i shelled out the money for the FEITV site and i am happy i did. everything i wanted to see is there. and more.
i think it was like 13 USD for a day pass… i wasn’t sure if that meant midnight to midnight or want so i signed up for a month - i think that was 39 USD.
yep, that’s right. No viewing rights outside of US.
Does this mean they actually DID show some para dressage highlights on TV? That’s actually more than I expected, if so, and I’m pleasantly surprised. Did they show the winning riders or the American riders? (Who sadly weren’t the same people – some of our riders put in LOVELY tests and received baffling scores.)
[QUOTE=poltroon;5150298]
Okay, now that I’ve taken the time to see the USA vaulting freestyle, I am incredulous that NBC did not show it in its entirety. I haven’t seen vaulting for a long time… I had no idea the choreography had gotten so complex.
Truly amazing. Rather like figure skating dance but with 7 of your closest friends and a horse. 
http://www.usefnetwork.com/WEG2010/Vaulting/[/QUOTE]
I’m always amazed that the networks don’t give more coverage to vaulting. What’s one of the BIG deals of the summer Olympics: GYMNASTICS!! Always one of the highest priced tickets of the Games. So Vaulting: Little girls and handsome guys in leotards doing gymnastics on a REAL HORSE! What’s not to like???
Where can I watch?
I am in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia and we do not get the Universal Sports channel of NBC that the Final Four Jumpers Round was televised on.
I was sooo disappointed that I could not watch it. Does anyone know of the channel around here that carries the WEG when it is going to actually come on the real channels?
Yeah, but they only showed about two seconds (quite literally) of a few of the winning riders.
I am so, so happy to see horses on TV, and am deeply appreciative… but I wish they had cut out the Lexmark “how the media tent works” thing and just shown one full vaulting ride or para-dressage ride.
I’m thrilled they showed as much of the jumping finals as they did - but they could have cut out some of the warmup stuff they showed in order to fit in one full vaulting or driving round…
Hopefully they will continue to learn and coverage will get better, and they’ll get enough positive feedback to continue to broadcast some equestrian sports 
[QUOTE=She’s Pure Gold;5149545]
I hate how we (horse people) always get screwed by television. 
Does anyone know a website that has videos you can watch (for free)? I’d really love to be able to see some of the vaulting performances. I’ve never had an opportunity to attend a competition but I’m fascinated by it.[/QUOTE]
Ok, this will be an unpopular post I’m sure. I’m not happy about that fact, but I’ll go ahead anyway. The above attitude is why “horse people always get screwed by television.”
Television is a business and it costs big money to create and air a television show. Producers and networks look for easy shows to produce that will get big sponsorship. Things that will make them money. Football is easy and it has a huge audience with money to spend. If we horse people continue to act like having horses on tv regularly is a right, we will not get our wishes of having horses on tv regularly. We need to put our money where our mouths are. There were a LOT of empty seats at WEG, sadly. You don’t see empty seats at the Superbowl.
We paid $12.50 per day to watch hours of xc online. It was fabulous and I’d have paid more. You get what you pay for.
[QUOTE=Camstock;5153462]
Ok, this will be an unpopular post I’m sure. I’m not happy about that fact, but I’ll go ahead anyway. The above attitude is why “horse people always get screwed by television.”
Television is a business and it costs big money to create and air a television show. Producers and networks look for easy shows to produce that will get big sponsorship. Things that will make them money. Football is easy and it has a huge audience with money to spend. If we horse people continue to act like having horses on tv regularly is a right, we will not get our wishes of having horses on tv regularly. We need to put our money where our mouths are. There were a LOT of empty seats at WEG, sadly. You don’t see empty seats at the Superbowl.
We paid $12.50 per day to watch hours of xc online. It was fabulous and I’d have paid more. You get what you pay for.[/QUOTE]
That doesn’t even make any sense. OK- so the Superbowl sells out- big deal. I pay for cable TV and they show other major sports where stadiums don’t even fill to a quarter of capacity (anyone watch baseball- the TB Rays, Baltimore O’s, and many others) but they’re still on tv 162 games per year (plus post season). This is a world event that happens every 4 years, and I’m sure that they would have had good tv viewings/ratings if they had shown more coverage than they did. But what I was most upset about was that they advertised that they were going to show vaulting and then they showed literally about 5 minutes (tops) of highlights- to me, that’s not showing vaulting. It’s a misrepresentation.
Not all of us can afford to take time off of work and/or school and fly out to Kentucky and pay the high prices for lodging, food, tickets, etc. If I could have, I would have. I’m just sick of equestrian sports never getting on tv when everyone else gets to watch their favorite sports all the time (football, baseball, etc). Put my money where my mouth is? Someone put together an equestrian channel, like the MLB channel or something (and not just RFD-tv natural horsemanship stuff). I would gladly pay extra to have that.
