Nice work, NBC

[MileHigh]

Here is a list of headlines if you want to see what most people went with:

http://therail.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/05/read-all-about-part-of-it/

Interesting. About half didn't deal with the filly/death.

 

[markvid]

Two mistakes, by my count.

The obvious one was sending it over to the winning connections after breaking the news about the death. Had to be some sort of transition there ... commercial break or just some quality face time with Costas. Something.

The other blunder, IMO, was going directly with the doc on live TV w/o any kind of set-up from the announcers. They should have alerted the announcers first, and then had them say, "And now, we send it back to the track, where we understand there is some tragic news to report ..."

That kind of news doesn't need to be sprung on the viewers. That way, the viewers could brace themselves. As it was, you didn't know how severe the injury was.

I've been going to the track regularly for 25 years, and the announcement that the horse already had been put down hit me by surprise. I can't imagine how it struck the family that watches one race a year.

We needed to be prepared?
Good Lord, it's not like a family member died.
If you saw the one wide shot, then the ambulances, you knew the horse was dead.

 

[beefncheddar]

What struck me (and I'll admit I could be misremembering) was how NBC was pushing the idea that EB could be OK.

IIRC, the woman speaking from the track was talking about how they could be keeping her down on purpose and it could have just been a fainting spell.

One minute later, the doc says she was already dead.

 

[Moderator1]

I don't know if it was pushing - she didn't know what was going on and was listing reasons why a horse could be in that position. When a horse goes down, it isn't always fatal.

 

[Ira_Schoffel]

Two mistakes, by my count.

The obvious one was sending it over to the winning connections after breaking the news about the death. Had to be some sort of transition there ... commercial break or just some quality face time with Costas. Something.

The other blunder, IMO, was going directly with the doc on live TV w/o any kind of set-up from the announcers. They should have alerted the announcers first, and then had them say, "And now, we send it back to the track, where we understand there is some tragic news to report ..."

That kind of news doesn't need to be sprung on the viewers. That way, the viewers could brace themselves. As it was, you didn't know how severe the injury was.

I've been going to the track regularly for 25 years, and the announcement that the horse already had been put down hit me by surprise. I can't imagine how it struck the family that watches one race a year.

We needed to be prepared?
Good Lord, it's not like a family member died.
If you saw the one wide shot, then the ambulances, you knew the horse was dead.

Maybe you didn't. Maybe you only get upset when family members die.

Ever think that others might feel differently?

 

[2muchcoffeeman]

I was pleased with NBC for not oversensationalizing what happened. Apparently that puts me at odds with the thread-starter n00b; I sure as hell can't tell if I'm with the majority or not.

AFAIC, they played it the right way.

 

[markvid]

Two mistakes, by my count.

The obvious one was sending it over to the winning connections after breaking the news about the death. Had to be some sort of transition there ... commercial break or just some quality face time with Costas. Something.

The other blunder, IMO, was going directly with the doc on live TV w/o any kind of set-up from the announcers. They should have alerted the announcers first, and then had them say, "And now, we send it back to the track, where we understand there is some tragic news to report ..."

That kind of news doesn't need to be sprung on the viewers. That way, the viewers could brace themselves. As it was, you didn't know how severe the injury was.

I've been going to the track regularly for 25 years, and the announcement that the horse already had been put down hit me by surprise. I can't imagine how it struck the family that watches one race a year.

We needed to be prepared?
Good Lord, it's not like a family member died.
If you saw the one wide shot, then the ambulances, you knew the horse was dead.

Maybe you didn't. Maybe you only get upset when family members die.

Ever think that others might feel differently?

I'm talking about the "brace themselves" part, Ira.
I think, given the images NBC chose to show, it wasn't that much of a stretch to know how it was going to turn out.

 

[JBHawkEye]

To me, when they showed the shot of the two equine ambulances and the other ambulance surrounding the horse so you couldn't see anything, I knew it was bad.

 

[Mediator]

I like the idea of a transition because casual horse racing fans went through the wringer over Barbaro. I think this Derby is going to turn people away. Sure, it's fun to wear big hats and drink Mint Juleps, but being awed by a horse only to watch him or her die, it's horrible.

 

[Ben_Hecht]

I like the idea of a transition because casual horse racing fans went through the wringer over Barbaro. I think this Derby is going to turn people away. Sure, it's fun to wear big hats and drink Mint Juleps, but being awed by a horse only to watch him or her die, it's horrible.

In the public-opinion poll arena . . . fact that we're talking about a filly makes it so, so much worse.

 

[Appgrad05]

The metro down the road's main head was "Big Brown delivers"

The subhead did play up Eight Belles death.

 

[UPChip]

I edit our sports photos and lay out some pages in the morning, and I gave me SE choice of both Big Brown and 8 Belles in both color and black and white, and hung around to see how he played it.

I was very surprised to see him put the whole thing on page 3 (we actually ran a Packers rookie camp story as main art). It turned out that he took page three, and he chose Big Brown as the main and put the Eight Belles down with vets photo at the bottom of the story. I'm guessing he put it inside because of the time factor, but I was rather surprised by the decision, given the lack of quality page one material we had today.

 

[Tom Petty]

I edit our sports photos and lay out some pages in the morning, and I gave me SE choice of both Big Brown and 8 Belles in both color and black and white, and hung around to see how he played it.

I was very surprised to see him put the whole thing on page 3 (we actually ran a Packers rookie camp story as main art). It turned out that he took page three, and he chose Big Brown as the main and put the Eight Belles down with vets photo at the bottom of the story. I'm guessing he put it inside because of the time factor, but I was rather surprised by the decision, given the lack of quality page one material we had today.

yeah, because god knows the derby is as big as the super bowl.

 

[Pilot]

"The Tuscaloosa (Ala.) News 'The Favorite Wins'"

This one made me laugh.