TargetTalk

If athletes are many, reach the finals eight also requires work, it is not easy being a finalist.
these new finals add a touch of emotion that did not exist.
old shot finals were boring to the public.
I like the single elimination

Nano

john bickar wrote:So what channel can I watch the Pan American Games shooting events on?

The official webpage of the games offer real time scoring. Just today I followed one 15 y.o. female shooter from my country win the silver medal (for ONE tenth in 200 points) and his ticket to Rio in AR40.

I honestly find watching a free pistol match or a mens prone rifle match to be FAR more interesting than golf. Look at how much of a following golf has, even though they basically have a long drawn out day of activity that is cumulative. The PGA hasn't decided to get rid of the last hole, and simply take the last five and the closest to the pin off the drive wins for instance.

-Jenrick

Unfortunately making the event TV friendly is a reasonably relevant argument. TV will not show the entire event, just the final, or maybe a half hour window during an event. so the final has to be interesting to both shooters and non shooters alike to have a hope to remain on TV and in the Olympics.

When I go to the range to practice, either on a weekday afternoon after work or on a weekend morning, I am often the only one there or at most there is a pair of shooters who came together. If I drive by a golf course on the way home the place has many people playing. Much like shooting sports, the golf world is distressed by constant declines in participation, yet still has lot's of regular recreational players.

The US may have 10s of millions of gun owners, but the number of them who show up at ranges regularly to shoot is small compared to the number of people who show up to play golf or tennis regularly. Outside the US with gun ownership fairly rare worldwide the story is even worse. So if the sport is to survive in the Olympics and be on TV it has to be interesting to non shooters.

Many sports are tinkering with format and rules to the dismay of purists in an effort to retain participation and spectators. An example is Cricket. While mostly unknown in the US, the Cricket World Cup is the third largest sporting event in the world behind the Football World Cup and the Summer Olympics, yet even a sport that popular globally is going through a bit of a existential crisis which has lead to the T20 format to retain spectators and TV audience much to the dismay of purists.

To bring it closer to home for many in the US, consider college basketball. While some people are die hard fans all season long, it really only gets major national attention during the NCAA tournament. A team can have a great regular season, then loose early in the tournament in single elimination and are gone.

The reason for the women's events was because Margaret Murdock won the Silver in the 76 Olympic 3 p beating all the men except Lanny Bassham and because she was kicking everybody's butt in 300 M, setting a WR in standing that stood for a long time. The misogynistic Europeans got their feelings hurt so they started events for women with different rules.

Man, am I with you on this one, John!

Change it for the sake of TV and then don't bother to look at it! Sucks!

Who are these media butt-smoochers anyway?