Thanks CBC For Such Fabulous Coverage

Thank you CBC for such wonderful coverage of the Worlds. I can't remember when I have experienced such great tv coverage. I enjoyed every minute. Barb and Paul did a great job, as did the CBC sport announcer, Mark Lee. I also enjoyed the Ice Dreams segments with Elvis, Barb and Paul and Tracy Wilson. It was such fun to see these skaters demonstrating skating moves with young skaters.

I am upset that the CBC did not get the bid to cover the 2010 Olympics to be held here in BC. I just hope that CTV can match such fantastic coverage.

If anyone wants to send their comments to the CBC here is the address:

http://www.cbc.ca/contact/index.jsp

Thanks for posting the link, LAD. I just sent in my thanks and congratulations for the fine coverage. It was on for 2 hours every night, plus the live coverage on Saturday afternoon. ESPN should be ashamed of themselves in comparison.

Totally agree. CBC did an excellent job of covering the event. We saw more skaters than I can remember seeing at a competition in recent history. Thought Underhill and Martini were excellent as commentators. The fluff stuff never does it for me so I skipped the backstage interviews and the learn to skate stuff.

As for CTV Olympics - my hopes are low, very low.
For one, we will be once again subjected to Rod Black. Second, they will attempt to imitiate the American network coverage - not a good thing. We will see far fewer events, also far fewer competitors as they head to a "star" mentality. We will be forced to sit through endless drivelling puff pieces about various athletes, preferably with inspirational sob stories, all part of the "star" mentality. We will also see great focus on those covering the event - more star-making. That is my prognostication.

Thank you for the link. I sent my thanks, too. It was great to see such intensive coverage of figure skating.

I sent an email thanking them too. In the future, I may watch the Canadian coverage instead of the U.S. coverage. I was very disappointed with ESPN.

There has been speculation in various places that the announcers from CBC and ESPN were precluded from criticizing the scoring system, judges, etc. during their broadcasts. (Perhaps as a trade-off for being able to use the ISU official feed?)

Someone said that they expected blood to be oozing from the corners of Barb's mouth by the end of the week from having to bite her tongue so much!

In particular, the results of the Ladies SP have been widely criticized. It's true that it might not have changed the overall outcome (Irina had the skate of a lifetime in her LP) but she did seem to get a "gift" in her SP marks!

Apparently there have been criticisms of marks, judging, placements aplenty on ESPN/ABC in the past and they were strangely missing on this one...


http://www.fredwilliams.ca/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=30

Irina did not receive a gift in the SP. The COP does not penalize skaters as much as the 6.0 system did in the SP. Irina had enough level 3's in her SP to compensate for the mistakes. Had Sasha skated clean she could have overtaken Irina, but 3 mistakes took her out. Michelle skated the most beautiful SP (out of the ones we saw on espn) but she did not have the difficulties. Under the 6.0 system Michelle would have definitely won the SP. From what I heard (I did not watch CBC telecast) Barb and Paul explained the rules to the viewers re:Irina's mistakes. I believe that's what commentators are supposed to do (unlike S&S in SLC).

Vash

kemisha said:

There has been speculation in various places that the announcers from CBC and ESPN were precluded from criticizing the scoring system, judges, etc. during their broadcasts. (Perhaps as a trade-off for being able to use the ISU official feed?)

Click to expand...

Is this just "speculation," or does someone actually have some information about this? I would think that it is the television networks that call the shots, not the ISU. Money talks, bs walks. I cannot imagine any network executive agreeing to such a thing. In any case, you will not find much criticism of the CoP by Canadian commentators -- the Canadian federation essentially wrote the CoP and was its most enthusiastic proponent.

I have been searching and searching the ladies SP scores (trying to find some way to say that Michelle should have won, LOL). You can check them out at the ISU site.

http://www.isufs.org/results/wc2005/WC05_Ladies_SP_Scores.pdf

In the tech scores, Irina's program had a base value of 29.8, which she raised by a total of 2.7 points on the GOE. She got the biggest positive GOE on her layback spin (level 3) and her double Axel. This balanced the correctly given negative GOE on her opening combination, where she flipped around awkwardly between the two jumps, and on her final combination spin.

Sasha had a base value of 29.5. Her total GOE was 2.79. Like Irina she got big positive GOE on her triple Axel and on her spins, which balanced the negative GOE on her triple flip.

Michelle had the lowest base mark of the top four ladies at 28.8. For her clean program she got no negative GOEs (except a -0.04 (?) on her first spin), and a total of +2.40 GOE overall. I cannot find fault with these scores. She skated every element well, but did not do anything out of the ordinary, like unusual jump entrances or spin positions, that rack up the by +2's and +3's. She did get some +2's for her footwork sequence -- well deserved, IMHO.

Carolina had the most difficult program, with a base mark of 30.0, thanks to her combination 3F/3T (9.5 + 1.0 GOE). Her total GOE was also the highest, at 3.14. She got positive GOE on every element, except a 0 on her final spin.

All of these scores were in the same ballpark, with the order Kostner, Slutskaya, Cohen, Kwan. So it came down to the component scores. Although there are supposedly criteria for what constitutes superior "skating skills" or "interpretation," in practice the judges seem to use these marks in the same way that they used the second mark in the ordinal system: to rank the skaters in the order which the judges felt they deserved.

Carolina dropped from first to fourth, presumably because her presentation skills were not as mature as those of the other three. Slutskaya, Sasha and Kwan all brought different strengths and weaknesses to the table, and Irina ended up edging out Sasha by 26 hundredths of a point, with Michelle third, only 1.06 points behind Sasha (Sasha also had a 1.0 time deduction).

Where both Michelle and Carolina lost ground to Irina and Sasha was in the category "Transitions and Linking Footwork," which I can't really dispute.

Well, if I were a judge I would have given Michelle a few more points for her general Kwanliness, but hey -- what are you going to do?

Mathman

Mathman said:

In the tech scores, Irina's program had a base value of 29.8, which she raised by a total of 2.7 points on the GOE. She got the biggest positive GOE on her layback spin (level 3) and her double Axel. This balanced the correctly given negative GOE on her opening combination, where she flipped around awkwardly between the two jumps, and on her final combination spin.

Click to expand...

Slutskaya was gifted three times in the SP: she did not receive a mandatory deduction for the noticeable break between the steps and 3F; the highest she should have received for the element was base score, or -1, if the break was long enough. She also traveled on one of her other spins (besides the spin where she received the deduction, which is supposed to be a mandatory -3 for bad travels and recentering on a combo spin, for a maximum GOE of -2, only if all other phases of the spin are "very good", or -3 if not all phases of the spin are "very good"), for which she received positive GOE, when base was the maximum according to the rule book. In addition, her presentation was not the best of all of the Ladies -- Kostner and Sokolova were both superior in different aspects of the PCS.

With these deductions/reductions she would not have been in first for the SP -- she might have been as low as 4th, but the top four would have been within a point or two of each other -- but she still would have been leading after the SP, based on her deserved lead from the qualis.