tags: F1
ITV F1 Shambles - how it was reported.
April 25th, 2005, by Rich.
The shambles of ITV’s 2005 San Marino F1 coverage has been picked up by several of the UK’s newspapers and news websites. Here’s what they’re saying:
Jim Rosenthal, the presenter of ITV’s formula one coverage, sided with disbelieving viewers last night after the channel broke away from the climax of the San Marino grand prix to take a commercial break. The Guardian
Neil Duncanson, executive producer of ITV F1, confessed: “None of us are happy. The Sun
Furious fans flooded ITV with complaints after producers cut away from the action to an advertising break with three laps remaining as the world champion and young charger Fernando Alonso diced for victory. The Mirror
Mark Whittell, a spokesman for ITV Sport, continued to defend their coverage. arguing that they were ‘obliged to include five commercial breaks during a race and that they did not want to take the final break while Jenson Button was in the lead’. However, as the Guardian pointed out, Button lost the lead on the 47th lap of the 62-lap race. Planet-F1
ITV admitted that it was as frustrated as anyone, but that it had obligations to its advertisers. “They are the people that keep things like Formula One on television,” a spokesman insisted. crash.net
Of course you don’t hear or see any of this. You’ve already put your foot through the TV set and are currently en-route to the headquarters of the broadcaster, along with several hundred thousand others, to let said commentator, and his employers, know how you really feel. pitpass.com
Notably, at the time of writing, ITV have yet to mention the debacle on their website.
If you’ve seen other coverage, please post a link in the box below.
April 25th, 2005 at 2:37 pm
April 25th, 2005 at 3:23 pm
F1 Central has a story. As does Yahoo UK. And finally, PitPass has an excellent Talking Points column on this issue.
April 25th, 2005 at 3:40 pm
It’s interesting that the ITV are reportedly claiming that they have ‘obligations to its advertisers’ to have an ad break. If I were a company director that paid money for an advertisement specifically aimed at a F1 audience, the last thing I’d want is my product and brand to be in any way linked to the events that took place on Sunday. Surely the negative impact of such advertising on companies, such as Audi, outweigh the cost of the ad itself, and maybe ITV are in some way responsible for not putting clauses into their contracts to safeguard such situations that are negative to ITV, the advertisers, the sponsors, and most of all the fans.
April 25th, 2005 at 9:35 pm
Indeed, there are those who say there’s no such thing as bad advertising; and to those people, may I introduce Mr. Gerald Ratner.
April 29th, 2005 at 12:31 pm
It’s not rocket science for ITV to record the race during the ad break ( should the action demand it ) and then bring the viewer back into the action at the same point they left. Ok, they introduce a small program extension but they would have avoided all these problems.
May 5th, 2005 at 10:41 am
As I remember it, just before the disastrous cut away to the adverts, the commentator was heard to say something along the lines of…” Don’t go anywhere! Keep watching this!”
The sad thing is that this was the most exciting GP in years. We could not believe our eyes/ears when the went away for all but the last lap.
May 22nd, 2005 at 5:17 pm
I was really surprised that ITV waited so long into the race to show the final ad slot, as the rest of the race was fairly lack-lustre so they had ample opportunity to fit in their required adverts. Is this sort of thing just down to bad planning or an inability to think on their feet?
June 2nd, 2005 at 1:44 pm
I really have to laugh at the coverage this is getting. I live in South Africa. Up until this year we only got local commentators giving their usual 2p worth of uninformed comment, usually derived from websites. We were only allowed to see one of the qualifying sessions, and as far ad ad breaks they came at pre-determined times regardless of the action taking place. There were a few times when we got back the race leader had changed or a major player had crashed.
Now in 2005 we do not get any live coverage from the national broadcaster, only from the satellite providers like Supersport. The reason is that a “leading” Black business man who is well in with the government is involved with the A1 GP, and has termed F1 GP as a racist sport only open to white males.
So count yourselves blessed that you can watch the best sport in the world on an open channel.
June 20th, 2005 at 11:45 am
ITV really needs to look at their control over advertising slots. Without commenting on the tyre fiasco surrounding the American Grand Prix- a Producer decided that a ’slot’ was necessary during the run up to the first pit stop of the Ferrari’s- cutting in when Ruben’s team were getting ready- rejoining at the end of Michael’s pit stop- which led to Ruben’s lead for a few laps. ITV needs to employ a Producer who understands the sport and give him the authority to put that ‘understanding’ into practice.
June 21st, 2005 at 8:38 am
I understand the need for ITV to slot it ads to the live coverage. There timing is not good though. I would like to see the whole race as we used to on BBC. Why cant they show the whole race at least when they show the replay.