Conference krakar::f1

	Apparently Martin Brundle will be co-comentator with Murray
	Walker on ITVs GP coverage. Mansell will also appear 
	occasionally and they will be following the fortunes of
	the Stewart team in particular. There will also be a 
	technical expert and a female pit reporter (anyone remember
	John Bolster?).

	Apparently they're going to give it heavy coverage and 
	races that occur at unsocial hours will be repeated in 
	their entirety during the day.

	-John

    The full team is as follows:
    
    Anchor Man		Jim Rosenthal (From circuit not studio)
    Commentary		Murray Walker
    			Martin Brundle
    Studio Expert       Simon Taylor - ex R5 Live, Autosport Editor
    			Tony Jardine - Ex BBC GP
    Pit Lane		James Allen - Eurosport & Writer
    Paddock		Lousie Goodman - Ex Jordan GP
    Director		Keith McKenzie - Ex BBC 12 British GPs to his
    			credit
    
    Format - 4 progs per weekend, 90 mins live qualifying, 15 min summary
    at 5.20pm on Saturdays, Race coverage from 30 minutes before to 20 mins
    afterwards, hour long highlights program at 11pm on Sundays. Melbourne
    will be repeated on Sunday afternoon. 
    
    Sponsorship by Texaco #3.4m year 1, rising to #3.8m by year 4.
    
    Sounds good apart from the ad breaks
    
    Paul

    Being stuck in the land of the Windmill and ball shaped cheese we don't
    get much in the way of the ITV transmissions here.
    
    BBC was my lifeline to the GPs.
    
    Does anyone know if any of the National Radio Stations (R5Live?) are
    going to be providing commentry?
    
    Or do I have to try and follow RTL5/RTL+?
    
    Kevin 

>  Or do I have to try and follow RTL5/RTL+?

F1 coverage will be moving to RTL4 this season.
Btw, it could be worth a try ;-). The commentry the last few years was
a few levels above that of BBC / Eurosport / RTL+, imho
Finally someone instantly recognizing drivers when a piece of the car
was shown in a flash, and very alert on everythings that's happening
on the track.
My experience with the other stations is, that while you notice
something, e.g. someone trying to overtake / having problems / going for
a pitstop, who's not in front at that time, that is only being noticed by
the commentator the next lap, or in the replay...

    And in Canada.                                                   
    
    TSN reported that they have signed a 3 year deal for F1 coverage.
    
    Don't know all the details of who and when but before this they did not
    have a contract, so we were in the dark (for F1). If the contract is 
    the same as last year we will only get the race, no qualifying. They do 
    usually repeat  the broadcast during the following week.
    
    A little F1 coverage to keep us going. No sleeping in on Sundays.
    
    Fred

�.38Being stuck in the land of the Windmill and ball shaped cheese we don't
�.38get much in the way of the ITV transmissions here.
    
    You ought to move to the U.K then! :-)
    
    Martin (who's going to his room!).

    Well what did people think of ITV?
    
    I'm not that impressed, I recorded the 2am live slot and noticed:
    
    They cut the interviews with the drivers, and hence the Haks interview
    wasn't even shown!
    
    The pit timing problem, Murray Walker said wasn't their fault.
    
    They also seemed to have more adverts than they first said they would.
    
    
    Greg

    
    
    Considering how much time they devoted to the coverage I was amazed
    that they didn't show us any of the final warmup or even give us
    a list of times. Nothing on teletext either.
    
    Generally I thought it was similar to the BBC coverage. Brundle though
    is a big plus - much better than Palmer.  
    
    Richard.
    

    Not having ITV here in Windmill land I was forced to watch RT4, they
    had very few adverts and these were to the end of the race and only a
    couple of minutes long they did have a *lot* of voive interviews with
    Drivers, I got tired of switching the Mute buttons on the Sat Receiver
    and TV on/off.
    
    The Radio 5 commentry was fair, they had a good backup panel with Both
    team owners and ex-drivers but they did seem to be a minute or so
    behind the TV coverage, however they had an ideal view of the whole pit
    lane and gave very accurate timings on the Pit Times which was just as
    well as the TV timer was buggered.
    
    All in All I miss the BBC but my substitute worked out OK.
    
