i know why f1 viewer numbers may have faltered

i say 'may have' because personally i don't think they have suffered that much but.....if they have i think i know at least one reason why:

most coverage sucks ! i am used to watching the race on itv and i think brundle and co. do a very good job of bringing out the important points and making it even more interesting.

since i am in the process of moving to switzerland, i have watched the last 2 races on a combination of french, swiss, german and italian tv (i speak all the relevant languages so its not a comprehension issue), and their coverage ranges from merely adequate to abysmal !!!!! it is so bad, that i was providing my own commentary to my son and father who were watching with me. the talking heads were mixing up drivers, team principles, laps, grid positions, never mind not being able to provide any facts or figures or opinions about qualifying, race strategy, or even the weather. they just sucked !

forgive the rant, but i am not relishing the idea of watching abother race at 7am with a bunch of numbnuts.

how is the coverage where you are?

 

I agree

I watched a race last year in Ireland and the guys were pretty boring. I think Brundle does a brilliant job on ITV, it was a bit lacking a few races ago when he didn't do the commentating.

 

I agree that Martin Brundle is great. He's probably one of the best commentator/pundits in any sport in the world. James Allen, however, is an annoying tit! I wish there was a way to use interactive tv to swiitch Allen off!

 

No the worst of the bunch is that twonk Jim Rosenthal

 

at least we have the possibility to switch from RTL (which is the less evil in german) to ORF or SRG to avoid the commercial breaks

 

Ross,simple answer is to get Sky in Switzerland,I had it in Basel.

 

The ad breaks are the worst in the UK there seems to be one every 10 mins so annoying, you dont see them in football though.

 

yes, i fully plan to once i have moved in to a more permanent location. i am currently renting a furnished place so have to watch what they give me ! but it could be worse, at least they ahev the race on !

 

10 minutes? we should be so lucky.

when we have a race that we can watch during daytime hours (most races occur after midnight my time) then they are totally plagued. usually you get about 3-4 laps of race time, then 2-3 laps of adverts, then we miss half of the next 3-4 laps while they show replays of what we missed during the ads.

be interesting to see how today's GP goes... starts in about an hour.

 

Good coverage where I am at.

UBC - South East Asia.

They did not show what happened to RB and why he had the front end damage.

MS drove the wheels off the Ferrari and was 14 seconds ahead at the end.

 

oh now that's just annoying.

i said there was still an hour before it's aired here, so you post the results.

cheers.

 

Watching the GP at the moment in Australia.

Coverage is utter sh*t. We don't see any of the grid preparation or warmup lap, picture quality is below average and it's one ad break after another. I can count 2 or 3 key events that have been missed as a result of the constant breaks.

The entire TV timeslot for the race here is only 90 mins, so we probably won't even see the podium, let alone the press conference (which we missed out on last race in China). Oh yea, and it's shown 2.5 hours delayed, despite us being in virtually the same timezone.

All this yet we had 10 hours of non-stop boring-as-sh*t V8 taxicab racing before the F1 race.

Utter pathetic disgrace.

 

yep, i stopped watching.

the last ad break i saw they led into it with "oh NOOOO, a car is off the track, i think it's a sauber..... tonight on australian idol...". then 4 1/2 minutes later we're back at the race, webber has pitted unexpectedly and someone else spun off... or so i tried to piece together.

totally useless. why not just put an australian idol re-run on, i'd be just as interested.

oh well, at least i knew the result...

 

Yes, I was right. Switch to an ad break the second Michael crosses the line, then hear the Australian commentators babble away for a few mins, flash to the podium, flash back, and seeya later, onto Australian Idol and no press conference.

I'm truly sick of this sh*t. I cancelled it back in 1999 because I hardly ever watched it, but how much is Foxtel these days? Would Fox Sports show live uninterrupted coverage of the Grand Prix?

 

the Japanese were a little pre-occupied with Sato so we missed the RB/DC accident and only get the accounts from the protagonists who point the finger at each other (strangely )

James Allen is a moron and Brundle is stightly about a chimpanzee in the evolutionary scale with his analysis.

AJ used to say very little when Ch9 had it but he was spot on everytime he said what the problem was, Brundle hasn't got a clue and I often wonder if he ever was on the inside !

You can always read the interviews on F1-live.com and get ALL the interview not just a couple of questions each.

10s coverage is still a mile ahead of 9s

 

Can't believe they did that. Idiots! They sat on the footage of Sato in the car driving, and ignored the rest of the race! We also got hardly any decent onboard T-camera footage during the race.

Yes, James Allen is a moron. But you're the first person I've ever heard criticise Brundle's commentary. He's generally considered the best F1 commentator worldwide.

True, but it's much nicer to actually hear and see the interviews.
I can actually download from various F1 websites videos of the Free Practise and Qualifying Sessions, team and driver interviews, the Martin Brundle pre-race Gridwalks, highlights from the races, full onboard laps from various camera views, and even the entire races themselves. Doing this is very time consuming, however, and I would much rather just see this on TV as part of the Formula 1 coverage!

And it's still sh*t.

