IAAF World Athletics Championships on C4

Ouch.

Just seen this YouTube clip : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEbqsuzI5e8 of all of Ortis's "best" bits from the IAAF.

Slightly unfair to bolt them together like that - but you can't imagine Sue Barker, Steve Cramm or Jonathan Edwards being this bad can you? It's a combination of lack of fluency in the language of live TV sport and commercial TV in general (I wonder if he marks up his scripts so he can instantly see where he needs to be at the end of items?) - and also an apparent lack of any knowledge of athletics.

I wonder if Ortis's other live shows have had autocue ?

Rick Edwards has a much easier job - but is massively more confident and fluent.

Ortis aside C4 had a really good 90 minutes or so of action with the 10,000m and 10m final this afternoon - but Orts still clearly needs to be dropped.

A peculiarity of the rights on this one, seems that the BBC still retain some video rights, there are online packages of highlights on the BBC Website.

Sky have highlights on their website as well- so it appears they're available to anyone who wants to pay for them- possibly being offered by a news agenecy such as Reuters or AP.

I wonder if this is the Gadget Show curse... Ortis on C4 Atheltics and Jason on Don't Scare the Hare.

The difference is Jason was competent on Don't Scare the Hare, it was just the format I don't think people liked.

Also, you would have to link Suzi Perry to Treasure Hunt only and ignore her work on MotoGP to get the curse to work.

I think that Treasure Hunt was pre-gadget show as well.

Rick is looking very competent on C4's live coverage this morning. No awkward pauses and he doesn't keep looking down at his notes. Has Otis been dropped?

Perhaps they've swapped places.

Much better with Rick presenting, hopefully this will be the set up for the rest of the competition.

Ortis Deley is truly shockingly bad presenting the World Athletics Championships on Ch 4. Mistake after mistake and so many pauses and stupid questions from him. Why did Deley get this gig? He is awful. The great Michael Johnson looks embarrased sitting next to him. Rick was a better presenter this morning and I hope not to see Deley back on from this point.

The overall presentation by Ch 4 has been flat and so many advert breaks is spoiling it. Some of the track and field events have already started when we rejoin after the breaks and the potted catch ups of the early morning events are so swift that I have had to go online to make sense of some of the results.

Plus points: Michael Johnson for his knowledge and class. Dean Macey for his enthusiastic input and John Rawling for his commentary.

Stick to Horse racing and NFL Ch 4. We miss you BBC!