Shooting on TV

[gn303]

Maybe this is a stupid question, but if I don't ask it, I'll stay stupid. Though this will be more interesting for European members comments from all members are welcome. So I'll give it a try.
It is extremely rare that we have Olympic shooting on TV. In Europe we have Eurosport with 2 channels on cable TV. These transmit sports events practically 24h a day. Recently they also had a program with the finals 25 m RF and 50 m 3 positions in Bologna. But it was announced a a trail. I understand that shooting is a 'static' sport that doesn't create much excitement. But I'm sorry not to see the difference with eg. snooker or curling.
Shooting certainly the finals are as exiting as snooker...or have I got it wrong.
Thanks for your comments.

[jhmartin]

My perspective (from here in the US): Shooting is politically incorrect and the media hates it.
There is nothing that ISSF can do to make it more "TV Friendly & Exciting" ... the media will simply not cover it.

So ... keep it fun & exciting for those in the sport and do everything you can to bring juniors into it so that they see the fun and the personal rewards it gives with determination, effort & focus.

[Hemmers]

The media want televisable events. Shooting doesn't really offer that outside - possibly - clay shooting where you have a clay busting into dust. Much more televisual than seeing someone fire a shot you can't see and waiting for a computer to tell you what happened.

Heck, even Archery can have a split-screen with one camera on the archer and the other showing the arrow striking the boss.

Eurosport picked up the European Championships (what you saw from Bologna), but they're unlikely to bother picking up anything lower level than that unless there's some reason it will attract a decent revenue/advertising income (Biathlon fits better here).

All the Finals at the Olympics are televised, same at the Commonwealth Games (this may not be the case in the US but that's because NBC's coverage of the Olympics is utterly woeful to start with). The ISSF do their own webcasts for World Cups. Broadcast TV is dying anyway with live streaming. That doesn't bode well for Shooting on the broadcast channels because they have to make every hour of TV pay it's way (so they can afford the crippling costs to license Football rights) and ISSF Shooting just doesn't make that much money for them.

On the flip side, down the road if everything goes more on-demand then stuff like Shooting can be acquired cheaply and slotted into the on-demand services next to football/rugby/hockey/skiing because disk storage and bandwidth are way cheaper than broadcast time (there are only 24hours in a day, only a couple of hours of prime-time when you can rinse your sponsors and advertisers for the megabucks).

Politically incorrect? Maybe in some countries, but Eurosport have no issues picking up Biathlon in the Winter. It's not a political thing, just good business - ISSF Shooting is not good televisual business, and the ISSF's attempts to make it so have been largely to the detriment of the sport...

As a sport we have to stop laying all our woes at the door of "Oh well, it's the nasty anti-gun media. The antis have got to them, can't do anything about it". It's lazy and in no small part it's nonsense. Shooting has to start acting like a business - with proper PR and PA. Sell ourselves. If we want media coverage, we have to make media coverage.

It's kind of funny that it's never been easier to distribute media. People have become millionaires on YouTube. Yet Shooting is sat here whinging about how the legacy broadcasters won't come knocking... as if they owe all sports equal airtime or are the gatekeepers to global media. The broadcasters are there to make their shareholders money. We either have to give them something to work with or do it ourselves.

[David Levene]

One of the big problems with rifle and pistol is that we have more than 1 atlete performing at the same time.
Whilst it is possible to show a few shooters with split screen, any more than about 2 or 3 and it just becomes too busy and confusing.
Shotgun and Archery are so much easier with only 1 athlete to cover at a time.

[spektr]

The Euro Doods have Biathlon. It is televised and among the highest rated winter sports on TV.
We have zip, because like it or not, MOST shooting disciplines dont make for exiting TV. Theres
also the politics of gun control in America and Mainstream TV sponsors needed to get on network TV
wont want to be identified one way or the other on the issue........
Too bad, because we need to televise teenagers at a Run and Gub event with their AR's.

[Hemmers]

One of the big problems with rifle and pistol is that we have more than 1 atlete performing at the same time.
Whilst it is possible to show a few shooters with split screen, any more than about 2 or 3 and it just becomes too busy and confusing.
Shotgun and Archery are so much easier with only 1 athlete to cover at a time.

Very true. And we can see the ISSF trying to step towards that - originally by introducing 8-athlete finals which gives broadcasters half a chance of "telling a story" compared with 60+ athletes on the line in Qualification.

Knockout-finals formats now move towards being able to focus on the individual in the drop-zone in the first half, and then pivot to an archery-style head-to-head battle for the medals in the second half. The Shotgun format has gone a step further with the head-to-head Gold- and Bronze-Medal matches.

