HOCKEY: In an interesting development on the international stage, the International Hockey Federation (FIH) is making efforts to maximise the television production quality of the game of hockey.
They began the experiment at the summer's Women's Champions Trophy in Macau, China, by funding a team of expert hockey TV production staff to assist host broadcasters, TDM.
The aim of the project is to improve the quality of TV production at the FIH's major events, in order to maximise hockey's attractiveness to existing and potential broadcasters worldwide.
The staff, who have been nicknamed the 'FIH Flying Squad', consists of an Executive Producer, Director and assistant, two follow-camera operators and a graphics operator.
Two production teams, one based in the Northern and one in the Southern Hemisphere, will cover all the remaining FIH major tournaments in 2002 - the Men's Champions Trophy in Cologne this weekend and the Women's World Cup in Perth in November.
In addition the squad will continue to edit and produce a rights-free daily news feed from each event, which was very successfully initiated at the Men's World Cup in Kuala Lumpur in March.
The news feed will be supplied to news agencies via FIH's consultants Octagon/CSI.
The result of this has been significant news coverage of the Men's World Cup on international networks such as CNN, BBC World Service and Eurosport with the FIH hoping that it will further improve the showing of the game at the main events.
Given that the Irish women compete in the World Cup in Perth and both the men and women take part in next year's European Championships in Spain, the move could have positive effects on the ability to see top class hockey in Ireland.
"Anyone who knows hockey would admit that, due to the speed of the ball and the sometimes mesmerising skill of the players, it can be quite a challenge to exploit the full range of motion and emotion," said FIH marketing director David Christison.
"The Flying Squad will set up a knowledge transfer process that will not only make dramatic improvements to the TV product currently on offer, but will also leave an ongoing legacy of expertise passed on to host broadcasters in the countries where major events are to be staged," he added.
