Re: [Paddlewise] What's Wrong with Kayaking

On Tue, Dec 21, 2004 at 11:49:07AM -0500, Rcgibbert_at_aol.com wrote:
> I was disappointed to see only a few scenes of olympic kayaking made it onto 
> the big screen. My forward apologies to runners or shot putters, but those 
> translate to TV as well as weight lifting or reruns of Locomotion. Watching large 
> greasy men wrestling each other somehow didn't do it for me, either. And yet 
> 5-6 minutes was all the screen time they could manage for kayaking. It's not 
> just the surfers who are eclipsing paddlers, its every sport.

TV is _entirely_ driven by the money.  That's why Olympic program schedules
are (at least here in the US) arranged as necessary to present the sports
which draw the largest audience and/or competitions in which American
athletes happen to do well.

An excellent US performance in heptathlon will get (maybe) coverage of the
final event and medal presentation, plus maybe a puff piece...whereas even
a poor performance by the men's basketball team will covered uninterrupted
for hours at a time.  And so on: we all know the drill by now.  (I can only
hope that it's better elsewhere.)

And people primarily want to watch the sports that they either do, or
(secondarily) that they would like to do.  So basketball and soccer, ice
skating and hockey are emphasized, and team handball and biathlon aren't.

And so kayaking isn't covered because not enough people want to watch to it,
and the network(s) _know that_.  Heck, even most of the paddlers I know
didn't pay the slightest attention to the Olympic competition -- sprint or
slalom -- and in part that's because even though they paddle, they can't
relate to it.  It's not part of their idea of paddling, it has no relevance
to them, and they simply *do* *not* *care*.

And having followed this (paddling in the Olympics) since slalom came back
in '92, I can tell you that fewer people care every time it comes around.
The sport has completely failed to capitalize on the momentum generated by
its return in '92, and in fact has regressed badly ever since, becoming
more and more elite, more and more removed from majority of paddlers.  If it
disappeared entirely at this point, few would notice or care.

---Rsk