The award for the most ridiculous, self-absorbed, overzealous all sports entertainment network in the world goes to...
ESPN, for the 10th year running.
They have once again proven that outside the 4 major sports, Tiger Woods, and the Williams sisters, you're really not much of an athlete. Unless you count token consideration of Cael Sanderson and -ahem- Sarah Hughes (don't even get me started on figure skating).
No offense to college athlete of the year Sue Bird (UConn BB) but a certain swimmer from Cal who set at least 6 AR and 1 WR over the short course season would have had my vote.
Anyone else? Natalie Coughlin, female college athlete of the year as awarded by the USMS discussion crew?
-RM
As much as we love swimming, we are minor compared to the thundering herds of runners. I think that's one of the things that sets us apart.
The RRCA boasts a membership of 200,000 which is almost 5X USMS. It's not hard to walk out your front door and start running compared to getting to the pool at the odd hours they seem to let Masters practice.
The Peachtree Road Race this year had over 55,000 participants. I heard it took longer to start running than to actually run the race.
Although with the freakish heat, even by Southern standards, we've had this year, it seems many runners are opting for the pool now.
I think Ion and Cindy have a point. Swimming does get less media coverage than you would expect based on the number of participants. You can argue that swimming simply does not interest many Americans, but that argument does not withstand closer examination.
First, there is the claim that fewer people swim than play baseball/basketball, etc. OK, then explain why there are so many fans of these sports who HAVE HARDLY EVER PLAYED THE GAME IN THEIR LIVES! (Or like me, one week each of little league and jr. high football each before I decided these sports were not for me.) I know that there are a lot of golfers out there, many more than swimmers, but enough to justify 3 pro tours (PGA, LPGA and Seniors ) on the TV every single weekend?! And, there is no way you can convince me that any but a handful of people actually do any of those absurd "World's Stongest Man" competitions that fill up all the dead air time on ESPN2. The membership in USA Swimming and USMS (plus maybe some of the kids swimming for their high school, colleges or in YMCA/Summer Rec Leagues) amount to a fairly significant number of people. If it was purely numbers, you would expect an occaisional meet on one of the sports oriented channels.
Then there is the fall back argument that the team sports are simply more interesting for a casual fan. There is some truth to that. I'd love to watch all 16 minutes or so of a world class 1500m free, but that is because I have swam the event, and have some notion of the pacing and guts that event takes, same thing to a lesser extent for track events. I don't expect my family, or even my teammates to find that sort of thing interesting. However, why is track & field, which has the same problem as swimming in the U.S., so much more popular in Europe? Why is swimming so popular in Australia? I can buy the idea that more Australians swim, but you can't convince me that those vodka quaffing, Galois smoking Europeans have more people involved in track and field than the U.S. And to finally dismiss this argument, someone explain why water polo is not more popular here. It suffers from an even more profound lack of attention than swimming in the U.S. In terms of being a watchable sport, however, it is much better than soccer: (1) people actually score (!!) a reasonable number of goals, (2) the ball moves from the defensive to the offensive side of play more quickly, although not quite as fast as hockey or basketball (two other similar sports), & (3) it does not suffer from soccer's infuriating offsides rule whose sole purpose seems to be to choke-off any reasonable scoring chance. I neither liked nor appreciated basketball or hockey until after I played some organized water polo. So why can't you EVER catch a water polo game on TV?
I think the answer to all these questions is that the sporting, broadcasting, and advertising industries decide what is marketable, and then package it for our consumption. I'm not saying this is a vast conspiracy; I'm just observing it is a big, self-reinforcing loop. Because people have historically watched the "big 4" sports in the U.S. and Canada (which includes college footbal and basketball, but not hockey or baseball; explain that as anything other than a historic circumstance), the networks will show their games, which will interest the advertisers as a way to sell their products, which will generate ad revenue, which will cause the advertisers to demand more of the same because it is a "proven" medium, and the cycle reinforces itself. In France they watch the Tour de France; in Brazil it's soccer; in Australia it's swimming; and in the U.S. it's the "big 4." We see what we see because a cadre of professional sports writers and network producers have a consensus of opinion that football matters 24/7, but swimming only for one week every 4 years.
