IAAF World Athletics Championships on C4

I think it's safe to say Ortis Deeley needs replacing ASAP - he can't even get the names of the commentators right!

The overnight coverage wasn't bad at all - straight into the action with no ads and no talking heads in the studio until the end of the coverage (C4 is in the stadium too). This morning though has been shocking - mainly thanks to Ortis. Michael Johnson superb as always, but he doesn't deserve to be paired with such an amatuer. They need to get Rick Edwards into covering the "evening" sessions ASAP and leave Ortis on the overnights where no one will see him.

And they've certainly made up for the ads this morning - indeed I think they should have done a preview show yesterday as so much of the morning so far has been previews. If they'd just stuck to highlights from last night before live coverage of the evening session from noon people would be getting a much better first impression.

Agreed. A worring degree of occasional incompetence. They should not be using this coverage as a testing ground for the Paralympic coverage for next year.

Thank god they didn't get their hands on F1 after attempting to watch an hour of the coverage this morning. Over to Eurosport for the rest of the World Championships for me then.

Deeley is truly terrible. Rob Walker (freelance and wasted as a second commentator) would have been a better perch point live host (at least he has done some live sport presenting) this guy looks like he's never been to an athletics stadium before, or used a directors talkback earpiece. He visablly stops whenever someone shouts something down his earhole.

There have to be more freelance presenters knocking around who would have been better? James Richardson or Steve Rider for example..

The only saving grace is the excellent John Rawlings, who as lead commenator has the experience and knowlegde to carry the commetary off. Pity it all falls apart as soon as they cross back to the studio.

On what basis did they choose Ortis? Has he any experience of Sports Broadcasting?!

In comparison to Channel 4's cricket coverage, which did blood several new commentators (Atherton, Slater, Reeve, Hughes etc.), they at least had Mark Nicholas who had presented lots and lots of live cricket for Sky over the preceding three seasons so he had lots of experience (and he had his moments during the first couple of years ISTR).

Ortis was just shocking. I only watched 20 minutes or so, but he had already got mixed up with the decathlon, said that it was the "two-hundred-and-eleven" World Championships rather than 2011, and been utterly clueless talking to Michael Johnson and linking into VTs.

I was one of those who criticised Jake Humphrey's Olympic presenting three years ago (although he has improved beyond belief, and I am a massive fan of his presenting now), but at least Jake was completely competent, could handle talk-back and didn't make terrible howlers like Ortis is doing!

Mind you, would Rick Edwards be better? Has he got any sports broadcasting experience?

Good point about Jake Humphrey - he may have been learning on the job but at least was competent.

I guess C4's biggest issue is they haven't really got anything else to offer to a presenter they lure over, so an established name in an established role isn't going to pack it in for a weeks work this year and in 2013, and I'd guess also a role in the Paralympic coverage. The only person I could think of is Claire Balding who they could offer a role within C4 Racing too - and she's probably low enough down the pecking order at the BBC in regards to the Olympic coverage in order to be willing to give it up to lead the Paralympic coverage instead.

That said though with commentators and pundits I can't really fault any of C4's signings and they've managed to lure them for just a weeks work, so there must be a sports presenter somewhere who could take on the role with confidence.

They're certainly making up for all the ads they didn't show in the overnight session.

This coverage is truly shocking. That presenter fella doesn't have a clue what he's doing. A Uni student would do a better job. He doesn't even do the basics right. The amount of breaks they are taking is ridiculous. Theres no sort of continuity to their programming. However Sanya the trackside interviewer has impressed me but that is it. As regards Clare Balding - Shes actually quite high up the BBC's Olympic pecking order. She had her own Olympics show last weekend and she will be anchoring the Swimming coverage in the Olympics next year among other events I'm sure.

It was bizarre watching Ortis this morning. With him on children's TV he'd always seemed quite competent, and nowadays on The Gadget Show, he works quite well.
The style of presenting this morning was odd. Obviously there was a massive opening ceremony in the background that may have been putting him off a bit, but he seemed to be trying to change his presentational style, deliberately over pronunciating words, and messing up a bit. I like the guy, and as I said, it could be the atmosphere & noise of the ceremony, it could also be live TV (not sure if he's done it in a while), and trying to appeal to a different audience, when the production team most probably hired him for his previous work.

It will be interesting to see how Rick Edwards does. He's doing the evening highlights programmes, and as much as some people may not like him from T4, I think he has an individual presentation style, one that I do hope he continues with. From the VT this morning, it appeared like he would.

Suspect it is less 'luring' - more taking work that that they are offered. If they are freelance, not signed exclusively to the BBC, they are presumably free to work for any broadcaster who offers them work, and as the BBC have less athletics now, presumably there is less work for them there ?

It seemed like a mix of dependable, experienced (though with the exception of Michael Johnson, no major 'stars'), competent supporting team, and an inexperienced lead presenter.

To be honest I'm not a huge fan of Ortis on The Gadget Show so I wasn't expecting to warm to him on the Athletics, but I thought I'd give it a chance. He really was pretty awful. He just didn't seem to have any fluency or intuitive turns of phrase. Out of his depth it felt - but it was his first time doing it - and his previous live background was mainly XChange and Live and Kicking wasn't it? Track and Field TV coverage can be pretty tricky, as lots of things are happening at once, and you have to keep across the state of a number of events at the same time. As a location presenter you often need to be quite self-sufficient - it's not as controlled as a studio?

I suspect Rick Edwards will be better - but will also have a more structured show to work with. He was an interesting, but in hindsight not totally surprising, choice for C4's Paralympics coverage.

Daegu 2011 is not on BBC there? I'm so surprised. What sporting event BBC is focusing on?

Over here in South Korea, the coverage is shown on KBS1. And I think the KBS is producing the world feed this year.

I guess so. Have Steve Cram and the usual BBC voices been called into action elsewhere - perhaps the IAAF World Feed considering C4 have taken Rawlings/Walker.

The BBC lost the rights to C4 - it's not a case of them focusing on something else (though we have the Grand Prix this weekend on BBC One)

The BBC, with their 20% savings, have decided to significantly reduce their spending on sports rights. They are either chosing not to renew the rights to some events, or not bidding figures they know will guarantee to win them.

The argument is that if you are having to cut your spending by 20%, increasing your spending on sports rights at the same time as you are cutting programme budgets, reducing service ambition, sacking 100s/1000s of people probably isn't justifiable.

C4 outbid the BBC for the rights to 2011 and 2013. They've also got the rights to the Paralympics