Sail For Gold on the Beeb

What gets me with all this sailing on TV is the style in which it is edited.  Every time it starts with gentle sweeping shots of the venue and the dinghy park, with some laid back suedo trip-hop sound track and a few shots of boats bobbing around prestart, lets introduce people to sailing as an exciting sport by lulling them to sleep in the first 5 minutes of the show!  Then we can sit back and wonder why people think it is boring once they've switched over!

Watch the way in which things like the x-fighters is cut (or the rallying on Dave) and any one of a hundred other sports who do it better.  Its far more fast pased, the sound track is more enegetic and there are more interesting shots (read crashes, stunts, or in sailing's case capsizes, and mark roundings), the start of the piece needs to be quick to engage the viewer, then you can do the introduction and have the back story bits with interviews in the dinghy park. 

I would love to see a camera mounted on every bottom mark, so you can see the whites of people's eyes as they pile in to each other in a tangle of dropping kites, I would love to see a camera mounted in the gunwhale of each boat catching glipses of other boats through a wall of spray, I want to be able to hear a sting of bleeped expletives inbetween people calling tactics and shouting protest.  The sound track needs to be lead by guitars and synths and it needs to be cut so fast that the MTV generation have to put some effort in to keep up with it all.  If we are going to delude ourselves as to how photogenic the sport is to the public at least let us do so in such a way as to make it look like it is pased at 100mph not a stoll along a tow-path on the broards.  This is not class specific, you could make racing oppies in 5 knots of breeze look like F1 with the right approach.  We spend all this time worrying about the classes that are sails, we need to make sure that whatever we have is being presented correctly, and in my opinion it has to date, clearly not been. 

(cowers for stream of abuse and dissagreement)

Originally posted by Skiffybob [QUOTE=Chris 249] [QUOTE=Skiffybob] The point I was making, is that if you want to make the sport more interesting to the general public, it has to be fast and furious with some spills and crashes along the way.  I think based on the boats that are currently used (49ers as the exception), they're wasting their time tring to televise it. Look at the difference to the populrity of the downhill skiing when they introduced the ski-cross. That was great to watch and became an instant hit because it was fast and had some great crashes. Much more fun to watch than people skiing against a clock.

I respect your point of view, but I'm not so sure that crash and burn actually attracts more spectators. For example, why did so many of those crash and burn pro series die when the slowest of them all (match racing leadmines) survived? 

And the Olympic viewing figures cast a lot of doubt on the need for crash and burn (or other spectacles) when it comes to attracting viewers.  Here's a list of Olympic sports from the Beijing Games, in order of popularity.  The first number is the hours broadcast, the second the average number of viewers each minute in millions.  What they seem to show is that spectacular sports DON'T really attract more viewers.

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Athletics  206 hours broadcast / 65 mill spectators each minute

 

Swimming  120/ 58.8

 

Artistic gymnastics  106 / 53.3

 

Diving   31 / 43.5

 

Trampolining  11 / 41.6

 

Table tennis   41 / 40.8

 

Rowing   24 / 40.8

 

Volleyball  103 / 38.5

 

Track cycling   37/32.8

 

Sprint (flat**ter) kayak/canoe – 24 / 32.4

 

Rhythmic gymnastics  49/ 30.4

 

Shooting 12 /28

 

Sync Swimming 17 / 25.7

 

Sailing – 11 / 24.5

 

Road cycling  121 / 23.8

 

Slalom (whitewater) canoe – 22 / 22.3

 

Beach volleyball  59 / 23.6

 

BMX  44 / 23.2

Slalom (whitewater) canoe – 22 / 22.3

Triathlon 68 /. 19.4

 

Water polo   24 / 17.4

MTB  45 / 16.4

To me, that list doesn't seem to show the spectacular sports to be more popular.  The most popular is athletics, followed by a bunch of people going up and down a pool at about 4 knots.  Diving - which seems more spectacular than swimming up and down a pool - attracts only 2/3 the viewers. Water polo, which is a pretty fast and vicious sport, is much less popular than people going up and down a pool, or synchronised swimming.

In cycling, fast and furious track cycling is popular, followed by road cycling and then the "newer and cooler" mountainbiking, with the even "newer and cooler" BMX trailing a looooong way back.

The fourth event with cycling in it, triathlon, was only as popular as badminton.

"Boring old vanilla" volleyball attracts half as many again spectators as "cool new funky beach volleyball", which doesn't seem to be living up to the hype.

In canoe/kayak, the "boring" flat**ter stuff is much more popular than the spectacular whitewater stuff.

Rowing - which is a bunch of people going in a straight line over glassy water at about 8 (?) knots, got not too far from double the viewers of the windy sailing regatta which came complete with crashing 49ers, RSX boards, and Tornadoes - all of which can go three times as fast as a rowing shell and over rough water.  But not many people cared.

I haven't got any idea about ski-cross and can't comment unless you give us some figures.

