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From Helsinki With Love 

  by Hal Higdon

                

At a dinner in New York some years ago, I sat next to Carol Lewis, Olympic athlete, sister of Carl Lewis and part-time TV commentator. Someone at our table complained about the lack of coverage for track & field, a charge with some justification.

Lightning flashing from her eyes, Carol responded sharply: “The American public was offered pay-TV for the 1992 Olympics. NBC lost a bundle of money on its ‘Triple Cast.’ TV executives, not without logic, concluded nobody cares about track & field.” I got the impression this was not the first time Carol Lewis had fielded a complaint about TV coverage of our sport.

Given that logic, and considering the IAAF World Championships just concluded in Helsinki, anyone who failed to pay $4.95 for 58 hours of live coverage streamed through their computer forfeited any right to complain to Carol again.

Less than five dollars! Live coverage of the women’s marathon on the final day with Brits Peter Matthews and Steve Ovett providing incisive commentary was worth at least that much. Granted, World Championships Sports Network would now like us to pay $9.95 for four track meets, the remaining four in the Golden League, but, hey, they delivered the goods from Helsinki with love.

Not without some technical difficulties, particularly at the beginning when the British blokes didn’t realize their mikes were live during the opening ceremonies and complained about a classical orchestra playing Sibelius: “It can’t get any worse!” One later announced his room at the Continental Hotel as Room 443. Writing a blog about the Championships, I recommended we ring Steve or Peter up and say hello.

Sound problems plagued the streaming telecast for several days. Steve sounded as though he had been handed a Dixie cup and string instead of a microphone. Freeze-frames often caused gaps in the action. Clicking “Full Screen,” I soon realized, enlarged the picture on my computer, but that caused a loss of definition, which I solved by pushing my chair five feet back. I would have preferred seeing the telecast downstairs, reposing with a glass of beer in front of my wide-screen TV, but sometimes one is asked to make sacrifices.

Unlike coverage of the Tour de France a month earlier, no network large or small felt the IAAF World Championships worthy of coverage, live or in Prime Time. Among events telecast instead: National Pro Fastball Softball; Poker Superstars Invitational; and Xtreme 4x 4, whatever that may be. PAX offered a daily one-hour tape-delay telecast, but at 5:00 P.M. Eastern time, guaranteeing a skewed audience. Judging from commercials, those watching were mostly females who worried about cats peeing on the rug and the length of their eyelashes.

Hardly a complaint, but PAX crammed so much action into their brief hour, there was little time to showcase the announcing talent it had assembled. Dwight Stones, who usually can make an event I couldn’t care less about exciting, was stuck in a studio looking uncomfortable in a new suit each day. Dan O’Brien introduced a few events, but otherwise was invisible. My dinner companion Carol Lewis mostly did reports on the miserable weather. Maybe she was auditioning for a job with the Weather Channel reporting the next hurricane from Miami.

Any comments above are nit-picking. I got my $4.95 worth, and I’m even thinking of signing up to see the Golden League meets offered later this season. Carol, honey: the next time we have dinner together, let me answer the complaints of others at our table.

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Hal Higdon, a Contributing Editor for Runner’s World, wrote a blog about viewing the Helsinki coverage. Access Hal’s day-by-day commentary by clicking here.

 

Copyright 2005 by Hal Higdon. All rights reserved.