Giles Smith in The Times gives his verdict on the C4 coverage
"Dodgy days in Daegu for Channel 4, which would normally have been bringing us Big Brother at this time of year, but which signalled a significant assault on the broadcasting high ground by dumping that format on Five and snaffling the athletics World Championships from the BBC instead.
Which means that Colin Jackson and Steve Cram can only spend this week sitting at home with their mouths open in shock. Ditto the rest of us. Only Michael Johnson has been spared. Our hosts: Ortis Deley and Rick Edwards. Ortis who? Rick what? Desmond Lynam will be spinning in his golf club. Then again, let’s not overlook a pair of CVs that boast appearances at the helm of The Gadget Show, spells with Channel 4 staples such as T4 and Freshly Squeezed, and one glorious night as a contestant on Blind Date (Deley). Your Hazel Irvines and your Clare Baldings can’t really hold a candle to that.
Anyway, background would be irrelevant if it were all going smoothly. The trouble is, it’s not going smoothly. Deley chiefly wears an expression that brings to mind furry creatures and headlamps. Edwards, meanwhile, seems to be locked into a permanent struggle, not just for the right tone, but for words of any kind. “Well, well, well,” he said, after Usain Bolt’s false start. And then, again: “Well, well, well.”
Around them, botch follows botch: athletes get misidentified, Slovenia shot putters are mysteriously transferred to Italy, line-ups for the men’s 110 metres hurdles are inexplicably superimposed over the start of the women’s 100 metres, floundering commentaries on 100 metres races manage to mention only one of the runners by name. And, hovering permanently in the background, is the sense that a commercial break could strike at any time without anyone being entirely ready for it.
For instance, Lord Coe was in the studio yesterday, discussing Bolt’s world-shaking decision to go not on the “b” of bang, but on the “d” of disqualified. No reason to change the regulations, Coe insisted. If it had been anyone else, we probably wouldn’t be talking about it and you can’t expect sports to bend their rules every time a big star messes up. Then again, Johnson said, if . . . but at that point we had to “go outside”, according to Deley (cut to a commercial break, in fact), so we never found out what Johnson thought.
It doesn’t help that the team have yet to work out the time difference between South Korea and the UK. “Good evening,” Deley said yesterday at 10am, BST. “If you’re enjoying your afternoon off work and want to have some athletics banter . . .” began Rob Walker, the commentator, trailing a Twitter feed. It was just before 11am where we were. A small detail, but it only adds to the feeling of disconnection.
And then there’s Dean Macey, loud of voice and shirt. As Jessica Ennis narrowly failed her first attempt at 1.89m in the high jump, Macey assured us: “She’s got that. Don’t worry about it. I’m telling you now.”
Has Dean never heard of Murray Walker and the priceless warnings his career served about stepping over the line between sports commentary and astrology? Ennis duly failed her next two attempts and had only Macey to blame.
But awkward conjunctions abound. “I think she’ll be quite proud of herself there,” Katharine Merry said as Jeanette Kwakye finished sixth in the semi-finals of the women’s 100 metres. At which point we went down to the track, where a distraught Kwakye crisply decried her performance as “shocking” and “really, really upsetting”, adding, as the tears began to brim, “I’m not happy”. None of us is, Jeanette. Still, it’s early doors for Channel 4. Maybe it can turn it around. What’s Johnson — the one still voice of reason — always saying? Focus, focus, focus."
