From Live Broadcasts to Reporter-Submitted Footage at the Asian Games / Did IRIB Meet Audience Expectations?

It seems it cannot give a good grade to IRIB's coverage of the Asian Games.

It seems that it cannot give a good score to the broadcast coverage of the Asian Games.

Morteza Rezaei; Almost a week has passed since the end of the Asian Games. Competitions that were of great importance for Iran and Iranians and for the athletes who had a lot of their training in the face of war and bomb rain. Athletes whose hope was to win a medal, turn a new chapter in their life and be seen by the people.

Regardless of the written media, personal social networks of the athletes and video media on different platforms, many athletes were happy that at least the national media would leave no stone unturned for them and broadcast all their matches live with a fixed schedule, but what was seen most on Iranian television was the mushroom production of meaningless programs that bore the audience without compliments. Programs focusing on sports analysis, which must be said, are not particularly important for the general sports audience.

Sedavsima had announced the live coverage of the competitions before the start of the competition, but the announcement of live broadcasting does not mean full and high-quality coverage of all competitions.

The story is that the audience sits down to watch a sports event, not just to hear the result of the match or to see some scattered pictures of the venue or even boring expert discussions! Professional coverage means accessing the images of the competition itself, following the decisive moments, seeing the performance of the athletes and experiencing the excitement of the competition, with appropriate image quality and reporting; Not reporting such as taekwondo matches, which if an audience closes their eyes, they will have strange and unconventional thoughts that do not fit into Iranian culture.

Meanwhile, the published reports of the coverage of this period have also raised many questions. For example, Reza Alipour, an Iranian rock climber who won a silver medal in the Asian Games, very clearly criticized the lack of broadcasting of his competition. This incident showed that even announcing the coverage of Iranian athletes' competitions does not necessarily mean that the performance of all of them will be exposed to the audience in the same way.

On the other hand, in some audience reports, the issue of image quality and reliance on reports and videos sent from the venue of the matches is raised. However, more evidence is needed to attribute this issue to a specific technical problem, such as not having broadcast rights or access to the main match signal.

Of course, it was observed time and time again that Seda and Sima used the films sent by the journalists present in the competitions (who had published the films in their own media) and this may be the reason for the low quality of the broadcast of many of the films published in this organization.

The question that should be asked to the radio and television authorities is to clarify for the audience how many hours of sports programs (live from the Asian Games) have been on the air, or how many times the names of Iranian athletes and their competitions have been announced and broadcast on radio and television?

Another question is, has the audience been able to follow the matches in a continuous, high-quality and fair manner? Have you had the opportunity to watch the performance of athletes in different fields or is the television coverage limited to limited choices and scattered images?

The answer to these questions requires a detailed review of the broadcast schedule, real antenna images and official explanations on how to provide images of the matches. But one principle is clear, and that is that broadcasting the news of a match is different from broadcasting the match itself; Just like the announcement of live coverage, it does not replace the quality and comprehensiveness of the coverage.