okansas.blogspot.com
Occassional thoughts about orienteering


Thursday, June 23, 2011

Watching the Swedish TV Orienteering Coverage

 

I watched the Swedish TV coverage of the sprint world cup races in Gothenberg. I thought the coverage was some of the best orienteering coverage I've seen. Personally, I'm not sure I like the "knock out" sprint format, but I think the coverage was strong.

You can see a clip of one of the semi final races below. The entire clip is about 10 minutes and gives you a good idea of what the entire coverage was like.



I watched the coverage and took a few notes. Among other things, I found that TV showed:

  • runners in action for 4:06 (just over half of the race time);
  • GPS tracking for 3:34;
  • a view of the empty terrain for just 0:25 (and nearly all of that came in just after the start).

That's pretty good - over half of the race time the cameras showed the runners in action. I think it is quite unusual for orienteering coverage to have so little time devoted to empty terrain, waiting for a runner to show up.

I watched two of the races (the one above and one of the finals) and counted how often each of the three commentators was talking. The commentators were: Rickard Ekman (a sports journalist), Anders Garderud (Olympic gold medalist and orienteer who runs for IFK Lidingo), and Helena Jansson (WOC gold medalist orienteer). For the most part, Ekman described what was going on. He was the play-by-play. Garderud and Jansson provided "color commentary." Ekman spoke the most. I didn't time each commentator. Instead, I counted how often they were leading the commentary. Ekman had the lead 27 times. Garderud was leading 18 times. Jansson was leading 18 times.

As a viewer, the balance between the color commentators and the play-by-play commentator felt about right.

People frequently criticize the knock out sprint format (mass start, no forking, first 2 finishers qualify for the next round) for being nothing but a group running around together. That's a valid criticism, but it is a bit of an over simplification. In the 8 minute race shown in the video, there are a couple of legs where people take different routes. So, there is some splitting up.

You can criticize the format for minimizing map reading, too. I think a lot of the runners just hung with the pack, looking at the map now and then. But, they did look at the map. If you watch the video, you'll see that they are looking at the map and they do so fairly often.

One way to think about the coverage is to think about how this 8 minute race compares to a race like Jukola. If you watch 8 minutes of Jukola coverage, how much of that is likely to be runners in the forest? How many times would you see a pack of Jukola runners splitting up on route choices?

Overall, I think the SVT coverage was very good. I thought this was especially interesting:

SVT commented that the format itself was interesting and that the production was OK, with some room for improvement (which we know). Last week-end the European Team Championships in Track & Field was held in Stockholm and the number of viewers for orienteering was in parity with the number of viewers for that event, which is a good number.

Also, the knockout sprint from Gothenburg was sent on Finnish TV (a 1 hour taped show sent at 10 PM Finnish Time) and had an average of 170 000 viewers (with a max of 200 000)! (Note, there are appr 40 000 members in the Finnish O Federation, so obviously around 150 000 "non-orienteers" found the production understandable and interesting.

I'll be interested to see how the TV-versions of orienteering develop. I hope we see more experimenting and I think it is moving in a generally positive direction.


Back to okansas.blogspot.com.

posted by Michael | 8:04 PM

2 comments


Comments:
:-P It wasn't just the same number of spectators, it was most likely the SAME spectators, because in the end it was just a Track&Field(with map).

1) The later winner did not read much map neither in Quarter- nor Semifinal.
2) The later winner waited until the third last control and even from there his tactics was 'taking the same route as Hubmann'.

http://o-zeugs.blogspot.com/2011/06/nort-2011-knockout-sprint-goteborg-ii.html

This is not his fault to win that way. It is the settings fault. The combination of 'no routechoices' and 'even routechoices' with a 500m run-in in my opinion is no good direction (->3000m Urban Steeple) (Even some runners like Merz, Bortnik, Eliasson or Bilstam could not believe, that it had nothing to do with orienteering) (Why did it have to be in Göteborg? - I saw about 200 Spectators and GPS does obviously not work in a citys center).

So all in all. To make this TV format really unique there should be a form reintroducing orienteering in it, for example something like this: http://o-zeugs.blogspot.com/2011/02/woc-2014-langdistanz-mit-massenstart.html (btw. nice phrase! Like Biathlon decided to reintroduce shooting :-)
 
Post a Comment
March 2002April 2002May 2002June 2002July 2002August 2002September 2002October 2002November 2002December 2002January 2003February 2003March 2003April 2003May 2003June 2003July 2003August 2003September 2003October 2003November 2003December 2003January 2004February 2004March 2004April 2004May 2004June 2004July 2004August 2004September 2004October 2004November 2004December 2004January 2005February 2005March 2005April 2005May 2005June 2005July 2005August 2005September 2005October 2005November 2005December 2005January 2006February 2006March 2006April 2006May 2006June 2006July 2006August 2006September 2006October 2006November 2006December 2006January 2007February 2007March 2007April 2007May 2007June 2007July 2007August 2007September 2007October 2007November 2007December 2007January 2008February 2008March 2008April 2008May 2008June 2008July 2008August 2008September 2008October 2008November 2008December 2008January 2009February 2009March 2009April 2009May 2009June 2009July 2009August 2009September 2009October 2009November 2009December 2009January 2010February 2010March 2010April 2010May 2010June 2010July 2010August 2010September 2010October 2010November 2010December 2010January 2011February 2011March 2011April 2011May 2011June 2011July 2011August 2011September 2011October 2011November 2011December 2011January 2012February 2012March 2012April 2012May 2012June 2012July 2012August 2012September 2012October 2012November 2012December 2012January 2013March 2013April 2013May 2013July 2013September 2013
archives
links