[jhmartin]

Some of us have imagined a broadcast format that >>might<< be a bit more interesting - Imagine:

All shooters in the final have a wireless SCATT type device mounted.
Greenscreen of the trace .... no rings necessarily.
Split screen of both the target/shooter face and a trace of their hold.

Each shooters unique "style" of approach, hold time and release (+maybe recoil) shown to help differentiate between the shooters.......

[David Levene]

That sounds similar to the Dortmund Masters from the mid 1990s. Shame it didn't catch on.

[Mike M.]

Shotgun and Archery are so much easier with only 1 athlete to cover at a time.

The obvious solution would be a ripple-fire final. Shooter #1 has one minute (or whatever is appropriate) to shoot his shot. Then Shooter #2 gets one minute. Etc. Real-time color commentary and statistics.

Now, if you want to see some outstanding work, try the capandball YouTube channel. I know the man running it, he's most impressive.

[Ramon OP]

Watching a shooting competition is boring for most people (some say it is like watching paint dry). I watch to see if I can learn something and for the thrill of the changes in the rankings throughout the 8 person finals with eliminations after 2 shots.

The finals with 8 competitors are the most exciting because of all the changes in the rankings during the match. Anything can happen amd does happen (with many wild changes in position), so there's tension all the time.

The format of two matches with two teams each is less interesting, there's a lot less drama.

What I miss the most in all the broadcastings is more education about shooting, explaining the different techniques, tactics, etc. This is interesting for shooters and non shooters alike and would help have people developing an interest and joining our sport.

Better guidelines about how to produce matches are needed too, they are too different and many times done by people that clearly do not understand the sport so they usually focus on the least interesting parts amd mobe the cameras way too much.

A majority of the directors focus on the most static moments of the shooting sequence (where there is less to see), missing the raise and entry into the zone completely and only showing generic shots where you see the all shooters at once from afar. To make things worst they move the cameras in closeups wich does not allow to appreciate the stillness.

Focusing on details like the trigger finger and the eyes could be more interesting than a half body shot of a static shooter (and more educational).

The comparison frontal shots with two shooters whose position or elimination depends on that shot are great, very dramatic. Not all broadcasts set up those shots.

The presentation of the targets in the lower part of the screen changes a lot too. Some are hard to follow.

[JamesHH]

Foxtel showed a series on ISSF matches, they only showed the finals which weren't bad.

I made my sister watch a few and she could see the point and why I did it but it was never going to take off as a spectator sport.

I enjoy watching fencing and biathlon, there is at least some movement.
I'm not sure how Penthalon was moved to lasers, that was a very bad step.

[Hemmers]

Pentathlon was at risk of being dropped entirely from the Olympics back ~2002.

It's expensive to run and to participate in (elitist), had limited global participation (basically "rich countries") and was/is a logistical nightmare to run.

The shift to Run-Shoot with staggered starts based on points accrued obviously gave them a more televise-able finish - the first over the line wins, not a rather turgid session adding up points after 5 events to find a winner. But the other problem was that a number of countries like Japan simply couldn't participate. Whilst firearms are not entirely "banned" in Japan (as is often thought) and they do have target sports clubs, the paperwork involved is only worth it for actual shooting clubs. It's prohibitive for something like Pentathlon where shooting comprises one small part of a multi-event sport. Plus there are issues with licensed premises/armoury facilities in countries which require airguns to be locked up. Even in some European countries airguns are subject to licensing - which isn't much of an impediment to taking part in shooting sports, but is a disproportionate PITA for something like MP where shooting is just one small component (e.g. getting firearm permits to travel to overseas competitions - as if athletes don't have enough to deal with humping their Fencing and Equestrian kit about on top of their pistol).

Moving to laser undoubtedly harmed the marksmanship element of Pentathlon. It probably also saved the sport to some extent by making it much easier to run in many more countries (and in some countries, making it possible to run at all), reducing the paperwork load for athletes and reducing the logistical complexity of operations.

It's unfortunate, but Pentathlon/UIPM had a specific set of issues which made it the best route forward for them.

It's also completely irrelevant to the challenges facing the ISSF and dedicated Shooting sports and despite some FUD around the issue, no one is seriously suggesting that the Shooting events go over to lasers.

[ilionkid]

Try 1 hour of it on Norway's NRK Sport https://tv.nrk.no/serie/landsskytterste ... /avspiller


Mike

[Azmodan]

Try 8 hours of it on Vimeo http://www.nrk.no/nett-tv/klipp/862078/
Used to be available on Their TV, maybe still is, not available on my old link anymore.

Mike

link not working :(

i would like to see a full 60 shots pistol match (qualification). i can only find finals on the net...

[ilionkid]

edited the original post and fixed the link.
Mike

[Ramon OP]

I really like this composite view where you can compare two series of the same shooter and see the shot from different sides at the same time:
https://twitter.com/i/status/1181442233888755712