Ironman coverage on NBC

Yesterday I watched the IM Kona coverage on NBC after a mid-day bike/run brick workout. I settled in with my food and drinks while in my compression gear and got ready to watch the 2 hour highlight show of the world championships. I followed the live web coverage during the actual race so I already knew the outcome but I was excited to see how they would present the showdown between Macca and Raelert during the final miles of the marathon.

As usual the show did not disappoint. It was a good combination of race coverage and human interest stories (although many on SlowTwitch disagree), with a little more race coverage than year's past. Personally I like seeing more race coverage than human interest stories but I’m more familiar with the pros than the average person that NBC/WTC target with their coverage. I doubt the average person watching the show also watches ITU coverage on Universal Sports or has their Tivo set to record anything with the word “triathlon” in the title.

One thing I noted during the show that was different this year than last year was the advertising coverage. I don’t recall seeing many big ads last year that were specifically targeted at triathletes, yet this year there were major commercials by mainstream brands like Ford that featured pro triathletes (like Chris Lieto). I’ll tip my hat to the folks at Ford, they did a great job specifically targeting triathlon users with their advertising; the Ford commercials caught my eye and had me watching the whole 30 second segments. Wheaties Fuel also had Hunter Kemper in their commercials but they didn’t really give him a speaking role or call him out. I think that was a big miss by Wheaties, how hard would it have been to have an alternate version of that spot with the focus on Hunter Kemper? Other brands that did a good job are Tyr with their use of Andy Potts, Sarah Haskins and Chrissie Wellington, and K-Swiss with commercials featuring Terenzo Bozzone and Chris Lieto. PowerBar and RoadID had decent advertisement as well. I also noticed a couple WTC 5150 commercials.

Some people are complaining about the use of in-show advertisement (i.e. Ford, RoadID, PowerBar), but I think that’s just the nature of television advertisement today. In this day and age of Tivo, integrated advertisements are sometimes an effective way to capture viewer’s attentions, so long as the advertisement is not too heavy and doesn’t detract from the show. I’ll admit some of the Ford and RoadID placement was a little aggressive but I think it worked well within the coverage.