Now having said that, should we swimmers launch a crusade to get our sport more media coverage? I think the answer to that is mostly no we shouldn't. Would some more media coverage help us increase our membership which would allow us to have bigger and better events, and incidentally offer to more people a wonderful form or exercise for any age? Sure! But, that is well short of turning into the next NBA, or even the next WNBA (which became what it is because the NBA put its reputation, contacts, advertisers, and financial reserves behind it, not because women's professional basketball became more worthy as a sport or more watchable than it has been already for the last several decades). Does swimming get slighted by the sports media? Sure does. However, that is a different question than whether we can do something about it, and if we can would that necessarily be a good thing. Let's use media attention as a tool, not an end, and let's be realistic about why the media pays attention to certain sports.
Matt
"the sporting, broadcasting, and advertising industries decide what is marketable, and then package it for our consumption"
Don't forget promoters. Some of that "dead time" is purchased by promoters who act as middlemen, selling advertising, producing the show and keeping what profits may accrue. But they still make judgements about what is marketable and what is not. But that's the capitalist system and I wouldn't have it any other way.
If we (or some subset of "we") really think we have a commercially viable broadcast product AND we (or some subset of "we") think that product SHOULD be broadcast then we (or some subset of we) should get off the the mark, MAKE it happen and reap (or endure) whatever financial rewards ensue.
Most communities have public access channels where nearly ANYONE can get ANYTHING televised for dirt cheap. Not long ago I chanced across such a channel where two guys were hosting a show where the general concept was to watch girls in bikini's roll around in all manner of semi-liquid materials - 1000 gallons of creamed corn at the moment I caught it. I got the impression they do this regularly. Their show is filmed on a digital camcorder costing under $2000.
Could we get a higher quality product on the air? Undoubtedly. Could we get and keep a bigger audience? Undoubtedly.
If the USMS membership, as represented by the HOD at convention, thought it would be money well spent, a 30 or 60 minute show about a USMS nationals meet could be produced (possibly by volunteers, perhaps even the very swimmers who are so fired up to see Masters swimming on TV) and distributed for LMSCs to air on access channels. Or, if sufficient money was spent to do a professional production (EXTREMELY expensive), USMS might even be able to get enough sponsorship support to buy some of that ESPN dead time Matt was talking about. Or how about trying to get PBS involved. If the Magliozzi brothers can foist Car Talk on NPR then ANYTHING is possible!
Yes, I'm talking about inauspicious beginnings here. But after a number of inauspicious beginnings WWF/E now gets loads of TV time - and we have some ofthe same basics going for us - athletic guys and gals with good physiques wearing very little! Hey, somebody get Vince McMahon on the phone!
Endlessly moaning about swimming not getting its due coverage is utterly pointless - and has about as much mass entertainment appeal as one of Matt's 1500's :)
The incessant complaining about some mysterious media powers or "Big 4" bias or whatever the term du jour is now is completely and totally ridiculous.
This is America, guys. If someone can make a buck off of it, they will broadcast it. Do you think the media televises all these sports you love to hate in order to lose money? Don't you know at some point in history each of the big sports also had to clamor for more attention. They are just 60 years ahead of us swimmers.
Start the grassroots campaign, have people swim naked while taking quiz questions or whatever. I can absolutely guarantee you that if the networks see an interest, it will get broadcast.
I can't believe with all the real issues we are facing with the media this is one of any importance right now, or ever. Go swim and let's move on. There is not some anti-swimming lobby at the networks. It all comes down to Econ 101 - supply and demand. It's that simple.
I agree with Matt.
