Figure skating fans deserve better

[WildRose]

I'm in Edmonton too, and I think most of the media waited until she was back in town so they could do live interviews. She was on a number of local news broadcasts when she returned. Edmonton used to be a great skating town with excellent media coverage - I think we'll see more coverage now that the media have woken up and discovered Kaetlyn.

[The Accordion]

In ran on Tuesday... I suspect they waited until she was back to do the interview. Logistics can be a crazy thing.

It is a pretty common practice for reporters to do phone interviews.

ETA - this response sounds snottier than I meant it to. I just wanted to point out that a good portion of interviews aren't done live.

[kylet3]

I'm in Edmonton too, and I think most of the media waited until she was back in town so they could do live interviews. She was on a number of local news broadcasts when she returned. Edmonton used to be a great skating town with excellent media coverage - I think we'll see more coverage now that the media have woken up and discovered Kaetlyn.

Indeed, even after Kristi and Kurt retired, we still got a lot of great coverage from 1996-2005ish, but since then it's been a steady downhill decline, sad really, maybe it will start to pick up now with Kaetlyn's success.

[Habs]

It is a pretty common practice for reporters to do phone interviews.

ETA - this response sounds snottier than I meant it to. I just wanted to point out that a good portion of interviews aren't done live.

I know - I spent many years as a print reporter myself.
In this case, though, it sounds like Team Kaetlyn set up a media availability right after nationals at one of her training sites here.

[MacMadame]

These athletes work just as hard as hockey and football players, but yet they seem to be ignored by the print media when it comes to events like this these days, it's too bad really.

Well, if you are talking about what the athletes deserve, that's a completely different story. All athletes everywhere work hard and deserve recognition for their achievements!

[LilJen]

The spoiler was announcer Rod Black, whose cliché-riddled hyperbole and silly histrionics diminish the sport. A friend wondered if Wilson had been elbowing Black in the ribs. His Stephen-Brunt-wannabe editorial to close out the championships was just silly. Silly rhymes, silly sentiment, silly summation: “Skating is . . . (wait for it) . . . us!”

I'm so sorry, my northern friends. I didn't realize you also had an idiotic commentator. He and Scott "aaaaaaaaaaaaaannndddddddd OMIGOD he LANDED IT!" Hamilton should go out for dinner together.

[The Accordion]

I'm so sorry, my northern friends. I didn't realize you also had an idiotic commentator. He and Scott "aaaaaaaaaaaaaannndddddddd OMIGOD he LANDED IT!" Hamilton should go out for dinner together.

Consider yourself lucky! You have missed classic Rod Black comments such as "She broke her maidenhead here" and ____ Elvis ___ Elvis ____ Elvis ___ (everything Elvis - for YEARS after he stopped competing) and Elvis is in the building! Not to mention he has repeatedly cursed skaters by dubbing them "the next one" and says such stupid things that I can just hear Tracy Wilson biting her tongue on a regular basis.

[kalamalka]

I agree that "figure skating deserves better" in terms of knowledgeable and accurate reporting (respect for the sport as a sport) and live coverage that is really live (ditto, and one of my pet peeves with the Canadians coverage was having the Saturday afternoon broadcast in BC live on TSN at the same time as the tape-delayed CTV). BUT - I think that the scheduling changes - which I think were to respond to broadcasters - have contributed a lot to the loss of print coverage. When senior events at Canadians were spread over 4-5 days, there were likely to be articles in the major papers every day focusing on the previous days events. Now with it all crammed into the weekend, there are no stories or interest to develop, and since a lot of papers (e.g. Globe and Mail) don't even publish on Sunday, it's old news by Monday and you're lucky to have anything at all other than on-line stories.