 

i'm only medium interested in F1 nowadays.

if i don't see it when it happens, all i want to do is see some highlights and the results.

i would have been much happier if they'd not bother showing the race under a time-constraint during heavy advertising times, and just devote 30 minutes to showing highlights from the race weekend.

 

sort of agree for this year now that the results are in but until we know what is happening Iprefer ALL the info , and Foxtel DON'T have it and while Ten have the rights they never will no matter what they tell you.

I put Foxtel on because I was told unequivocally that they would have the GP AND the practice AND they have neither so they are taking it out .

I think you can get Digital Satellite TV that has Speed or some French feed but you need to be able to speak or at least understand French

 

You can't please everybody it seems.

Gee some moan when it is not shown at all, then if not live and now when we have a whole weekend where Channel Ten devoted itself to OUR sport ... we moan again!

FNCK OFF is what I say!

While I am not the biggest v8 Supercar nut ... I love Bathurst and I was a couch potatoe just about all Sunday ... and even some of Saturday (I had to work, but made sure I had an operational TV ... so I could watch the support races and the top ten shoot out, etc.).

Bathurst has been part of my life since ... er, well since it was first shown on TV in NZ. The perfect day when women in my family just know that they loose and TV wins and accept that it is an institution, and simply sit down and get into it.

On top of this we had the amazing thing of following the end of Bathurst with the Japanese GP in DAYLIGHT! ... holey fnck I was in heaven.

Yep the broadcast sucked and we missed a lot of the action, but guess what sitting in Sydney is a long way away from Suzuka and we miss stuff every bloody year, so that is the best we can do unless I buy the airfair and ticket and get of my lazy @rse and go to it live ... and then you still miss stuff.

While I am a big fan of criticisim, and yes it is 100% fair to criticise the broadcast, just be careful for what you wish for ... somebody might listen and no longer will Channel Ten take F1 so seriously and accept that seeing it live is not so important after all and Channel Nine was right, ie. nobody really watches it so yeah we will just show it when everything else has finished (like rugby league, tiddly winks, etc.)

Bravo Channel Ten ... it was not their fault that the broadcast sucked. And while I'm not a great fan of Neil Crompton he is a better commentator than he is a driver ... and they talk about F1 heaps more than Alan Jones, who likes to play 'I'm on the in crowd, and I will choose what I share with the low lifes game '.

Channel Ten almost every weekend devote a considerable amount of time covering all sorts of motorsports ... Why not send ideas to Channel Ten and work with them to help them improve the show for us all. Atleast we can talk to them unlike Bernie and the FIA.

Absolutely, and I am a big fan of seeing the races live ... then you feel you are involved. Plus I could not really care less about the interviews ... they all say the same corporate BS (if you think that the truth is being said ... er, wake up and smell the roses, it is whatever their sponsors and team want them to say ... with occasional exceptions ).

Pete

 

We get SpeedChannel here in US. Coverage is pretty decent - we pretty much get the full deal - preview, race, post race etc. But compared to the itv-f1 coverage, Speed is nowhere as good.

Itv gives you on-race interviews with the drivers after the race and other benefits from being onsite at the race. Speed seems to be broadcast out of a studio here in US and so cant have the same degree of realism of being there.

But the best part of the US coverage is the presence of Steve Matchett who is the technical commentator - he is simply awesome.

 

despite the commentator of speedvision, I find the picture quality sucks! I wonder if F1 coverage comes in HDTV???

 

channel Bill is rather amusing on sundays. Bill Woods will sit there and present an entire show about some motorsport, sign off at the end of it, then 2 minutes later there's Bill Woods back on the tube going "hello and welcome to..."

how does he keep up? he must be hosting like 6 or 7 shows almost consecutively some days.

 

SPEED was good at least it had qualifying as well........it was a local Japanese feed they were using....hence the Sato infatuation..

We had some occasional 'black outs' throughout they blamed on the 'wet cables' or something..


Psk, you can't say 'funk off' anymore on Fchat. We have new rules on sanitation!!!!!!! LOL!!!!

RB and Couthard both are calling it a 'racing incident'. I guess as long as the paychecks cash, all's well!!!

 

Surprised to hear that the Swiss commentators are allegedly bad. I used to watch them and once in a while get a current tape from a race with these guys and think they are brilliant. The commentator has been doing this for over 20 years and knows his stuff and his co used to be Marc Surer, former F1 driver and very knowledgeable on all the techie stuff.

IMHO in short they're miles ahead of anything Speed has ever produced and they're slightly behind the ITV reports with Brundle.

 

Yes it is very weird ... but atleast it's motorsport . I guess to be fair to others who may have grown up or experienced better, I grew up in NZ ... we only had 2 channels and Channel One did not start showing F1 until I was nearly a teenager ... before that nothing!.

Now in NZ there is only one sport and that is Rugby and to get anything else shown on TV was (and probably still is) very difficult.

Channel 3 then came along and did try and fill the motorsport hole ... but compared to Channel Ten over here, er, it came well short.

Thus in conclusion I am a very, very happy camper that on most Sunday afternoons I can get comfy in the couch and watch my favourite sport ... after a hard morning (ofcourse ) working on my Alfa restoration.

Thus what I am trying to accept here is the quality of what we current see does depend on what you are used to .

Pete