The Marathon may be bigger. For local TV stations, Marathon Monday is the day they do their longest stretches of live coverage of the year. When the running boom hit in earnest 25 years ago and Boston Marathon entries increased exponentially, local TV stations scrambled to increase their coverage. The trouble was, there was a lack of marathoning knowledge in the media, and the reporting was, by today's standards, terrible. It used to be that the media's heavy hitters could hide their lack of knowledge by panning the event.
Marathoners say there's nothing like experience in training for their sport.
The same holds true for covering it, and Boston TV stations have become experts by covering the distance so often and so well that TV coordinators from other major marathons come to Boston to study how Boston's stations get the job done. Respect has been earned the old-fashioned way. Linda Polach has been coordinating Channel 5's coverage for more than 20 years. Channel 4 news director Peter Brown will be handling his 19th marathon. Frank Shorr has been Channel 7's producer for Marathon coverage since 1995.