Eurosport tapes of the Olys

However, all that said, I respect the fans' desire to see more skaters shown on TV or wherever. I wish the skating fans the best of luck here. :agree:

Red Dog said:

It's not fair to say I'm only interested in one skater here. It's mainly the top skaters in the ladies (in which there are about 10 of them).

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Trust me Red Dog, you will not get more than 6 Ladies from a tape of the competition and it's quite possible you will only get 4 if Kwan and Cohen have a meltdown and pushed into the penultimate group of 6 to skate. You will get them but you lose two skaters who beat them.

Joe

Mathman said:

Red Dog does have a point, though. This is the Winter Olympic Games, not the World Figure Skating Championship. I'm sure that enthusiastic fans of other sports would like to see all the time trials, preliminary heats, etc., for their sports, too.

The TV folks have to go with whatever brings the highest ratings. Luckily for us, that's figure skating, so we get a lot of coverage of our sport, compared to hot dog ski jumping and, yeah, that cross-country skiing/rifle shooting biathalon thing.Mathman

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Mathman - I daresay if it were the Worlds, you would still be ok with limited coverage as long MK is in the final six to skate.

We are aware of the business of TV showings. Not only in figure skating but in all sports. Some bring in big sponsors.We get complete coverage of golf from Thursdays through Sundays.

Now if you really watch the Olys as I do, you will see many of the events shown during the day time as one does seeing Tennis. I've seen Luge, Bobsled, Downhill skiing, Ski Jump, etc. absolutely LIVE if in the US or taped for showing soon after for afternoon or early evening showings. So Figures Skating which is taped for Prime Time evening showings does not get into the way of other sports. What does one have to do with the other? Figure Skating is cut drastically to fit into a prime time slot because it will get a larger audience than the other winter sports regardless of how much is shown. I don't know why you can't understand that?

What I and many other figure skating fans want is more coverage of figure skating. Cable is a good possibility at early morning showings. Figure Skating does not interfere with other winter sports duh! And there is no need to suck up to the networks business affairs. If Eurosport can do it why can't the Americans get out of that 35 year old programming?

Joe

childfreegirl said:

Me too. I loved watching Eurosports coverage of the ladies LP, or was is SP? at World's, even though it was in Italian. I got to see a lot of skaters I'd seen raved about on the internet, but never seen compete. That was the highlight of World's for me.

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Maybe you are talking about RAI (Italian channel, not Eurosport). They showed quite a lot of skaters during last worlds, and we could watch it live on the internet.

Olympic Coverage

Mathman said:

Red Dog does have a point, though. This is the Winter Olympic Games, not the World Figure Skating Championship. I'm sure that enthusiastic fans of other sports would like to see all the time trials, preliminary heats, etc., for their sports, too.

The TV folks have to go with whatever brings the highest ratings. Luckily for us, that's figure skating, so we get a lot of coverage of our sport, compared to hot dog ski jumping and, yeah, that cross-country skiing/rifle shooting biathalon thing.

Mathman

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In the 1988 Calgary Olympics, ABC broadcast the last two skating groups, in their entirety, without breaking for any other events. The ladies and men's finals were broadcast live, no less. NBC has covered things differently, since they took over the Olympic broadcasts, you get one skater, then bobsledding, another skater, then some downhill. It is hard to feel the buildup of the competition when the event keeps changing on the broadcast. Figure Skating IS the Winter Olympics as far as bringing in the sponsor money and the ratings. The skating coverage could be better, especially since NBC has so many cable options. But, it seems NBC would rather do athlete profiles than show the actual competition. Somewhere some marketing "genius" told the programming director that ladies like the "feel good" stories, and I bet they think that the MTV generation does not have the patience to sit through an entire event.

I'm remembering fro m 2002 that the CBC broadcasts weren't as bad, with the chopping up and stuff, but they were later at night, something like that.

ID Nurse said:

In the 1988 Calgary Olympics, ABC broadcast the last two skating groups, in their entirety, without breaking for any other events. The ladies and men's finals were broadcast live, no less. NBC has covered things differently, since they took over the Olympic broadcasts, you get one skater, then bobsledding, another skater, then some downhill. It is hard to feel the buildup of the competition when the event keeps changing on the broadcast. Figure Skating IS the Winter Olympics as far as bringing in the sponsor money and the ratings. The skating coverage could be better, especially since NBC has so many cable options. But, it seems NBC would rather do athlete profiles than show the actual competition. Somewhere some marketing "genius" told the programming director that ladies like the "feel good" stories, and I bet they think that the MTV generation does not have the patience to sit through an entire event.

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I did not know about this. What about CBS (which I believe had the Olympics in the 90s)?

I think NBC had alright coverage of the 2004 Athens Olympics. Of course it could have been better, but I think it could have been worse, too. They pretty much had all-day Olympic coverage, and you can't get much better than that IMO.

We're stuck with NBC at least until 2012, so I suppose we'll keep seeing this same "athlete profiling" for a while...

I suppose they do this for ratings, to keep the broadcast "diverse" and try to show as many sports as possible while switching back and forth between events to avoid losing viewers to a sport they may not like. Blah. But it did work IMO for the Athens Olympics (as there were a lot more sports/events to cover).

Joe,

You might try to see if you can get the CBC in your area, I was really inpressed with there coverage last year. At worlds we had at least 2 hours of coverage each night and saw I think most if not all of the last two groups of eah disipline. At the very least you would get the Canadain skaters and all of the last group. During the last Olimpic CBC was your all Olympic all the time so you should get relitily good coverage

Janet

Joesitz said:

Figure Skating is cut drastically to fit into a prime time slot because it will get a larger audience than the other winter sports regardless of how much is shown. I don't know why you can't understand that?

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I do understand that, Joe. So do the TV executives. That's why they do it.

Mathman said:

I do understand that, Joe. So do the TV executives. That's why they do it.

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MM - I didn't want to seem harsh, but I just felt you are ok with the status quo and I think most fans of figure skating want more Oly figure skating on TV - not just Kwan and Cohn.

Joe

I'm with you Joe. As much as I love MK, I want to see a lot more skaters than we get now. What irks me most of all with the way figure skating is broadcast in the USA, is that they are not happy unless they can make it more of an entertainment program with fluff pieces, etc. and much less of the actual sport itself. ABC has gotten totally ridiculous with their coverage, and I'm betting that in this Olympics we will see fewer skaters than 4 years ago. I hope I'm wrong, but I don't have a good feeling about this.
I am so desperate to see all the performances, that I wish they would just get them on tape and show them when the Olympics are over ... if that's the only way we get to see them.

Is there any wonder why so many folks don't see figure skating as a sport?