Marathon feedback
Understandably, the aftermath of this year's Flora has been overshadowed by the , David Rogers. On behalf of the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ team, I would like to extend my sympathies to all his family and friends.
We would all also like to express our admiration for everyone who did take part last Sunday. It's very easy for all of us in the media, and in particular television, to get carried away with our own self-importance. Mornings like last Sunday are a humbling experience when we watch thousands of people achieving great things, not only surpassing the goals they have set themselves but also raising millions of pounds for charity in the process. Once again this year, there were stories that brought tears to your eyes and it's only disappointing to realise that we can only feature such a small percentage of those within our coverage.
We were grateful to those who took the trouble to text and e-mail us and hopefully some of you were able to see your messages on screen. We had almost 10,000 text messages alone. With regard to feedback, we had with a number of 'well done' comments on the coverage, as well as a number of complaints and observations, some of which I will try and answer.
Firstly, the perennial one about the use of the phrase "fun runner". I promise you that no disrespect is intended and we do understand that everyone makes considerable sacrifices in terms of training through the winter months, etc. It's not meant to be demeaning. We do want to differentiate between the elite and club runners and the rest, and are open to suggestions. Perhaps instead of 'fun' we could talk about "charity" runners although I suspect that's not ideal either. What do you think would be the best catch-all phrase?
Being a lovely day, London looked a picture and many of our shots conveyed that. However, I should apologise for some of the break-up we experienced on the motorbike cameras. This was worse than the last two years and we are investigating why. We are reliant on the complexities of getting signals by line-of-sight from the streets up to a circling airplane. Tall buildings, leaves on the trees, etc, are all factors. The digital technology is improving year by year but appears to have let us down on this occasion. Tempting though it is to blame everything these days on "global warming", we will try to get to the bottom of it as it spoilt for us what was generally a successful broadcast.
Miles and kilometres - why do we use both? Naturally, we work closely with the marathon organisers. They have mats every 5km so that the chips the runners wear can be recorded electronically and we can display the time differences between runners. There is still the tradition of mile times - you've probably noticed the arches erected over the course every mile - and we are able to make judgements on pace, etc, with this information. Using both systems does seem odd, but I am sure that the subject will come again when we have our marathon debrief with the organisers.
I am sorry that we disappointed one viewer in Glasgow when our interactive service of the finish line closed down at 4.00pm. We have to shut it down at some point and had always planned to do so at this time to catch all the six hour runners. Sadly, it's not practical for us to keep going any longer.
You can still watch the main highlights from the day on the of the . But to those who want to see specific bits of the coverage again or purchase segments, I'm sorry to tell you that there are no plans to do this for this year although it is an issue that we will take up with the organisers.
In fact, the planning for next year starts straightaway as we try and learn lessons from this year's coverage and work with the organisers to achieve the best possible TV coverage. It is one of the great sporting events, an inspiration to all and I for one cannot wait for next year.
