This would be huge for figure skating visibility. Amber Glenn and Elladj Baldé do really well on TikTok and TikTok's algorithm is highly unpredictable. I'm not sure how well On Ice Perspectives does on there because he posts the same stuff on Instagram and TikTok and I already follow him on Instagram. But I've seen Amber and Elladj both get over a million views twice in a week and that's not normal on TikTok outside of the really big creators.
Even a less well-known skater like Sondre Oddvall Boe can rake in a substantial number of views on TikTok - his open-air skating videos have been doing really well there. I don't do TikTok myself even just to watch, but it does seem to be a platform that's good for skaters to use.
But it's not like Dancing on Ice in the UK results in greater interest in actual skating. People will shell out a lot of money to see Z list celebrities falling around on the ice on the tour the programme does after the TV show but they won't spend a tenth of that cost to go and see actual elite level skaters at nationals. Same with Strictly Come Dancing - people pay tons to watch the tour of that after the show but it doesn't result in an increase in popularity of competitive ballroom.
Right. That was my point earlier... The writer is obviously thinking only about Ladies because Russia (USSR before 1991) hasn’t suddenly come to the forefront of figure skating.
Not just winning, having a female OGM. Let's face it, men, dance and pairs don't drive skating popularity in the US. It's not just the USFS driving that meme, it's the popularity of the sport. Same as gymnastics--it's the girls most people watch, not the men. It's just what's popular with the public. The reverse is true in other sports---women's basketball anybody?
Just like ballet. In the US, it’s the image of the pwetty ballerini in tutu and pointe shoes that sells tickets...marketing brochures, company web sites, etc. (in normal, non-***** times).
True, but it still says a lot that the US was never able to get a similar show off no matter what effect it would have had on the popularity of the regular figure skating season.
Title 9
Title 9 certainly provides a motive to get daughters into sports that colleges like. I've seen little girls in soccer practice at our local park -- which would not have occurred 30 years ago -- and this is completely independent from whether or not any of them will be able to use their soccer to benefit from Title 9
Live sports? Truly, I would rather watch American football, competition skating/gymnastics, college basketball, college football even if I know the scores or outcome of the games, than contrived reality shows.
You're combining two different instances of attempted shows. Skating with the Stars (branched off of Dancing) happened in the fall after Vancouver 2010. Johnny was a judge there and obviously did not like Bethenny Frankel. Her partner, Ethan Burgess, looked like he was ready to beat down on Johnny at any given moment for all of his negativity.
I agree about cable/satellite etc tv. I refuse to pay anymore the high cost in Canada. I remember one year when I did have it and struggling to find the coverage because it was split between two networks that were owned by the same company. It just used to be so much easier and cheaper to watch.
They've been doing it longer than that, I'm pretty sure.People have been writing articles about the end of the sport since figures were eliminated and the sport is still here and the fans are still here arguing about the results
But there is nothing set in stone about that.
They have always been cookie-cutter. As someone who used to mark down the elements as I watched live comps, that was very clear to me.
Social media is huge and it can be used in so many exciting ways.
If I were Skate Canada, I would be all over the opportunity to piggyback on the social media talents of the young, hip, and charming, Roman Sadovsky! Just saying.
I love Dick Button, but this quote in the article “The old six-point system was understandable and one could hear folks in a bar cheer and argue about whether someone should have had a 5.7 or 5.8,” absolutely shows that people didn't understand the 6.0 system. It equates ordinals with scores--which is what people did. I well remember trying to explain to people that that one judge giving a skater a 5.7 didn't mean that the judge was giving a skater a lower score than a judge who gave a skater a 5.8. This makes absolutely no sense intuitively and casual fans aren't drawn in by scoring systems that requires study.
. And here's the huge thing about 6.0 that people forget: during those days, we almost always (in the US and Canada at least) saw only the top skaters. We didn't see how low the scores typically could go. I remember that one Ultimate Four where Kurt forgot the last 30 seconds of his short program and just went in circles trying to remember what he had done, and he had scores down to a 2.5 or 2.9 or something technically, which I thought was
simply because I had really never seen a program scored that low, or if there was an off-chance that I did, those scores were from someone much less known than Kurt Browning.To me, this statement is where the United States itself is. Skating a reflection of that in some ways...
They've been doing it longer than that, I'm pretty sure.
But there is nothing set in stone about that.
Yup I was thinking that too.
I would love to see a link of Kurt Browning doing thatAnd here's the huge thing about 6.0 that people forget: during those days, we almost always (in the US and Canada at least) saw only the top skaters. We didn't see how low the scores typically could go. I remember that one Ultimate Four where Kurt forgot the last 30 seconds of his short program and just went in circles trying to remember what he had done, and he had scores down to a 2.5 or 2.9 or something technically, which I thought was
(ETA- completely random side note but I remember Fedor Andreev blowing all three jumping passes at 2001 Skate America, ESPN still deciding to show him and constantly remind us that he was an A&F model, and he got scores down to 2.5 or so, too, and I remember people talking about that like it was a surprise as well. I suppose it would've been the first instance of fans that joined around the time of Nagano seeing scores that bad.
When you're only seeing the top set of skaters, the marks make more sense because the judges are likely comparing those skaters to one-another. And it's not like the judges didn't get creative with their second marks, anyways, especially in short programs. That way, they were still capable of sliding a favorite or top contender exactly where they wanted them to be by simply saying 'but their presentation was stronger'.
As far as the last point- this is another thing that I don't understand when people complain about the lack of skating. I came into watching skating in 1993 and recorded everything in sight from about 1998 until I left for college in 2004. Yes, ABC and ESPN were getting to the point of showing 6.5 hours of Grand Prix events a week. But besides those, Nationals, 4CC, Euros (which those two were just the final groups of the LPs, anyways), and Worlds, we didn't see anything else. And the majority of the stuff was on tape delay anyways. Now we see every skater from every competition, even obscure National Championships via YouTube. Popularity surely went down in the US and I'm sure it took a huge hit in Canada following their entire top team retiring after 2018, but it's thriving in other places and many countries now at least have the chance to see skating to begin with. I don't even think Europeans typically saw anything besides Euros or Worlds and the occasional Grand Prix until about 2002 or 2003 when streaming options/video sharing became a thing.
. Likely not available from back then.
