October 12, 2008 (Zurich, Sui) – The autumn FIS Cross-Country TV seminar was held in the form of a workshop in Zurich this Tuesday and Wednesday. The session featured open and productive discussions among the five FIS Cross-Country TV experts – Ola Fagerheim (Nor), Steffen Lunkenheimer (Ger), Odd Kaldefoss (Nor), Tapani Parm (Fin) and Johan Bernhagen (Swe) – and the representatives of the rights holder along with FIS staff.

The goals of the workshop were to revise the FIS World Cup Cross-Country TV production guidelines, to discuss the different levels of support needed for specific TV productions to guarantee continuously high standards and to identify common principles for TV production and promotion of the FIS Tour de Ski.

The group debated the various perspectives and agreed on common ground to be articulated in specific production guidelines for the different event formats such as sprint, mass start and so forth. The basic principles were defined, to be articulated in a first draft of the new guidelines, and those will be tested during the upcoming season. Thereafter they will be refined on the basis of the newest experiences by next summer. The main focus of the discussions on guidelines was on individual start races where the most challenges have been encountered in the past. For the Tour de Ski, common elements such as interviews with the current leader and the importance of relaying the story of the entire event series were discussed.

“It was pleasing to see such active and constructive discussions among all the experts. They are clearly great fans of Cross-Country Skiing and we highly appreciate their willingness to participate in further developing the product,” commented Jürg Capol, FIS Race Director Cross-Country.