COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – Portions of the 2004 U.S. Fencing Olympic Team Trials will air as part of a package with four other Olympic sports on the USA Network this Saturday, July 17.
“Making the Team” will run from 10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. EST and will feature segments from the Triathlon, Judo, Taekwondo, Fencing and Archery Olympic Trials. The archery segment will run approximately six minutes.
NBC Olympics partnered with USA Network to create “Making the Team,” which was produced by Bud Sports Productions in association with Echo Entertainment.
Jim Lampley, who has been in broadcasting for over 30 years and covered five Olympic Games, will host the show.
one hour, 5 sports, 6 minutes for archery, i don't have much hope for much time given to fencing :-/
Well, an hour long show generally has about 40 minutes of content (the rest going to credits and commercials), which means an average of 8 minutes per sport.
Assuming that the listing is in order of importance, we can assume that fencing will receive somewhere between 6 and 8 minutes of time ... hour long TV shows generally have the "teaser" bit at the start and four or five "acts," which are divided by commercials.
So, I'm guessing 5 "acts", probably 6 to 10 minutes in length each, one for each sport. I'm hoping it'll be pretty good.
Ok.....I've just finished watching the show and fencing didn't get half the coverage the other 4 sports got!!!!! They concentrated on Emily and Sada Jacobson (which is good and all) but failed to mention anything about this being the first year for women's saber, mention any other fencers, or give a highlight about scoring or equipment. (They did these things for all other sports) We got to see the entire Judo team!!!! Where were all the other fencers? UGh.......at least it's coverage, right?
It's repurposed footage from the College Cable Sports Network presentation. I don't think there's anything new... I tivo'd the presentation, but I have a copy on DVD which I will clippify someday soon.
The spot focused on the Jacobson sisters. It followed the standard sports reporting paradigm -- 90% how the sisters feel about each other and inspire each other, 10% fencing. For what it was, it was pretty good, though.
That was all well and good but I was really excited to see some explanation of fencing on tv. I know it's weird because I already know the rules and the gist of fencing but I was excited to think that there might be people all over the country being exposed to fencing as a sport for the first time. Oh well, there's always the actual olympics even though I'll bet it gets shown at like 4 am or something.
__________________ Exciting news- before even finishing Chem I, I have already received an invitation to work as a research assistant!