Media and Marketing
A limited edition €10 coin was produced for the event by the German government, which was only the third occasion that they had done so for a sporting event. The organising committee held a contest to decide the name of its mascot, a running anthropomorphic bear, and the name "Berlino" was chosen. The colour scheme of the event, including the official logo, advertising, and the Olympiastadion's track and field, was blue and green. The committee stated that blue represented reliability while green represented the event's environmental ambitions. The event featured a number of environmentally friendly initiatives, including: free public transport with every ticket sold, efforts to reduce energy usage, considerations for waste and recycling management, and environmentally conscious construction and building management. Furthermore, as part of the United Nations Environment Programme, forty-seven trees (one for each athletics event) were planted to create an "Avenue of Champions" in Berlin. The official song for the event was "Foot of the Mountain" by Norwegian group a-ha.
The broadcasting rights for the Championships were sold to 213 countries, a new high for the event. ARD and ZDF were the host broadcasting TV networks and producers of the TV signal, and they founded a company named BERTA which provided the signal in high-resolution HDTV for TV stations around the world. The average viewing figures in Germany were 5 million with peaks of 9.9 and 8.6 million for the men's 100 metres final and the women's high jump, respectively. The average audience figures in France were 3.5–4 million, 2.5–3.5 million in the United Kingdom and 4–5 million in Japan. The IAAF website received a record number of page hits and unique users: having around 1 million unique users accessing the website on days five and six, and a total of over 90 million page views over the course of the nine days of the competition. Around 3500 media representatives were estimated to have attended the event.
To provide the public with an opportunity to participate in the event, the local organizers also conducted a Champions Run 10K on 22 August between the scheduled time for the men's and women's marathons, using a portion of the official marathon course which passes various Berlin landmarks with a finish at the Brandenburg Gate. The field was limited to 10,000 runners.
Read more about this topic: 2009 World Championships In Athletics, Organisation
Famous quotes containing the word media:
“Few white citizens are acquainted with blacks other than those projected by the media and the so—called educational system, which is nothing more than a system of rewards and punishments based upon one’s ability to pledge loyalty oaths to Anglo culture. The media and the “educational system” are the prime sources of racism in the United States.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)