As for the idea that it is a consummer market here with many channels to choose from when looking for any sports including swimming, I discarded it by giving in a past post here the example of the year 2000 in US:
it was poor coverage of NCAA swimming offered by one single channel, ESPN, not many competing channels to choose from, and poor coverage of Olympic Trials swimming offered by one single channel, NBC, not many competing channels to choose from;
this contrasts to many channels in Australia competing for appeal when reporting the 2000 Australian Trials and 2002 CommonWealth Games.
I would rather think that the culture here in US is conditioned in entrenched insular steretypes.
Right now in Europe, Eurosport broadcasts live, the Europeans Championships in Berlin, Germany, to many European countries. The hype of this event is at the correct level in many European countries.
Emmett,
You have greater faith in the impartiality of the market. (But your accomplishment making swim coaching pay as a capitalist enterprise is impressive.) I happen to think the dice are loaded in this game, but the point I eventually stumbled into making was "so, what?" Let's ask ourselves what we want to do as an organization, then try to generate coverage to meet that goal. I'm not sure I would want the organization to do the things it would have to do if maximum media exposure was the overarching goal. (Visions of these god-aweful "reality" TV shows, and humiliating, every man for himself game shows pop into my head. My feeling is we would have to turn ourselves into a WWF-style side show to get a significant number of people watching, for all the wrong reasons.)
I LIKE your idea of producing our own coverage of Nationals, and finding a way to broadcast it. Public access might not be where we want to start because it would be limited to the local viewing area. Then again, if we produce it, and ask our members in each little area to get it on their local access system... hm? This might work.
In the past, NE Masters got NPR's "Only a Game" to do a short piece on their meet. It was fine as far as it went, but it was 10 minutes at two different times on one weekend, then it disappeared into the vast collective unconscious.
Basically, I LIKE your ideas because they involve us producing the product ourselves, then finding a market for it. We control the content, rather than engaging in degrading "notice me" displays for a sports establishment that has already decided ahead of time what it wants to show anyway.
Matt
There are a lot of fans of sports that have people that have never participated in that sport. Figure skating and Gymnastics that have big fan followings among women are two such sports. Anyways, even figure skating had to be tape delayed because of Hockey and this was the nationals where over 18,000 people watched girls and ladies skated in Los Angeles before the olympics. Most sports coverage are geared to demogrpahics of 18 to 49 year old males. So sometimes even women popular sports don't get coverage as well as more male popualr sports. Swimming is a sport that public does not have much interest. To change that I don't know, gymnastics didn't come popular until the 1970's.
Originally posted by Matt S
...
...involve us producing the product ourselves, then finding a market for it. We control the content, rather than engaging in degrading "notice me" displays for a sports establishment that has already decided ahead of time what it wants to show anyway.
Matt
It makes sense, and I was mentioning alternative media keeping vibrant swimming web sites, personally participating in workouts and competitions;
Matt adds a Masters coverage of Nationals on TV, but sponsors need to produce this.
Matt sez: "You have greater faith in the impartiality of the market.... I happen to think the dice are loaded in this game, but the point I eventually stumbled into making was 'so, what?' "
Actually I was being a bit tongue in cheek - hence the "or some subset of 'we'". I, personally, don't think getting us on TV has great value (so I don't think USMS should sink gobs of volunteer or $$ resources into such an effort). Of even LESS value is griping about it. What DOES have great value is word of mouth promotion of what we do. Also of great value is the placement of articles about Masters in external publications (publications OTHER than Swim Mag etc). I'd venture a guess that the overwhelming majority of people who come to Masters have exposure to one or both of those figuring prominently along whatever path led them to USMS. I don't that that will change any time soon.
There is nothing "impartial" about the market for any given product. It is VERY partial toward those willing to risk their $$ in the production and distribution end and VERY partial toward those who would consume (in this case, sit still in front of the TV long enough to have commercial messages pumped into them).
Hey....production of broadcast material for RADIO is WAY cheaper than TV production. How about full end-to-end coverage of USMS Nats on the old squalk box!!! Yeah! THAT's the TICKET! :D
