And I mean porn in the clean sense. I’ve been sneaking frequent peeks at the wcsn.com webcast of the IAAF world meet in Osaka — both live coverage (which I’m ogling while typing this) and archived video. If you get past the small screen and occasional glitches, you have one of the best track-video experiences in history. Costing about $5 a month, World Championships Sports Network gives you what regular TV can’t: uninterrupted track and field. No (expletive) commercials!

WCSN’s press releases tell the range of the events it covers. The smaller track meets (mainly in Europe) inflict Carol Lewis on you occasionally (the worst track broadcaster in history). But camera work and direction make up for her inane remarks.
Although the WCSN critics on the T&FN message board are out in force, I think the positives far outweigh the negatives of this coverage.
Here’s how WCSN excels at Osaka:

1. They flood the zone with cameras — high above, down below and everywhere in between. The high jump seemed to have a dozen angles in play. The hammer throw includes a wide-angle remote that makes you feel like you’re inside the cage. They show how close feet get to the end of the takeoff board.
2. The director knows when to cut from the field (a distant shot) to closeups of leaders and others, including coaches in the stands. Someone at wcsn knows everyone.
3. Peter Matthews and Sean Pickering of Britain are the main announcers. Peter’s knowledge of track is unsurpassed. Recovered from a heart scare, he’s providing calm and detailed calls of races. (Unlike the excitable and cliche-ridden calls by the NBC and Versus broadcasters from America.) Peter also knows from masters, and frequently points out the ages of the older athletes.
4. Every major sprint race, jump and throw is replayed from different angles several times, including in slo-mo. A student of technique is in hog heaven.
5. Audio is fabulous, and you can pretty much hear every grunt and cuss uttered by the throwers. The background stadium announcer also can be heard, and since it’s mainly in English you can glean extra information.
6. Graphics display results — times and distances well-organized on screen. You can get real-time results from the official Osaka site, of course. But it’s nice to see results (basically the same as the stadium boards display) while watching the wcsn broadcast. Season bests (SB) and personal bests are noted.
7. The drama of distance is done right. Unlike U.S. track broadcasts, where long races are sliced and diced, you see every lap of the 1500, steeple, 5K and 10K. And there’s plenty of variety of camera work to keep the race from getting stale. At Osaka, the camera operators seem to have ESP on where to point the lens.
8. If you aren’t up in the wee hours, you can click on archived video of each session, and watch from the start — or view it anywhere in the middle. Finals tend to be at the end of the sessions. Meanwhile, many featured events have their own separate link.

I’m spoiled rotten by the Osaka coverage and hope I can go back to watching “regular” meets on wcsn.com and other outlets without feeling cheated.
But I’m just your average track fan. I don’t claim any expertise in broadcasting. But one who does is my M50 masters hurdler (and webmaster) friend Andy Hecker, who recently returned from covering the Pan Am Games as a cameraman.
Andy shared how own review of WCSN’s webcast:

I will pass along my endorsement of the WCSN feed. This is the uninterrupted World feed of the events, with informed race calls by British announcer Peter Matthews, frequently color is provided by Sean Pickering and Steve Ovett.
You see the every race and the best of the field events as they happen. For Field Event fanatics, I will note that meet management has even held up dramatic final rounds of the field events when a sprint final is taking place–perhaps a bit unfair to the athletes, but even the folks in the stadium don’t miss that important jump or throw. This is a pleasant contrast to the heavily managed/over produced (maybe we should better call it–reduced), jingoistic NBC coverage we are usually treated to in this country. Its certainly worth the few bucks it costs.
The bad part, its only 4 inches wide on my computer screen. The video quality is the best one could expect for such a small image–its a lot bigger than an Ipod video screen. Being in Japan, the hours the competition goes on are not the most convenient time to watch.
The morning sessions (with a lot of qualifying) are starting at 6 p.m., the evening sessions are starting at 3 a.m. (which is late even for a night owl like me). After the feed concludes live, you can “watch on demand” and get the feed all over again. For those people used to their TIVO the inability to jump past the boring stuff is frustrating (there are no commercials, but in a 4-5 hour feed, action is still not continuous enough to entertain even a track nut like me).
For this, there is a little menu in the lower right that allows me to save to disk. The files are in the 1-2 GB range. After enough people discover this feature and start posting videos on youtube, this will probably disappear. What I have taken to doing is capturing feeds when I can. While one feed is coming in, I can play back another at my leisure, though I usually end up watching the incoming feed as I work here on my computer.
Since TV is what I do professionally, perhaps my MacIntosh is a little more equipped for video–I don’t know what an average PC might do with this, though I can’t expect if they are selling this, it could be too much worse.
This is where the fragmented world of internet micro-marketing will take us. With literally millions of options available, all individuals are finding sources of information to match with their interests. Mass audiences are a thing of the past–which unfortunately means our children will be far better informed about the finer points of video games (or whatever else interests them) than they will be about the real NEWS of the day.
Track and Field is taking its place in that world with our own information sources. WCSN is a product of Major League Baseball (so they are doing the same thing bringing baseball games to baseball fanatics in different cities) and covers the lesser, Olympic level sports. Unfortunately, Track and Field falls into that category.
When I don’t have to concentrate on real, paying work, I can also call up the IAAF site, with start lists and then (later) results. For the folks who like their results posted before they step off the track, in reality at the most elite track meet of the year they aren’t posting final race results to the stadium for at least 5 minutes and are posting results on line around 15 to 20 minutes after the race.

It’s now 4:50 a.m. Pacific time, and 39-year-old Jeff Hartwig’s final prelims jump at 5.65 (a miss) was just shown on the live webcast. Too bad for Jeff.
But great for masters and vault fans, who can see how he missed in real time.