Too many adverts and bull US commentators

[F3L]

Great race, shame about the coverage. Watched the race with my girlfriend and we were both surprised at the number of ad breaks. Crazy and at one stage we reckoned that the time between two of them was less than five minutes. We had the london studio four or five times when the US viewers were geting adverts so we were spared some. Many too many.

I thought UK viewers had great commentary from Keith Huewen, Johnny Mowlem and Chris Tate calling Hunter Ray but then the American guys. Where do they come from? total bull. The stuff they come out with is just so poor, it is a joke really. What is with the Amercans as they are always crap. The pit reporter who sounded like he had just smoked 60 ciggies in a row. He banged on for two minuted about zip. I could go on and on but....they are just awfull and we need the pics but with a UK team on hand.

[gomick]

Remember hearing the "versus" commentators talk bs for 4 or 5 laps of caution, then the race restarted & they ran 1 lap & went to an add break - why

[MarkkuAlen86]

I agree, I hope Indycar gets the viewer ratings this year so skysports can put some more money into the coverage, so we don't have to listen to the american dribble.

It took them forever to identify that it was Tagliani who had gone up the escape road, and am I right in saying he's the only flourescent orange car on the grid?

[Dutton]

The number of ad-breaks was definitely on the extreme side of things. Very Fox/Speed like.

I have got used to having more adverts since leaving the UK for the most part (still find it too many, but have adjusted), but there are some channels/networks which just take the biscuit. It becomes intellectually insulting, not just deeply infuriating.

The programmes become adverts sprinkled with perdiodic show.

It was rather dire at points, although I have known Speed to be worse sometimes.

[drdisque]

couple points:

If you guys don't like these guys you should've heard the OLD American broadcast crew from ESPN. They were truly awful. In fact, American fans are delighted to have Jenkins/Beekhuis/Buhl/Arute/Thackston as it's a major improvement from Reid/Goodyear/Arute/Pedigo from ESPN.

In the US we have a thing where the race will keep airing in a box on the side of the screen while a commercial plays on the right side. This way, they can go to break without the viewer missing any action. I'm guessing you aren't getting these and instead every time they go to that you're getting a full commercial break.

[foreversideways]

I guess you could say "no adds, no show" but they do take it to extremes in the US. It's not just the motor racing, it's all sports and the TV shows. Out of an hour show you normally get 40 minutes after you strip out the adverts. Heard a great story last time i was at an Indy Car race last year from one of the team owners. Apparently one of the big networks was keen to have a big push on soccer a while back, after all the Beckham hype. There was only one stumbling block ??? it was the fact that soccer has 2 * 45 minutes halves. Not enough advert time, so they wondered if they could split the match up into 4 quarters !!!!. The worst think was that they didn't understand it when they were told that they have to play the game the same way the rest of the world does

[drdisque]

That whole Beckham thing is something that was likely fabricated in your neck of the woods. Football (or "soccer") is on here and aired just like everywhere else in the world. The network pays for it by putting sponsor logos in the corner of the screen next to the score and running a lot of ads during halftime.

It's industry standard here that an hour-long TV programming contain 44 minutes of programming and 22 minutes of commercials. It's standard that way so that a program produced for one network can easily be sold and re-aired on another.

Sports are of course different and like I said, you're seeing more ads over there than we see over here since we get "side by side".

[F3L]

Originally Posted by drdisque

couple points:

If you guys don't like these guys you should've heard the OLD American broadcast crew from ESPN. They were truly awful. In fact, American fans are delighted to have Jenkins/Beekhuis/Buhl/Arute/Thackston as it's a major improvement from Reid/Goodyear/Arute/Pedigo from ESPN.

In the US we have a thing where the race will keep airing in a box on the side of the screen while a commercial plays on the right side. This way, they can go to break without the viewer missing any action. I'm guessing you aren't getting these and instead every time they go to that you're getting a full commercial break.

I know we do have a big improvement with Versus over ESPN so we should be thankful. Maybe they can get Hinch who was excellent for ChampCar, on board sometimes.

Your right, we lose all coverage during a break but for approx. 4 or 5 ads during St. Pete they went to the UK studio where we have three commentators. This highlights the quality issue with the local team as the UK ( in my mind ) talk more sense. Anyway VERSUS is better and I for one cannot wait for Long Beach. My first non show in three years.

[Adam43]

Keith Huewen in great commentator shock!

[Jon411]

Last night's coverage was terrible at around 11pm UK time as there was a whole string of full advert breaks - I think in a 30 minute period we had more advert breaks than coverage, I almost gave up watching it as it was so frustrating.

The Commentary was not up to much either. Whilst I am not that clued up with the IRL as I never watched it until they merged with the Champcar guys, and only watched about 4 races last year, I seemed to have a better idea of who was off where etc than the commentators had. On the plus side - there is slight improvement over the awful commentary team they had last year. I wish Sky would allow us to choose if we wanted the US commentary feed, or if we wanted the UK studio team doing a commentary (like I think the BBC do with the F1) - as I would rather listen to the UK team. Also, what a shame that the IRL didn't pick up the team who did the Eurosport Champcar commentary - they were far better than the IRL team.

Its a shame that we are stuck with Sky Sports - as although Eurosport did the advert breaks when they had champcar - I can't remember it being as bad as it was last night (from what I can remember)

[Dutton]

Yup, they were ad-crazy again. Whilst there is too much advertising at the best of times over here, most channels manage to keep it within some degree of bearable limits.

There are some, though, which just completely take the ****. It would appear from the first two races that Versus is one of them. Get used to it folks, for it is not going to change.

[Flyin Ryan]

Why aren't the non-Americans watching the ESPN International coverage of the race?

[Alwaysfirst]

Well although I have over 100 channels not a single one of them shows the IRL so I end up watching on the IRL website. I use the term watching loosely. Even on the lowest quality the signal is so bad that I eventually gave up...and I have quite a fast internet connection. Certainly more than fast enough to watch A1GP online. Why can the IRL not do better than this?

[Tim Northcutt]

Originally Posted by drdisque

couple points:

If you guys don't like these guys you should've heard the OLD American broadcast crew from ESPN. They were truly awful. In fact, American fans are delighted to have Jenkins/Beekhuis/Buhl/Arute/Thackston as it's a major improvement from Reid/Goodyear/Arute/Pedigo from ESPN.

In the US we have a thing where the race will keep airing in a box on the side of the screen while a commercial plays on the right side. This way, they can go to break without the viewer missing any action. I'm guessing you aren't getting these and instead every time they go to that you're getting a full commercial break.

Agree with you on all of that...I like the side-by-side coverage during commercials...we see it all!

[fieldodreams79]

i'm sorry i saw this thread....

i'll be breif:
i hate the coverage of all motorsports in america...
american motorsports is OVER commericialized...
more than half of every race i watch is commercials.....
i don't care how much money people pay to overwhelm the viewiers with ads; i still ain't buyin the crap they sellin....
most american broadcasters never shut up and never really get what they are talking about.....
british commentators are far more knowledgable AND entertaining than the americans...not all british commentators are that grand either
did not even see the last irl race but i feel the pain
i could go on forever....

[Aloysius]

I really strongly prefer this years commentator to last. Jenkins it a pretty decent and experience mediator, Buhl know his stuff, and I've always enjoyed Beekhuis. Just as long as I never have to hear Goodyear and Reid again I'll be happy.