyed last night's skating. The only thing that is very irritating to me is the sound......and I don't mean the banner at the bottom and coloring. Sometimes it looked like everything was green......and no it is not my TV.

I wished Paul was doing the commentating with Dick and Peggy.

Dee

I enjoyed it very much. My only negatives would be: no pairs...I wanted to see NNN!, fewer OD's...wish we could've seen the top 8 and the wretched skycam!

But the live aspect was great...especially for this westcoaster who rarely gets live skating (with the exception of the men's FS each year). Seeing the lower ranked ladies was rather neat. And you can't beat almost four hours of skating! :agree:

I thought the coverage was very much improved and I was happy with it. They had few commercial breaks (compared to the usual break in between each skater), more coverage, better picture and color than in the past and the sound was much much improved. I was happy with it and the little strip at the bottom didn't even bother me.
:agree:

kurt was too sarcastic for my taste

I was plesantly surprised! I loved that we got to seem teams that normally don't place in the top 6 - usually you'd have to go to Nationals to see them skate and IMO, they really make nationals - NATIONALS!!!!

I would however, liked to have seen more dance teams - esp. Tiffany and her partner and Loren and her partner.

As far as talking heads, I liked it. I guess I'm just one of those folks that don't think its skating unless Peggy and Dick are there. I like that Susie was there for the dance segment (I think Terry Gannon was too) but I wasn't sure what the point of Witt was?...hello - she's not a us citizen and why would most people even want to hear from her?

An odd thing was Paul...his "Professor" gig explaining the scoring could have been a good informative segment, but aside from having trouble writing on the screen, the segments seemed out of place....Maybe they'll work the kinks out.

I didn't like Kurt...Isn't he Canadian?- what's he doing broadcasting at US Nationals? (that like Dick doing Canadians)

The SkyCam wasn't as bad as last year - some cool shots but I noticed they used if far less than last year. I guess they either figured out that it wasn't producing great shots or actually read the emails from people complaining about it. If I were a skater, I could NOT imagine how distracting having this thing flying above me would be. Its like some snot-nosed kid brought a remote controlled airplane in the building and was flying it around.

Oh, BTW - you see that crash btween the two Jr. Dance teams! MAN!!! he was really bit HARD! poor guy.

I know its been posted places, but who is commentation for the Men,Ladies, Dance and Pairs in Torino?

Darby

I love Kurt and his comments, and Kat is okay at best, but together.......silly, silly............42

Most guys act rather silly around Kat,LOL. I wonder if they are picturing her from her Playboy pics?

dwiggin3 said:

IThe SkyCam wasn't as bad as last year - some cool shots but I noticed they used if far less than last year. ....


I know its been posted places, but who is commentation for the Men,Ladies, Dance and Pairs in Torino?

Darby

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I loved Ryan Bradley's cute pointing-up (& winking) at the skycam during the footwork segment of his routine. That was hilarious!

re. Torino-NBC - I only know that Scott Hamilton will be the lead anchor. Too, Katarina Witt will be there in some capacity, it was announced, but I don't know if it's in the booth, backstage, etc. Dick Button will be hosting his own one-hr daily show on USA network (6pm EST each night) so I don't think he'll be part of the main NBC broadcasts.

Piel said:

Most guys act rather silly around Kat,LOL. I wonder if they are picturing her from her Playboy pics?

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42

My major complaint would be that we only saw 7 men's SP but 14 women? At least even it up a bit more. Like 10 men & 11 women. I think we have more depth currently in the mens field & the mens programs are more difficult & interesting to watch. I don't care for Kurt Browning's commentary. I don't find him amusing or interesting off the ice. I am looking forward to this evening's dance & pairs coverage. First time in years that I really cared about either.

merrywidow said:

My major complaint would be that we only saw 7 men's SP but 14 women? At least even it up a bit more. Like 10 men & 11 women. I think we have more depth currently in the mens field & the mens programs are more difficult & interesting to watch.

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Remember, the ladies event was being telecast live, with the men's part being pre-recorded. So they were at the mercy of the live event and working around the times when the top ladies were skating, which dictated just how much of the men's they could show. And the show started at 7:30pm (EST), which is actually 30 minutes earlier than one would expect for primetime.

curious said:

kurt was too sarcastic for my taste

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Me too, it irritated me

FreeKatie said:

They had few commercial breaks:agree:

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Can anyone explain the 3 guys in the bathroom. I thought I'm missing something here or this is really inappropriate. :no: :no:

Dee

Dee4707 said:

Can anyone explain the 3 guys in the bathroom. I thought I'm missing something here or this is really inappropriate. :no: :no:

Dee

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I was disgusted too. I understand this is a macho network but watching men peeing is disgusting.

As for the telecast I was delighted to see 14 Women and many ice dance teams. However I would have liked to see the team that placed fourth in pairs.

I don't have cable, so I couldn't watch it - I really wish ESPN didn't take over so much of the skating, especially international events! Oh well, I'm glad it was good coverage. :frown2:

ESPN coverage so much better than ABC! Less about fluff and more about skating. I wish ESPN did the long programs instead... and I bet they would have shown Jahnke. That was my biggest complaint about the weekend - no Jahnke and he finished 6th and he's a proven international competitor and his programs rock this year in terms of entertainment value (I think).

I hate the friggin sky cam. Hate it. For some reason I didn't mind it on Cohen & Rosenthal but otherwise Arghh. And although I think this year's camera work was much better in the long- I got tired of the close-ups and upper body shots in the ladies short (& mens to a lesser degree.) I wish they'd do a wide angel on replay to give a better idea of height/speed.

That said, I am greatly appreciative of seeing the almost the entire final 2 flights of men, women and dance; but why did we not see the Scott/Fein program that was the 3rd best free?

Terry, Peter and Suzie are my favorites and sometimes I am really in the mood for a good Buttonism.

Someone needs to put Kurt on Adderol.

Just partway through watching the ABC coverage Saturday night - being in Canada I don't get ESPN at all.
The ABC coverage is horrible. A full HOUR of fluff before ANY of the skating. Appalling, absolutely appalling. And the pieces....shudder. Katy Taylor waxing poetic about her barbie dream hummer? Is that supposed to make me like her? I actually enjoyed her skate, but can't bring myself to have much respect for her immature gas guzzling fantasies - didn't do her any favours. Has the girl not heard of global warming? The rising price of oil? The need to protect the environment? It wasn't cute. It just made her look spoiled and vapid.

Okay, now that that's out of my system, I was LOL at Dick Button's comments re: the ladies omnipresent Biellman and catchfoot mania. I wrote something almost exactly like that on the ladies FS thread for the Canadian championships - even down to suggesting a Zayak rule for the catchfoot/Beillman position. Button - who I'm not generally a fan of for commentary, hit it right on the nose when he said it's being used not only way to much, but to hide deficiencies skaters have in hitting classic positions in spirals and spins.

Good God, a fluff piece before every single lady pretty much.... I think I'll have to change the channel, tape it on my VCR and FF through the crap to the skating.

I used to like Scott Hamilton a lot as a commentator -- he's usually such a nice guy with his observations, and his opinions are usually totally on target. Unfortunately, I haven't yet forgiven him for his snarky commentary over Yagudin's LP at the SLC Olys. I understand that he has to hype the American competitor (i.e. Timothy), but his narrative overlaying Yagudin's incredible performance was really over the top. Apparently, everyone in the arena except SH realized that Yagudin was the clear winner; Scott's commentary really detracted from one of the best men's performances I've seen yet at the OLYS, IMHO.