With regards to the biased reporting, it's sailing. We are a small community and there is ALWAYS some raw emotion when it comes to the America's Cup. They really buttoned up the rules about teams not speaking bad about the cup this iteration and we haven't heard ANY of the usual finger pointing and crying like we usually do (and does Grant Dalton even existing anymore!?).

As far as broadcast reporting, there isn't that much for these guys to hone their skills on but there is definitely room for improvement. I scream at the TV every time they cut to commercial right after the first downwind gate rounding - that's the most critical decision making stage in my mind and I want to see how the teams are setting up against the boundaries for that upwind leg. I do think they are making a conscious decision to keep the coverage simplified so it doesn't overwhelm the common viewer. I agree with the approach and while I DEFINITELY would enjoy seeing more of the nuances that I know of racing, I do think it would be too much and would quickly lose the common viewer that they are trying to attract. I have been having a regular morning debrief with several guys here at work and they are chock full of questions about the racing and the cup history. Hell, we even got into prismatic coefficients this morning. ;-) My point is, they're staying entertained enough to keep coming back and they don't feel like the coverage is lacking - they often comment in the positive about the digital markers on the water and how much easier this is to understand. I think this really is the point.

Gladwell will occasionally get spurned on by something but he will recenter and lean back toward the middle of the road, usually. He came out in Oracle's defense when the allegations of kinetic energy use were lodged from that book a couple of years ago (can't remember the Author's name...I just re-read it again and I still don't understand how you can rotate a 100 foot tall on it's base and generate and increase of forward driving energy from the wind that is already coming across it at 40 knots... It sure as hell doesn't work on my catamaran at 2, 10, or 15 knots and I've never seen a bird fly by rotating his wings around a central axis....but I digress.)

Regarding attendance, we also need to remember that we're just in the early phases of the cup - there's a lot left to go and it is a weekday in Bermuda. If I were scheduling time to go to Bermuda to watch the cup, it wouldn't be right now, either - it would be during one of the later rounds. And, besides, people in Bermuda have to work sometime like the rest of us.

I'm glad that it is the spectacle that it is. I just hope people don't lose interest by the time we get to the finals - it's a LOT of racing densely placed over a pretty big span of time.