I finally watched Sunday’s coverage on NBC last night, and I think on the whole it was a good thing. Sure, we ‘all’ want to see more of the actual horses, but recognizing national audience that just normally isn’t that interested in horse sports in general, I thought it was reasonable. I was pleased that they gave a glimpse of para dressage- better than nothing- and quite honestly if they had showed a winning test it would have been ‘watching paint dry’ for most of the tv audience. Something like jumping or reining is easier for the casual observer to understand.
They for sure showed enough of the vaulting and driving to get my non-horsey family keenly interested and wanting more. That to me is a positive thing.
If you want more, thank NBC and the sponsors for what they DID show. It’s a far cry from Olympic coverage in decades past, where all you got was 30 seconds of crashes on the eventing xc.
[QUOTE=She’s Pure Gold;5158739]
That doesn’t even make any sense. OK- so the Superbowl sells out- big deal. [/QUOTE]
Yes, it is a very big deal, to the many millions of dollars.
The NASCAR folks do it, their stands are PACKED every weekend, which is why they get so much tv coverage. That and the fact that unlike some of the horse sports, it happens in one location that is easy to shoot–set up 20 cameras, hire 20 operators, make a set, hire a few announcers a producer and director and there you are. The logistics of covering xc or marathon, are horrifyingly expensive. Miles of video cable is the first problem. Maybe equestrian sport just doesn’t have the numbers to justify the coverage. What gets on tv is all numbers and money. Attacking the networks when they do put something horsey on is the antithesis of what a person should do if they actually want MORE programming.
And, please keep in mind that I don’t make these truths. I’m just the messenger. Please don’t shoot.
I personally loved all the coverage. Remember the coverage for the other weg’s? I didn’t think so.
So, they showed bits of the para dressage and vaulting.
But those really aren’t eye catchers - neither is regular dressage.
What gets people involved is drama and excitement - and cowboys ;o)
so, they showed a lot of the reining, xc, and sj. As it should be because to the average watcher, who isn’t going to buy feitv, these sports are exciting to watch and EASY to watch.
Dressage isn’t easy to watch. Sorry! I’ll watch it all day but it really isn’t exciting for an everyday person.
And I’m going to get totally flamed for this but I find vaulting disturbing. Especially, when the men get dressed up in a Spaceman leotard and spray paint their hair. While I realize how frigging hard it is to vault because I’ve attempted it - from the outside it looks totally weird. And when you get a bunch of boys and girls prancing on top of a horse - it’s just odd looking. And I love watching gymnastics btw. For all the vaulters out there, you may want to re-vamp ‘the look’ a bit.
There was a time when there was NO equestrian coverage on the networks…maybe an occasional show jumping on OLN or ESPN. It was only about several years ago that NBC started offering Rolex coverage during the KY Derby. They actually covered the Equestrian Olympics started in Athens! Universal Sports covered Beijing! The fact that we had 2 weekends of WEG coverage, even limited is great!
I think that Equestrian coverage is improving. Keep watching it, keep showing your support. Hopefully, one day we can get as much coverage as the World Series of Poker!
Jeesh, whiny American attitudes. I am so grateful and happy that they showed anything at all! NBC is a great network, very accommodating and had fabulous online coverage that didn’t break the bank. If you want to see horseback riding on TV all the time, move to Europe. If you want to complain about a network, start bashing CBS or Fox-- they weren’t even there at all!
NBC (who sometimes posts here), please don’t remove the coverage because some people really do appreciate it. There are many of us who LOVED that we could watch it on the couch with a beer and a bowl of popcorn on the big screen!
I know - beggers can’t be choosers. My beef was that the covereage itself was really a little second rate. The xc & jumping & reining were great - dressage OK - but the other events largely ignored and many of those events could have had a huge appeal to the general audiences. And really - to have 10 minutes of lyle flipping lovette INSTEAD of the horses - I mean REALLY - who at NBC thought that was a good idea. And if I wanted to go behind the scenes - show me the grooms, not the copy machines (although I am sure that was adversting by lexmark, not production). I was at the games and in the paradressage schooling ring there was one girl with no legs practicing a test that brought tears to my eyes - what a human interest story. And some of the team vaulting - wow - people CAN relate to gymnastics on horseback but you could not even see the horse and riders in the 30 seconds of highlights due to the info screen on the NBC coverage. How many people have been in a horse and carriage ride that could relate to seeing a few of the top XC driving teams. I appreciate the coverage but NBC IS missing the boat on popularizing it. As for watching it on the computer - well yes I can - with my reading classes on watching a jumpy, delayed video that lost my interest pretty quickly because its so frustrating and really not conducive to having a few horsey and non-horsey friends over to watch. FEITV was not available to us. People whine about sponsorship - but if I was a sponsor I would be pretty disappointed in the coverage and general appeal of what was televised.
