Ortis Deley axed as Athletics front man at Channel 4

So after three days of to be frank cringe-worthy presenting Channel 4 have removed Ortis Deley from the main achor role on their live coverage of the IAAF World Athletics Championships in Daegu, Korea. I don’t think anyone will be surprised but if you haven’t watched any of it and don’t believe it can be so bad that it warranted his removal within three days then please watched the following.

Yeah pretty darn awful.

I wrote a couple of months ago about Ortis’ appointment, ‘The front man will be former CBBC and The Gadget Show presenter Ortis Deley. I know over on the BBC Jake Humphrey was given the prime job of fronting the F1 coverage having come from a Children’s TV background but his track record had been in live television – Deley’s has not been. It just isn’t grabbing me. Obviously they couldn’t bring in Sue Barker but Ortis seems uninspired. When Channel 4 brought in the cricket they went with Mark Nicholas who was an inspired choice and their commentary and pundit team was first rate. Maybe I should move on to the good moves.’ That is from my blog lamenting the Channel 4 coverage.

As you can see that blog post has got 30 comments at this current juncture and very few are positive. I have been bits and pieces in the past few days and will do a review of the coverage after I was asked to by lead commentator John Rawling himself. What I don’t need to do clearly is talk about Ortis Deley’s performance. I won’t knock Ortis too much but more Channel 4 for hiring a guy with no live television experience for the lead role in a major project. Getting the World Athletic Championships was a real coup for the channel but putting someone who to be frank wasn’t ready for the big time in live television in the hot seat has overshadowed the wonderful Michael Johnson.

It was sad this had to happen but hopefully Channel 4 will learn from it. You give important jobs to someone who is fully ready to handle it. People need to work their way up and this appointment was terrible from the word go – and when some bum like me knows that – not just thinks that – knows that – then you know there is a problem.

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