NZskier

@HortonOverall Scoring.xlsx Here's my spreadsheet. Joel's first and second round from this weekend were both higher than the current approved record, but slightly below his pending record from Fluid the other weekend, so will only be records if the Fluid record is denied for some reason. What's possibly even crazier IMO is that an overall score of 2.5 @ 39 / 11520 / 64.9 (213) wasn't even good enough for a podium finish this weekend. I'm not sure how you compare, but I'd argue that's like someone running 41 in the finals and still finishing 4th in a pro slalom tournament, there are probably a lot more people that have run 41 than have ever had an overall round as good as Kolman this weekend.

@bishop8950 Point taken. Sorry. For the record I do not represent any broadcast organization, this is simply one hack’s opinion. But I understand how it may appear that way take your point that this discussion is probably not appropriate for a public forum. If that last comment somehow came across as a criticism of @Kelvin (as the other broadcast organization) I sincerely apologize, there are very few individuals I have as much respect for in the waterski community as him and I hope he knows that. I care a lot, that’s why I’m on an online forum offering (unwanted) advice on how to present pro water skiing. Not because I have a desire to tear any one down. But I’ll leave it, you’re probably right I should stick to skiing. Slalom, unfortunately, is out of the question for me though.

I suspect you're generally right, but as a counter example look at the 2021 World Championships. TWBC's live webcast of the final day (slalom & jump finals) has 19k views, the edited highlight videos of the men's and women's slalom finals, released in April of the following year, have 86k and 82k views respectively (more than any TWBC webcast ever). I don't know what the right video format is, but I'm aware of no other successful sport's broadcast in the world that doesn't utilize some kind of play-by-play announcer role. Yes I'm extremely biased, but if you're trying to put on a show, I think it should be one of the first priorities. There's a lot of variability in intended audiences for pro events, some like Moomba (or on a much smaller scale the Canada Cup last week) are all about the in person crowd, some like the Swiss Pro Tricks/Slalom are clearly all about the webcast, and others (without naming names) remind me of stories from @Horton's brother about being flown out to put on a personal jump display for the Sultan of Oman. I started this provocative line of questioning because I wasn't sure which one the California ProAm was trying to be.

If you've got 20 minutes, check out this recap of the overall competition from the WWS Canada Cup last week in Saskatoon. It was an incredible competition, with four skiers in contention right until the end, coming down to the final jump of the tournament. (for those looking for the men's and women's jump, there will be a similar video out in the next few days)

If the goal is to attract college kids the dates are the least of your worries. At $175 and $155 a pop for an up and back in tricks the price to enter Nationals and Regionals is exorbitant and is a much bigger barrier. NCWSA Western Regionals is $30 for a 3-event score and has had close to 200 entries the past two years at the same site. Only 4 of those skiers competed at AWSA Nationals this year. That's a whole different thread though. At least in California most colleges are on the quarter system and don't start until late September. The two biggest teams out West (SDSU & ASU) are the exception, however, and start in late August. So you would lose them.

Recap videos for both the jump and overall should be up this week. Had the pleasure to attend this event in person, they got a really good crowd for a first time event (the beer garden ran dry and had to be restocked several times...), and as @UCFskier said the on-water competition was amazing!

Amen on how great it is as a fan to have live webcasts of most pro events! I volunteer to help at TWBC events every chance I get, and I’m not normally in the habit of donating my time to for profit companies. For those outside of Kevin who maybe aren’t following the subtle distinction I’m trying to make, bear with me as I try to make an American sports analogy. Imagine it’s the final seconds of the deciding game in the NBA finals. Steph Curry is open outside the circle, gets passed the ball, and shoots for a 3-pointer that will decide the series. The announcer would never stop to analyse the angle of his elbow, or how he times his release. Instead a good play-by-play basketball announcer, I’m guessing, would say something along the lines of “10 seconds left on the clock… Thompson finds Curry in space.. one shot to decide the title… Curry shoots… IT’S IN! HE FINDS THE BASKET! … from behind the 3-point line… the Warriors have done it!” Would there be in-depth analysis of that shot? I’m sure - in the post-match, in podcasts, youtube videos, you name it. But a good play-by-play announcer can make a moment like that engaging for everyone from the most avid basketball fan to someone like me that barely understands the game. The point is if you’re reading this forum you’re in the top 1% of waterski fans in the world. You’re likely watching no matter what. And in-depth technical analysis is probably really interesting to you. As one of these 1%ers I’m stoked anytime there’s a webcast. I’d watch grainy end course video footage of women’s tricks with only nails on a chalkboard for audio. That’s why I’m trying to play devil’s advocate and give constructive criticism. Because we only ever hear from the die hard fans that watch no matter what, never the casual fans that, I suspect, we’re not doing a good job of engaging. I think events can do better. There’s an incredible amount of work that goes into running an event like the California ProAm, in raising that much money, and I have to believe the organisers want to reach more people than the faithful few.