NBC Sports only had modest tv ratings for the closing coverage. From the cached edition of Sports Business Daily and the Final Nielsen Ratings:
Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games (taped)
Airing date: 10/10
Network/EST: NBC 4:00-6:00pm
Rating: 0.6
Viewers (000): 922
Worth pointing out is that the lead-in program on NBC Sports only had a 0.5 rating (“All That Skate”) so there was a dismal audience to begin with and the Alltech coverage did boost viewership. I suspect that the reigning coverage that kicked off the Games on NBC, with an AQHA push, likely was a few rating ticks higher.
If I recall correctly the Rolex Equestrian Championships [sic] aired on NBC (read: Rolex Three-Day) pulled on its best year around a 1.0 rating when it was aired the Sunday following Saturday’s Preakness Stakes coverage.
Well I was actually just glad they filmed anything! I guess I have lower expectations. And I loved the high def. Was bummed that the final 4 jumping was on Universal and didn’t come through in high def. (or at least it didn’t for me). Maybe I recorded the wrong channel?
A couple issues:
As far as production goes… only 1 crew filmed the entire thing for the ENTIRE WORLD - that includes Europe. NBC just picked out and edited the pieces they wanted to air. so when you divide it all out the cost of principle production was relatively minuscule compared to something like NFL or Nascar that only has a national following and outside the US is bumpkis, and since every country is a different market every performance had to be filmed (also the per-minute price of principle is practically free compared to the per day cost of the set up and equipment and considering that most of the film crew gets paid on a perdiem anyway…might as well use them) The days of corded cameras running miles of line are also gone - everything practically has gone to wireless… and goes directly to a home base where it is saved digitally - outside of the principle cost of setting the system up (which has been now for years - probably rolled out the same truck they use for golf) it just costs HDD space which if you know anything about computers has dropped dramatically in the past few years. (I can pick up 1TB for less than $100 retail). So somewhere right now there are TB’s of every second of the WEG from every angle saved in some hidden back vault at Universal - where it likely will stay. I think what people are griping about is how they decided to cut things together and what they chose to spend their time on. The 2 min intro was a little excessive…and a 10 sec slot would have saved them money.
Reason no other station covered it was the same reason only 1 station covers the Olympics - rights. ok ok they could have at least had a news report on the winners ie the HL reels they showed for the pittance they gave vaulting. Some of the vignettes (Lexmark, Breyer, Altech) were necessary since they were paying for those. But I am baffled to why they showed only HL of the vaulting team with the sold out crowd (even on Univ. Sport where they showed the top 3 + US Indv. Final) and yet they covered practically every second of SJ…
I thought the coverage was very good. Yes, some of the disciplines go little coverage compared to the Olympic disciplines, but really! Get real! Equestrian is NEVER, EVER on a major network – now we just had 2+ Sundays of it, and people are complaining?
Gotta tell ya - just contact NBC sports and tell them how much you enjoyed the shows. It will respond if there is viewership!!! (And you can mention in your thanks letter that maybe next time, if they could cover a little bit more of this and of that, that would be great.)
But I can’t complain at all. I thought the coverage of dressage, sj, and the xc/eventing was excellent.
The producers need viewership to get the advertisers – that’s the way it works!!
I was happy to have it on at all, but did wish they’d show more of the SPORTS and less of the happy-music commercial-y stuff. And more HORSES, as it seemed like any time there was an opportunity to show something at the World EQUESTRIAN Games that didn’t involved EQUESTRIANS, they jumped on it. For extended periods of time. That just makes me go 
.
I’m not sure why we should be thrilled with inadequate coverage (NOT in terms of time allotted, mind you, but in terms of editing) just because they are showing horse sports. I would think that NBC (or any other network that should get the rights in the future) bears some obligation to make their coverage APPROPRIATE to their audience if they want to make money.
If the only network with rights to show the Superbowl showed only the last five minutes of the game and filled the rest of it with “messages from our sponsors” and footage of the half-time show acts warming up cut in with 20-second cuts of the “highlights,” football fans would be outraged. And no one would be telling them to “be thankful for what [they] got.”
Less than 1% of the US population owns horses. And I’ll be blunt on the demographics. If you own a horse and a computer, you are, whether you choose to admit it or not, in a higher income demographic than the vast majority of the millions that scrape money together to attend NFL games or NASCAR events. So, as has been previously noted, I would say quitcherwhining, already. ‘We,’ US fans of horse sports, are a teeny tiny minority (who nevertheless DO have greater per person purchasing power than the gazillions of fans of NFL football). But we remain a teensy tiny tv audience. So yeah, we should be grateful for what we get. It is indeed lovely to go visit Europe and get a wide array of horse sports on tv, all the time- but they also have big spectator turnout at their events. We do not.
I will again suggest- if you want MORE on tv, then thank NBC for what you got. And ask them to be sure to thank the advertisers, too- they are who really can have some sway on better/ more programming.
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