Have you been watching the World Athletics Championship in Moscow?

Sport Have you been watching the World Athletics Championship in Moscow? I wouldn't be surprised if you haven't. As far as I can see barely anyone is. Of course, my window onto "everyone" is my twitter timeline, but that always seems to be a good gage as to what people in general, albeit the kinds of people I'm interested in are interested in. When Paxman's beard happened, that was a focal point, that was talked about. During the athletics, barely anyone has said a thing about anything.

The mood was set on the opening day of competition when the BBC failed to run the opening ceremony. Now, having seen the thing with its coloured balls covered in chemical formulae and a giant inflatable Battleship Potemkin, I can see why. They probably saw the rehearsal and balked at running it instead of the muppet gameshow they'd spent the past week trailing. But it's non-appearance barely registered a murmur amongst a Twitterati who were more interested in talking about other things. Even my own early protest provoked little reaction.

It's been the same since. While I haven't missed a minute of the action, my eye has been glancing a Tweetdeck and the reaction has been the exact opposite of the Olympics despite the blanket coverage. Arguably both Mo Farah and Christine Ohoragu offered even more epic, more exciting performances than last year but no one with my limited online sphere was watching, even taking into account the people in work and fighting to get home from work, that sort of thing.

Why would this be? The timings? Do people lose interest if something isn't in prime time in the UK? Have they been watching but not tweeting about the thing? Is this an early protest because Russia? Fatigue?  A sense of well, we did the Olympics so we've sort of done sport for now?  Photos of our champions have appeared on newspaper front covers so clearly someone's taking an interest, I just think it's interesting that it hasn't provoked the same reaction amongst the people who tend to get excited about this.  Well?