@bishop8950 apologies if that came across as an individual criticism, definitely was not my intention. I’m assuming you were the guy announcing with Brian during slalom and with Matt for jump. You’re clearly very knowledgeable about slalom and I thought you also did a fine job of prompting Matt with questions during jump. I’m venting about what I see as a broader issue and it’s probably unfair to be picking on this event specifically. But at the risk of offending more people I will try to offer my 2 cents as a constructive criticism. Regardless of whether that jump event was on Saturday, as originally scheduled, or Sunday, having the men’s field cut down from 10 to 6 or 8 for the finals would have made it much more exciting. Imagine the drama of Jack Critchley, who eventually podiumed, potentially missing out on the finals. Instead we got a tensionless hour of broadcast. On the announcing side, it felt to me like you had an incredible group of highly knowledgeable experts who filled the traditional ‘colour commentary’ role well. I would group your style of announcing in that category and I think you executed very well. We’re extremely lucky in this sport to have so many articulate athletes and coaches who volunteer their time to help out. What this event lacked, in my opinion, was an experienced play-by-play announcer(s). Someone who can build the excitement, bring up the volume levels and inflection (when appropriate), and really get a casual viewer engaged. Joel’s 225’ in a tailwind and then Freddy’s winning jump were incredibly exciting, but by having two relatively inexperienced athletes in the booth we captured very little of that through the webcast. It’s not that Poochie or Blaze did a bad job, I was so impressed with Blaze I was personally texting him my kudos during the event, it’s just that neither of them have any experience in that play-by-play role. The ’coaching clinic’ remark was an oversimplification of what I often see happen when you put two ‘colour commentators’ in the booth and the broadcast becomes dedicated to in-depth analysis of technique. I understand the appeal to avid water ski fans, but suspect it is not very engaging to more casual viewers.

Sounds like I’m in a minority, but I walked away from watching this webcast underwhelmed and confused as to who the audience is for this event. To be clear, this is not a criticism of any of the individuals involved. What Kelvin does with limited resources always blows my mind and the expert analysis from Blaze, Matt, Poochie, and others was excellent. But I struggle to see how an 8-hour long coaching clinic is drawing anyone in except the faithful few. Why was an hour-plus zero consequence ‘practice’ jump round scheduled during prime viewing (immediately following the slalom finals)? Was announcing an afterthought? It felt like they pulled in whichever skier or coach was willing to help out at the last minute. Maybe the goal is to create a quality video stream accompanied by technical analysis for the same several hundred (maybe a thousand or two?) die hard water ski fans to watch. If so then they knocked it out of the park. I just feel like maybe we could be setting our sights a little higher?

Recap video is up on Youtube, hope you enjoy! This is a TON more work than simply cutting up clips from a live webcast, but hopefully the result is a much more coherent and engaging product. We tried to use the old ESPN Pro Tour videos as our model, still plenty of room for improvement, but I think this turned out really well. I'm about as die hard a waterski fan as there is, but even I don't have the time to watch multiple day 10-hour webcasts. I think it would be awesome if every event did a recap like this. Imagine a TWBC produced recap of a pro slalom event, even the 'abolish slalom' guy might watch that...

I believe the plan is to do both for some of the later stops. But you're right, everything is tradeoff between production budgets and skier prize money. They've made the call to prioritize funding the skiers, the on-site crowd experience, and then do something different and (hopefully) really cool with the event footage. I don't know what the best approach is, but like the idea of trying something different. Once the video is out, would love everyone's feedback! I was admittedly asleep (West Coast time) when the event was live, but had no issue accessing the scores after the fact on the WWS event page.

They are trying something different for this tour stop, instead of a live webcast there will be a 15-20 minute highlight video released next week. The goal is to have something that is more accessible to non-water skiers than a 3+ hour webcast. Prelims were this morning and scores are up on the World Water Skiers site, incredible skiing from Danylo Filchenko, extra impressive considering he lives and trains in Ukraine. Hopefully some of the guys can put some pressure on Poland and make things interesting tomorrow.

I apologise if I’m coming across overly aggressive, in your defense 99% of what you’ve said in this thread has been glowingly positive about Jacinta. But I hope you can see how that one sentence can be interpreted as insulting, ignorant, or worse. It annoyed me enough to make my first ever post. Same with Jacinta’s brother. Hope to see you and Reagan out on the water soon! We’ll make a jumper out of her yet!

According to Return to Baseline there have been less women jump 55 meters (180 feet) than men jump 70 meters (230 feet). So it seems fair to assume jumping 55m as a woman is a roughly equivalent, or perhaps an even more impressive, feat than a man jumping 70m. Jacinta had to compete against almost every single woman in this club, barring only Sheers and Milakova. For comparison, I would guess almost a 1/3 of male 70m jumpers had retired by the time her winning streak started. I would suggest that a more precise use of the English language would be “during a lot of her winning streak, the field was at the highest level it has ever been.” Maybe that’s what you really meant to say?

Happy to explain @Horton It’s the part you purposely didn’t bold above. By calling the women’s jump field thin you are both diminishing Jacinta’s achievements and, even more insulting, you are disparaging a huge group of female athletes who were by any objective measure among the best of all time. Yes, you backtracked your own statement in the following sentence, but why make the baseless and insulting claim in the first place?

If it was Ryan Dodd that had retired this week would you have commented that “during a lot of his winning streak, the men’s jump field was a little thin” on the basis that he was consistently 2-3 meters ahead of the rest of the field on the world ranking list from 2016-2021? I highly doubt it.

That's nonsense @Horton Carroll has been up against more 55 meter (~180 foot) jumpers than any other skier in history over her career - Natty, June, Marion, Alex L, Regina, Poochie, Sasha, Brittany, Hanna