Dick Button: What Went Wrong With Figure Skating

jenaj said:

The 6.0 system, though not as simple as it looked, was still accessible to fans and created drama. Remember when fans used to hold up placards with 6.0s on them? Is anyone holding up a 220 placard? That isn't even a good score for the men! The artistry of skaters like Michelle Kwan and Sasha Cohen is what held the fans' interest. Now, artistry is devalued and programs tend to look the same, with crazy spin positions and long and laborious footwork sequences.

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I disagree with this. I think the 6.0 system, if anything, was inscrutable in that everyone knew 5.1 is worse than 5.9, but no one could explain why a certain skater deserves 5.1, and another a 5.9. It was the ballpark of the worst degree.

Secondly, I disagree, as I already stated earlier, that IJS is producing cookie-cutter programs with no artistry. Cookie-cutter programs with no artistry are the DEFAULT of all figure skating competitions. If you claim that 6.0 produced interesting, artistic programs en masse, you're either lying or your memory is colored by nostalgic rose glasses. If you actually took the time to sit through 24 long programs, either under 6.0 or IJS, the majority of them will be similar, and forgettable. A handful would be memorable, a very small handful. This has nothing to do with the judging system. This has everything to do with the hard truth that only a minority of skaters have the talent to tell stories on ice, or the resources to hire good choreographers. Mediocrity is the default. It's not the system, it's the distribution of talent.

If the issue under 6.0 was why a judge gave the score he or she did, they could have just required protocol sheets. There were mandatory deductions under that system in the short program, so it could have been tailored to become just as objective on the technical side, at least. And most people understood that the scores were relative to other skaters. The new system allegedly eliminates this aspect, but judges and fans still think in terms of rankings--for example Yuna is better at performance than Skater X, so her PCS should have been higher.

pangtongfan said:

... some Yuna obsessed stuff...

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You are looking into a completely wrong direction. Dick's point was about the presence (or lack thereof) of figure skating coverage on American TV. Dick is not looking beyond US in his anti-ISU rant. Figure skating popularity is going down in the US and this is all Button is concerned about. And I tell you this: the average US audience doesn't give a crap about Yuna. The US media decision makers don't give crap about Yuna either. Her contribution to figure skating popularity (or lack thereof) in the US is zip, null, zero. Yuna could have won the Olympic by a infinite margin, and the impact of that winning on the US networks would be none. The college sport system in the US would be identical, the money invested into sports would be identical, the sport distribution in US television prime time would IDENTICAL. Beyond some obsessed hard core elitist fans on this forum Yuna does not exist at all.
The problem is completely elsewhere, it is in the shifting dynamics of US sport public and Yuna has nothing to do with it.

Of course you must bring Yuna to every issue and every problem of your life, private and social, she must be present in your every step of your life, and by definition it makes you a stalker, doesn't it?