Skydiving on TV

[Bry 0]

There was a time (a few years ago) when I was working out at the gym in the early afternoon everyday, and the monitors above the Stairmaster machines were showing different skydiving competitions. I don't know who was doing the coverage or where the competitions were. Does anyone know which stations televise skydiving coverage and when? Any upcoming events? I would love to be able to set my VCR to record while I'm out jumping. Does anyone think that this was WFFC? Was it ESPN? Any clues would be helpful.

[hookitt 1]

ESPN2 used to show the X-trials. It featured Freeflying and Skysurfing. Is that what you're talking about?

My grammar sometimes resembles that of magnetic refrigerator poetry... Ghetto

[Unstable 9]

I guess from their point of view it isn't very economical to air skydiving activities - they have no marketing value to the audience watching. Now Skateboarding for example, on the other hand, can make you want to go out to Wal-Mart and buy a pair of skates.
Blue Skies,

=========Shaun ==========

[Bry 0]

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ESPN2 used to show the X-trials. It featured Freeflying and Skysurfing. Is that what you're talking about?

Yes. That is what I remember. Thanks. It was so cool to watch that I made my workout longer just to catch everything they had to show.

S. Smith has a good point about the viability of coverage (and Walmart). I just wish everyone could be as interested in watching skydiving as they are in auto racing. Not everyone who follows race car driving ever gets to drive a race car. Hmmm.

I checked the ESPN website and couldn't find anything about upcoming skydiving coverage, even in their X Games section.

With that said, if anybody happens to know of any future coverage, keep us all posted.

[Stik 0]

I used to work at the X-games and remember the last year that they had Skysurfing. It was in 98 IIRC. I wasn't into Skydiving then and the opinion of the higher up's was that it only appealed to people in the sport. Also there is not nearly the real estate to show the sponsor names. They were super anal about that. Someone put a Mountain Dew sticker on a snowmobile the crew was using and Nike made them take it off cause they didn't have one on it. I am a little bitter about the X-games as they decided that they could replace my crew with twice as many day laborers and still save a bunch of money. Anti-union Bastards.

[Unstable 9]

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S. Smith has a good point about the viability of coverage (and Walmart). I just wish everyone could be as interested in watching skydiving as they are in auto racing. Not everyone who follows race car driving ever gets to drive a race car. Hmmm.

Excellent point that is well taken. I am no marketing major by any means, but if you watch the commercials during an Xgame or some other "extream" sport (hard to consider Staking EXTREAM after jumping from airplanes at 13.5) their commercials appeal to a younger, more impressionable audience. And even Auto Racing has it's cash flow to worry about - people drop all sorts of $$ on auto racing merchandise or actually going to the tracks.
I would bet that a well operated tandem factory with enough money for good publicity could benifit from such an approach. People watch a skysurfer, they too will want to go out and skysurf (or do a tandem once and never be heard from again) I would be a well run campaign could REALLY get a DZ going.

=========Shaun ==========

[Blahr 0]

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People watch a skysurfer, they too will want to go out and skysurf (or do a tandem once and never be heard from again)

Problem with that is, you cant go from your couch to skysurfing in one easy step :-)
Skysurfing is point Q and mr/ms couch potato is at point A

How many times have you heard "I've always wanted to try that"
For most people, whatever "that" is, they will never actually go out and do it weather its skydiving or rollerblading.
The ones that WILL try something are far more likely to try rollerblading cuz they can go right out and do it
pretty much at any time for a minimum expense of money and knee skin.

Now movies, on the other hand, are different. After Point Break and Drop Zone there were big surges in people trying skydiving. Not even the fact that Point Break was totally rediculous mattered.
The HAD people believing that you can go from point A to point Q in one east step.
Sucessful 5 way stars on the very first jump. 5 minute long freefalls in which you can have conversations. 2 guys on one canopy opening at about 500 feet and surviving!

Watching sporting events and commercials doesnt get peoples attention, only total and complete bullshit can do that!

[hookitt 1]

The Show you saw was the SSI Protour X-trials. The show was hard to sell. Skatebarding and such looks radical and it makes sense to viewers. Skydiving just doesn't appear that way. Another thing was The competitions were in places like Charmey Switzerland and Ampfing Germany. Very Beautiful places but didn't draw much of a crowd. Competitors from around the globe would train in the US and then we'd have to buy expensive plane tickets over seas and compete for low dollars. Can see how that would deter many top notch teams?

I did a google search for some archives and came up with nothing substantial.

Have a good weekend.

My grammar sometimes resembles that of magnetic refrigerator poetry... Ghetto

[vonSanta 0]

Lots of good points made here by others, I'll just add my $.002.

Most of the skydiving disciplines aren't very audience friendly. For FS, you need to find that plane high up in the sky by moving your neck into an uncomfortable position, try to not look directly into the sun and then spot a little blob that at first appear to be falling slowly. Gradually it gets a little bigger and appears to move faster and faster. When you finally are able to distinguish legs and arms of the skydivers, the formation is broken up, they track away and deploy their chutes.

Accuracy competitions aren't really that fun looking at, as for a layman it's very repetitive and they aren't able to see the subtle techniques used, so that won't draw huge crowds.

The main problem however is that people have no frame of reference, really. Indycar and F1 etc is about driving, and they know what that feels like and what the challenges are, at least to a degree.

Freefalling however is not something you can semi-approximate by every day stuff. Bungy jumping etc is far from the same thing as there isn't really that much of control in the air of it. You don't manipulate the air flow around your body very much. Without a frame of reference it's very hard for non skydivers to *understand* what it's about and how it feels. I went from static line to AFF after about 15 jumps and my first AFF jump was a very different experience from the static line auto deployment and even the first static line jump is skydiving, sort of. Or parachuting at least.

If I try to explain to my friends, say, just how cool it is to freefall and actually control your position in the air they just look at me as if I was an idiot. Being very excited about doing 360s and backloops for the first time gets the same response. It's very hard to have a thing one feels so passionately about, yet one is unable to talk about it with friends because they get really bored or think one is bragging or whatever. If you can't get a close friend to really pay attention, imagine the problem of getting a bunch of strangers interested.

I mean trying to explain the feeling of freefalling is much the same as trying to explain a sunset to a colourblind person. You just have to do it. Unless we find a way to create a frame of reference for people I don't see skydiving being as popular on TV as skateboarding or other 'extreme sports' for many oof the reasons posted by others (mostly economy) but also because it's too hard to relate to.

Might not be a bad thing though. Just look at how the skateboardign world is, full of pretentious idiots and wannabes and has become more of an image statement and fashion show for many. Don't want that for skydiving.

Santa Von GrossenArsch
I only come in one flavour
ohwaitthatcanbemisunderst

[Iflyme 0]

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I just wish everyone could be as interested in watching skydiving as they are in auto racing.

I think that most people who "watch" are the ones who don't "do"... as for watching auto racing ... no thanks. If I watchany sport on tv, it's hockey. GO CANUCKS!!!