IAAF plans radical timetable changes
By John Mehaffey
ATHENS, March 30 (Reuters) - Facing increasing
competition for television spectators, the world
governing athletics body plans to make the sport more
attractive to the casual viewer by staging finals only
in the evening sessions of major events.
At the conclusion of a two-day IAAF television seminar
on Tuesday, competitions director Sandro Giovanelli
told Reuters that the body responsible for the core
sport of the Olympic Games would relegate all
qualifying rounds to morning sessions. Eighty percent
of the IAAF's revenue comes from television.
Giovanelli said a new timetable would not be possible
for next year's world championships in Helsinki but
would be in place for the 2007 Osaka championships and
the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
"Definitely in Osaka there will be a new schedule and
then after that in Beijing," Giovanelli said.
Figures released during the seminar showed that 80
percent of television time is devoted to soccer and
seven percent to motor sports. Athletics is just one
of the other major sports competing for the remaining
20 percent.
David Neal, executive vice-president for the U.S.
network NBC, the official broadcasters for this year's
Athens Olympics, told the seminar that television
coverage needed to evolve.
Neal said triple Olympic champion Marion Jones would
not be recognised on the street in the United States.
"American viewers have a very short attention span,"
he said. "For the casual viewer aged from 18 to 34
it's important to tell stories and engage the
audience."
IAAF vice-president Lou Dapeng from China, who will
play a leading role in the Beijing schedule, said
there was a close bond between soccer spectators and
the players.
"In our sport they come and watch but they don't
understand," he said. "They lack the emotion. You must
put in the emotions that connect the athletes and the
public."
Seminar chairman Alex Gilady, chairman of the IAAF
television commission and a member of the
International Olympic Committee, said the challenge
was to compress an evening programme into 2-1/2 hours
of prime time television. He also raised the
possibility of athletes having the same competition
number for the duration of their career in order to be
more easily identified.
"Athletes will have the same number for all
competitions for all their lives to make them stars,"
he said.
IAAF general secretary Istvan Gyulai told Reuters he
thought a better idea would be to have athletes' names
rather than their numbers on the vests.
"That's a totally new idea," he said. "The solution is
the names on the bib."
03/30/04 10:30 ET
Copyright 2003 Reuters Limited. All rights reserv
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