    Kevin

I thought the ITV coverage was "different" - but I'd hesitate to say 
better at this early stage.

The pre and post coverage is a bit over the top. Hopefully they'll 
re-balance it.

Martin Brundle is very good - not the quite the acid wit of James 
Hunt, but a whole bucket load more than Jonathan Palmer.

The advert breaks may be a good idea - at least I get a chance to 
go and get another beer/coffee/sandwich/natural break etc. Less of 
a personal endurance race now - maybe?!

Rupert

	I thought that the coverage was pretty good, all told.

	The thing I found most annoying, was a BBC import anyway.
	For some reason Murray, dear chap as he is, has this ever
	so annoying habit of always referring to Frentzen as 
	Heinz-Harald Frentzen why?. Alesi, Berger, Hill, Schumacher
	etc. and then Heinz-Harald Frentzen, always Heinz-Harald.
	I'm bored Murray, please stick to surnames.

	Martin Brundle was pretty good. Of course he's been in 
	the box before but was always very non-commital, but now 
	that he's out of the running he has more interesting and
	revealing things to say.

	-John

	Incidentally I've heard of a European channel called DF1 (on
	satellite?) which is digital (widescreen?) and has no adverts. 
	Probably of no interest to UK viewers but maybe in the future.

	-John

I agree on the point about the warm-up times - where were they? I even 
looked on BBC CEEFAX and could not find them.

Dave.

A particularly good point to note, ref HHF, when he shot across the sand trap, 
Murray was harping on about 'How excited HHF got when the pressure was on and 
the mistakes he made', this was immediately followed by the reply. This 
conclusively showed the brake disk exploding, and HHF spinning away.'AH', says 
MW, after a short pause, 'I apoligise humbly and grovellingly to HHF for the 
previous comments'

 Made me laugh, lets be serious, he's an old duffer who makes generalisms and 
foolish comments in the heat of his excitement, about all the drivers.( I seem 
to remember a great comment about Suzuka last year, but can't think of it right 
now.), but you can't quibble at his knowledge.

 Still, he gets my vote, just as long as it's not Archie McPherson-Strut from 
Eurosport's highlights, the man's a complete buffoon.

 Here's hoping they don't employ Mansell.............8-)


 Mad

    Being interested in all sorts of high speed transmission technologies
    and telecomm satellites, I had converted my TV satellite receiver to
    digital 6 months ago.
    
    Because of this I could watch the Canal Satellite SuperSignal and the
    associated channels. 
    
    Several comments:
    
    - during the practice sessions the signal was pretty bad with lots of
      cuts both in the images and sound
    
    - for the race everything was solved and the signal was perfect
    
    - you get 6 independant channels: 1 is the SuperSignal and the 5 others
      show different cameras, incar cameras, pit cameras and the official
      timing screen 
    
    - no commercial breaks
    
    - language is selectable, as the rest of the Canal Satellite channels
    
    - the french commentary was done by the previous Eurosport French
      commentator (needs improvement) and Patrick Tambay
    
    - negative point: not knowing what happens on the other 5 channels you
      may not watch the particular piece of action of special interest to
      you. Some PIP is definitely required. Otherwise you spend too much
      time zapping between channels

    re last,
    
    There's a interesting article on digital broadcasting in
    march's issue of F1 magazine which focuses on Bernie E's 
    investment in the above mentioned technology, and it really
    does sound impressive, 
    
    cheers
    
    mark
    
    p.s. patrick, how much extra in % did you have to pay
    for receiving a digital transmission, or is it on a 
    pay per view billing.?? 

    I did not have to pay any extra. The 1st F1 race was free.
    
    For this week-end and subsequent races it is FF 80. per race week-end,
    that includes practices, warm-up and race.
    
    FF 80 more or less equals 9-10 pounds and 13-15 US$.

    French TV channel TF1, which carries the F1 GPs, has been kicking up a
    fuss about the preferential treatment given to pay-per-view channels.
    Apparently, in Melbourne, TV crews from regular terrestrial channels
    had a hard time getting onto the grid, had fewer cameras at their
    disposal, and were very unhappy with the quality of the broadcast.
    
    More Bernie-inspired antics, or hype?
    
    Edward.

The German RTL channel shows qualifying and the race, so when ITV 
goes to adverts, you can still see the action!

greg