Regarding media attention:
I believe so far, in this thread, nobody has expressed the reality of the media attention so far, or maybe I should say, nobody has painted a clear picture yet. I believe it is quite easy to see why the media attention is on no-limits as opposed to the CW and FI. First of all from the surface nobody is aware of what is going on down there, nobody knows what you are actually dealing with, and most have a simplistic idea of what diving deep is all about. So depth is the first apparent full picture of what diving is all about. The first thing anybody asks about freediving is "How deep?" and "How do you deal with the pain in the ears?". Now of course at the beginning with little other understandings of diving, depth was the most exciting. So competitions and movies brought this to the forefront as being the exciting part.
However, who watches "The Big Blue" with excitement for the moments he is holding onto the sled? I don't think I am alone when I say that almost everybody is fixed on the moments when he is having nothing to do with the sled. It just happens that he is holding the sled when he enters the water as well, being the other exciting moment. Exciting because this is the moment the diver transitions from the human world to the aquatic world. Or another exciting moment exception with the sled, when there is nothing else to do while he is coming up from the dive, so he fingers the medics! But could you imagine the emphasis, intrigue, and amazement if the constant weight diver stopped his kicking/stroking to gesture at a person underwater and then continued along their way to succeed in their dive? I guarantee if that movie was done where all the competitions were constant weight no fins, people would have been much more interested and fascinated in the sport in general.
Maybe to emphasize this, I ran into a fellow at a get-together the other day who I had never met before. He knew very little about diving but brought up he had seen a movie called the Big Blue. And before I knew it he was saying something I have repeated time and time again when I tell people about my beginnings in diving. Essentially he said that he had never associated the movie with our natural ability to be able to dive without scuba. I saw the same movie 3 years before I began diving, yet had no memory of the movie being anything about diving. This being insane since I have always been fascinated with swimming under the water and swimming down and disappearing below people. I would bet on it that there would be a ten-fold audience out there for constant weight diving. People who hear about my diving are always more fascinated as I tell them about my no-fins diving. In cyprus the scuba divers could not stop telling me about the beauty of watching me dive with no-fins. With fins they were less interested and with a weight I am sure I would have barely got a comment.
What I am getting at is that the scene has been set with no-limits from the beginning, so that is what is in the media's attention at the moment. But just because it is the first does not mean it will stay as first. All we need is a nice production and attention solely focused on constant weight dives and I am certain it will grab people with much more excitment and romanticism than NL and VB. When people can imagine themselves trying to pull their way down into the deep, to drift motionlessly down, and then to make their way back to the surface, this is when they get excited at accomplishment. Sure we are all excited to know what is deeper and deeper and to be part of that. But that is one interest. I think constant weight has much more media appeal and will show that in the future, since it emphasizes multiple interests and accomplishments (ie. squeeze, breath-hold, equalizing, finning, stroking, mental awareness). But you are correct if this other side to diving is not focused on with no distractions, then it will remain forgotten and meaningless to the media and spectators. And it is not enough to just tell somebody about the other disciplines and expect them to hear you, unless you do it with the brilliance of a master story teller. It sounds pretty lazy to just suggest the media likes deep and that is the way it goes.
My thoughts so far.
