Murray questions BBC switch...

[MrKipling43]

http://www.crash.net/motorsport/f1/news/171859-0/f...

Not sure what he's saying is really relevant - F1 was a very different sport twelve years ago and the BBC wouldn't have spent all that money to just 'cruise' with their coverage.

I still think they're going to use it as a show-piece for what they can do/what can be done with OBs - HD, full interactive and so-on.

[motormania]

Such a non-story!

The guys getting on a bit now.

Look at how the BBC cover Wimbledon now, compared to 15 years ago. Things have moved on and despite the odd hickup due to the likes of those pricks Ross and Brand, the BBC is regarded the world over as the finest broadcasting company in TV.

We should all be celebrating the return of F1 to the Beeb, it's the start, IMHO, of a golden era of F1...

[FourWheelDrift]

BBCi, think of the red button options they could offer.

[MrKipling43]

FourWheelDrift said:

BBCi, think of the red button options they could offer.

Exactly!

[SamHH]

I like the 'interactive' stuff on snooker tournaments where you can choose to watch one table or another but I really don't see the point of it for a Grand Prix. The production and commentary team have all the info available to them; they should be able to present it to the viewer properly. If they don't, then having to find that information for yourself is just a poor substitute.

[dpbird90]

No Murray, you're forgetting that the BBC will piss all over the ITV coverage, and there is one good reason for this.

NO MORE JAMES ALLEN

[FourWheelDrift]

With the race SKY in Italy already have the facility and the ability to change which camera you are watching from, in car on any car with a camera. Or perhaps you are interested in watching a good battle, choose the car you want to follow.

[SamHH]

FourWheelDrift said:

With the race SKY in Italy already have the facility and the ability to change which camera you are watching from, in car on any car with a camera. Or perhaps you are interested in watching a good battle, choose the car you want to follow.

That doesn't appeal to me. I think that a professional producer with a team of assistants with simulations access to multiple camera feeds has a far greater potential to show me the most exciting and relevant footage than I can with my remote control and a ponderously slow 'interactive' service.

[FourWheelDrift]

SamHH said:

That doesn't appeal to me. I think that a professional producer with a team of assistants with simulations access to multiple camera feeds has a far greater potential to show me the most exciting and relevant footage than I can with my remote control and a ponderously slow 'interactive' service.

I think you are forgetting that for most races it's a home country director and team and they are in the main fecking useless, especially when there's a home driver involved. I don't want to see 2hrs of Kazuki Nakajima when there's action elsewhere on track.

Once you have the interactive service on it doesn't take that long to change options. For instance all those who want a different commentary or no commentary at all can do it instantly.

[SamHH]

FourWheelDrift said:

I think you are forgetting that for most races it's a home country director and team and they are in the main fecking useless, especially when there's a home driver involved. I don't want to see 2hrs of Kazuki Nakajima when there's action elsewhere on track.

IIRC, since last year most of the races have been produced by FOM. I think only the Monaco and Brazilian Grands Prix continue to be produced by the host broadcaster.

FourWheelDrift said:

Once you have the interactive service on it doesn't take that long to change options. For instance all those who want a different commentary or no commentary at all can do it instantly.

I take your point, but to me, if the commentary is not worth listening to, allowing viewers to turn it off is just curing the symptom, rather than curing the cause (i.e. making the commentary better).

[entropy]

SamHH said:

I like the 'interactive' stuff on snooker tournaments where you can choose to watch one table or another but I really don't see the point of it for a Grand Prix. The production and commentary team have all the info available to them; they should be able to present it to the viewer properly. If they don't, then having to find that information for yourself is just a poor substitute.

Completely agree

For a start timing and scoring needs sorted, copy what Americans do and stick a scrolling ticker at the top of the screen that's readable - though that's FOM's fault, not the Beebs.

Multiple-angles/interactive has a 5min novelty value during a race IMO. I'd rather have access to radio excerpts though saying that the vast majority heard have been completely useless

Does the Beeb seriously has the money and effort to show F1? By that I mean if rumours are correct that presentation will done in London studio then to me that's taking 1 step back.

Will we get outstanding features that Brundle used to do? Will the Beeb devote 3+hours on Sunday afternoons?

[FourWheelDrift]

entropy said:

Will we get outstanding features that Brundle used to do? Will the Beeb devote 3+hours on Sunday afternoons?

For starters they don't need to, the hour before the race that ITV did was mostly rubbish. but if they want to they can give more pre-race coverage again using the BBCi. Practice, interviews and lots more.