So overall, in a world where BMX runs a bad fourth in the ratings among cycle sports, where whitewater gets less viewers than flat**ter in kayaking, where rowing is less popular than 49ers and Tornadoes, where beach volleyball is much less popular than volleyball and where people ploughing up and down a pool at 4 knots is one of the big drawcards, it seems hard to find hard evidence that fast crash 'n burn stuff gets more viewers.

Originally posted by Phil eltringham What gets me with all this sailing on TV is the style in which it is edited.  Every time it starts with gentle sweeping shots of the venue and the dinghy park, with some laid back suedo trip-hop sound track and a few shots of boats bobbing around prestart, lets introduce people to sailing as an exciting sport by lulling them to sleep in the first 5 minutes of the show!  Then we can sit back and wonder why people think it is boring once they've switched over! Watch the way in which things like the x-fighters is cut (or the rallying on Dave) and any one of a hundred other sports who do it better.  Its far more fast pased, the sound track is more enegetic and there are more interesting shots (read crashes, stunts, or in sailing's case capsizes, and mark roundings), the start of the piece needs to be quick to engage the viewer, then you can do the introduction and have the back story bits with interviews in the dinghy park.  I would love to see a camera mounted on every bottom mark, so you can see the whites of people's eyes as they pile in to each other in a tangle of dropping kites, I would love to see a camera mounted in the gunwhale of each boat catching glipses of other boats through a wall of spray, I want to be able to hear a sting of bleeped expletives inbetween people calling tactics and shouting protest.  The sound track needs to be lead by guitars and synths and it needs to be cut so fast that the MTV generation have to put some effort in to keep up with it all.  If we are going to delude ourselves as to how photogenic the sport is to the public at least let us do so in such a way as to make it look like it is pased at 100mph not a stoll along a tow-path on the broards.  This is not class specific, you could make racing oppies in 5 knots of breeze look like F1 with the right approach.  We spend all this time worrying about the classes that are sails, we need to make sure that whatever we have is being presented correctly, and in my opinion it has to date, clearly not been.  (cowers for stream of abuse and dissagreement)

I'm going to throw around agreement and praise, 'cause in my humble opinion you make some great points.  The only thing I'll add, though, is that arguably the 18 Foot Skiff Grand Prix did most of what you are saying - and through that era the class actually contracted, if I recall correctly.  Earlier in the 18s, and indeed in the early stages of the first edition of the GP, there were small or fledgling fleets in other states and the NZ fleet was still around.  By the time the GP ended, I think there were no other fleets.  So if it a similar approach didn't even work for the class it covered, will it actually work for sailing?

Windsurfing did stuff that was quite MTV-ish, with guys blasting down big waves inches from cameras in the water, and it has gone down the pan compared to its "pre-MTV" days.

Maybe we should try a very different tack.  Maybe sailing is actually too complex for those who need the MTV approach.  Maybe we have to abandon that 50 or 75 or 85% of the potential audience and concern ourselves with the remainder?  Maybe we'll always be a niche sport, only really appealing to 25% of the population or so, but if we can improve our proportion of the people in that niche we could do really well.  Maybe the issue is that we are spending too much time worrying about the 75% who are actually unlikely to go sailing no matter what.  Isn't there a famous 80/20 rule for promoting activities?

Considering the stats I can find, it seems that the MTV sports aren't really that strong in participants or viewers (ie BMX fits the MTV style but vastly more people watch swimming), certainly not in the sailing demographic.  For example, many people say we should be like skating, but since the vast majority of skaters drop out of the sport after 19 (you don't see too many guys who are in the market for a Beneteau, RS400 or Formula 18 on the half pipes around here, anway) maybe that's actually a really, really bad model for a sport like sailing?


Edited by Chris 249

Chris' figures show one thing plainly to me. It's the simple sports that get the viewers. Who can run or swim the fastest is easy to

A, understand,

B, emulate (anyone can put on some trainers or a swimming costume),

C, Cover (TV cameras are nice and safe in the same place for days on end),

D, see the result.

With sailing there are so many variables, Wind (strength and direction), Tides, other competitors. Also it is an expensive sport to cover. Cameras have to be waterproof and moved about in Ribs or helicopters. I do like Phil's idea of a camera mounded on the marks.

I know there is a lot of comparison with sailing and F1 coverage. But everyone these days understands what a car is and to some extent how it works. Most non sailors probably don’t know what a tack or gybe is, or how a boat moves to windward. It’s just to great a knowledge gap. So yes forget about coverage for non sailors and do coverage for sailors.

Now how do we get the BBC to agree with us?

Well I just watched the sail for gold thing on I player and I thought it was pretty good. It was informative for the general public and the sailing shots were exciting. The sailors did seem a little introverted and unwilling to talk even to the lovely Miss Robertson. A few less pictures of cornflakes and oysters would have helped. What also worried me was that in one sequence some bloke was pottering around behind Shirley wearing a nappy and tights. Now we understand that but many might not!