Monday, June 20, 2011

When TV race coverage goes bad

Speed Channel cover Formula 1 racing - they have done ever since we moved to America. Occasionally though, Fox will cherry-pick a race and show it on their channel instead. The good news is that they keep the Speed Channel commentary team. The bad news is that they destroy the race by starting coverage after the race has started (missing the start and the run to the first corner), going to commercial every 11 minutes no matter what, and filling the screen with so many Fox popup promos that it's hard to see the cars or racing.
OLN do the same thing to the Dakar rally each year. They're the only network that broadcast the event and they cram it into 30 minutes a day. There's four commercial breaks, local-interest features that nobody is interested in, and when they finally get to the racing, they show the motorbikes and the cars and that's it. They barely mention the trucks, the quad bikes, or any of the non-mainstream teams (the independents).
The icing on this little turd-cake is that the BBC cover all these events but if you don't live in the UK, you can't use their on-demand service to watch any of it. Even if you pay for BBC channels on your satellite or cable service.
I'd like to believe that the US channels would learn a thing or two about motorsports but if it's not NASCAR they're just not interested.