[Muzzer]

In fairness to Murray, he's referring to how the BBC used to cover the F1 in the days before ITV.

All those who harp on about James Allen and ad breaks seem to forget the dark days of no qualifying coverage at all (apart from the British GP) and race build-up amounting to 2 minutes of Murray talking before the start. In the very dark days, they didn't even send Murray to the circuit and up to the 1980's they didn't even cover every GP...

But, times have moved on now and I think the BBC wouldn't have taken F1 if they couldn't do at least as good a job as ITV.

[FourWheelDrift]

Well we shouldn't get any more of this at least.

Brands Hatch, race start - http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=TGaJkEI0AAg

[entropy]

FourWheelDrift said:

entropy said:

Will we get outstanding features that Brundle used to do? Will the Beeb devote 3+hours on Sunday afternoons?

For starters they don't need to, the hour before the race that ITV did was mostly rubbish. but if they want to they can give more pre-race coverage again using the BBCi. Practice, interviews and lots more.

Entirely disagree.

Call it pride or me being old but chucking things onto BBCi is like the last resort. F1 is a prime sport and deserves prime treatment. You don't get Football Focus on BBCi, its on BBC1. The same with F1, the coverage should be top class.

Some of the features may be bland but I find it more interesting that flicking through F1 Racing magazine. It gives humanity to drivers, get to know them better (DC being a great example), seeing them and forming an opinion from their body language, learn their lives away from the race track eg. Webber's Aussie challenge/endurance pursuit thingy, Sutil's piano playing a la Cevert and de Angelis.

[FourWheelDrift]

No the things they don't show now can be on the BBCi, like practice sessions, Thursday build up interviews and such like, all the things that have never been shown live or even shown at all.

[Alex]

dpbird90 said:

No Murray, you're forgetting that the BBC will piss all over the ITV coverage, and there is one good reason for this.

NO MORE JAMES ALLEN

No more adverts!

[paranha]

Any regular BBC 2 GP viewer knows how the Red button works to complement the main transmission.Junkies can view 125-250 practice and races, as well as after the podium presentations one can get all the race details from the riders and garage news.

For F1 2009 the BBC can reinvent innovation.

[Eric Mc]

Muzzer said:

In fairness to Murray, he's referring to how the BBC used to cover the F1 in the days before ITV.

All those who harp on about James Allen and ad breaks seem to forget the dark days of no qualifying coverage at all (apart from the British GP) and race build-up amounting to 2 minutes of Murray talking before the start. In the very dark days, they didn't even send Murray to the circuit and up to the 1980's they didn't even cover every GP...

But, times have moved on now and I think the BBC wouldn't have taken F1 if they couldn't do at least as good a job as ITV.

Wrong - BBC started covering EVERY Go from 1978 (not live of course). Between 1936 (yes, that far back) the BBC covered all sorts of motor sport and a lot of it was live. They certainly covered Crystal Palace racing from the mid 1930s. They started covering the British GP in 1948 and started carrying some European GPs from the early 1950s. In those early days, all of the coverage HAD to be live as there were no easy methods of recording live TV feeds.

By the early 1960s they were covering the British GP and the French, German, Monaco and Italian GPs. Some they couldn't cover because the host countries still hadn't started broadcast TV yet (South Africa had no internal TV network until 1976).

In 1976 BBC decided they would show highlights of ALL the F1 GPs (on top of the live coverage they had been showing for years). This decision was made on the back of the massive increase in popularity of F1 following James Hunt's World Championship in 1976. Unfortunately, due to problems arising over the showing of commercial logos on BBC, broadcasting of the new highlights programme was postponed until the 1978 season which is when the show "Grand Prix" went on air.

As the popularity of F1 continued to grow in Britain, particularly with the rise of Nigel Mansell in 1985/86, the BBC gradually increased the live element of their F1 coverage, including increasingly live coverage of qualifying. They often slotted in live qualifying into their Saturday "Grandstand" programme (I remember watching Monaco qualifying live in 1994).
By 1996, BBC were sending their team (including Murray) to all the GPs. I bumped into Steve Ryder (anchor-man for BBC in those days) at Imola in 1995.

With Damon Hill's rise in the mid 1990s, viewing figures for F1 soared in the UK and it was in that heightened atmosphere (probably the peak that F1 ever reached in Britain) that ITV jumped in and offered Bernie much bigger bucks than the BBC could afford at the time. Bernie never even offered the BBC the opportunity to bid back. He just took the coverage away from them on the basis that he "knew" they wouldn't have been able to place a comparable bid to ITV's offer.