Reduced Kona 2011 Coverage on NBC

Honestly, golf on TV is far more interesting than triathlon--especially, IM racing.  My appetitite for either is about the same--fine in limited doses.  I say that and would MUCH rather spend my day SBR'ing than chasing a little ball around 18 holes.  Can you imagine how most people outside our sport would think about it?  Do you think many of them have even heard of Chrissie or Craig?  Or even Dave or Mark?

I thought it was always 90 minutes?

Anywhoo, this years pro race was race bleh (as are most years).  The only excitement was if Mirinda  would catch Chrissie on the run, but even then that's a stretch.  As for the human interest stories, most are a slight turnoff.  I've never like the WTC's silent stance of 'racer x is more important than racer y because of this...' 

Regardless, of my opinions of racer equality some of the stories are very inspiring.

You also have to consider Kona is not a show people plan to watch.  Very few people actually DVR the race, and my guess is most end up watching it because its the best thing on TV at that time.   This was a lot easier in the 80's with only a few channels, but with the 100's of channels now I'm not sure what its viability is...

Last year was 2 hours. If I'm missing something and they've all been 90 minutes except 2010, my apologies.

Yeah, it's always been a boil-down. I thought 2 hours was the standard. this would be 75% of that. I guess one could say that a glorified highlight reel is the same at 90 or 120 minutes. It's still a cut.

And I agree, it's not exciting to watch hours and hours. When it was online, I only tuned in for times I figured would be highlights.

I happened to come home from my first ever try this year and the Kona special was on. I thought it was a great 90 minutes of TV. Enough so that I down loaded it to watch while on the trainer this winter.

That being said if it wasn't for the human interest aspect we probably wouldn't get any coverage at all. There just aren't enough of us yet. Simply more people who want to chase a little white ball around all day. Until our numbers grow they wont brodcast more just like they aren't going to show it live.

Maybe we can hope that WTC is sponsoring the broadcast commercial free. 

Thomas Gerlach
Professional Triathlete
www.thomasgerlach.com

I'll definitely be watching. I watched online on raceday, but I like the NBC coverage for the in-depth human interest stuff.

I hope they show or mention the 17:00:04 lady. I stayed up late and watched the last finishers, and that was just a kick in the gut watching that. I felt awful for her and would like to hear her story.

I didn't hear about this. Dear lord, that had to be a crushing blow.

Really? No one was sure how Chrissie would handle her bike wreck. She had her worst swim ever, Julie Dibens made people start to question if she could maintain her 15+ minute lead off the bike, Crowie set a new Kona record and that's not exciting?

I agree with most that watching triathlon on TV is boring, but I will watch the kona coverage because I like the stories.

I would prefer to know more anout the regular age groupers who win or overcome things .

I still remember watching the Kona special in 1996, when I was an occasional runner - I had done one 5K and one 10K and training for them meant building up my run until I could go the entire distance, then after the race not doing any exercise for months.  I sat there eating pizza and drinking a beer and afterwards thought, I should really get off the couch.  An hour or so later I went out and ran 9 miles. 

I like the special, but 90-120 minutes is long enough for me.

90 minutes is probably way too long as it is for the general audience.  Just look at the broadcast date.

This time of year...college football dominates Saturday sports ratings.  Do you think it's any coincidence that December 10th is the only Saturday that has ZERO college fooball...and that NBC regularly picks that week (the week between conference championships and bowl games) to broadcast their Kona show? 

The only reason the broadcast was 2 hours last year was because Macca won in "iron war" like fashion. 

I'm sure there are competitive chainsaw enthusiasts that wish the broadcasts of the logging world championships they show (or used to show) on ESPN were 2 hours.  But the other 99% of us probably wish it was never on at all.

I watched this as well, and saw an article on her on ironman.com

I don't know how to make those tiny urls, but google "Summers WILL Come Back and Fight Another Day" to find the story.  It's pretty brief, they may do more of a story on the show.

What a bunch of crybabies in this thread!  Waaaaa, triathlon on tv is too boring!     Just be thankful you have the opportunity to watch it all!

NBC/WTC has some fantatsic production qualities on these broadcasts...aerial shots, slow motion etc that blow my mind every time I watch it.  The human interest stories are just okay IMO, and I much prefer the pro coverage, but those stories are what draws the people that don't actually do triathlons, or aren't all that serious about it.

90 minutes is perfect.

I may be biased in that I thoroughly enjoyed watching all 10 hours of the streaming pro race.

Wow, thanks very much for that. What a great read, and just what I was hoping to learn about her. I'd bet money that WTC gives her another shot with one of their "human interest" spots--or whatever they're called.

And you can see from the article that NBC didn't interview her. She finds out about her DNF when checking her results online. Brutal. Good on her for the positive attitude.

http://ironman.com/events/ironman/worldchampionship/matthew-dale-profiles-lottery-winner-nancy-summers#axzz1fPmWf4vB