NBC's "Coverage" of the Race of 1000 Years

[Liz]

While I do understand that NBC is the "Home of the NBA" and this is the Weekend of the College Football Bowl Games - couldn't they have afforded to hire some people who actually like racing for this very poorly presented 2 hour "highlight" film of the Race of 1000 Years" ?

The first hour of the package covered some of the first hour of the race, not in sequence or with much detail. The second hour covered the other five hours, sort of. The broadcasters reminded me of Bobby Unser's limping, chattering "commentary" of the Vancouver Champ Car races ("Wet tires loooooove the water!"), and I got the distinct feeling that they really didn't know any more about the racing teams than what was printed in the Official Program.

Maybe I'm spoilt by Speedvision's coverage. But I think Don Panoz is going to have a stroke when he sees this film.

What kind of coverage did you get and what did you think of it?

[Carrie]

At least you got some coverage Liz If we do get coverage of it over here (that isn't on satelite) then I don't know about it! So the only time I've actually seen the ALMS is when we went to Silverstone earlier this year - fantastic

[marcus]

we have to wait until the 7th to get a 2 hour highlights package in Oz..it may even be the covergae you recieved Liz..but its more than what we have had all year..every round so far this year has been 30 min shows ..you see the start then about 15 accidents and spins and then the winner crossing the line..silly trying to cram a 6 hr or even a 24 hr event into 30 mins ...so 2 hour coverage is a real bonus for us..pity we have to wait a week.

[meatballeyes]

while i agree that the two hours of coverage on nbc leaves much to desired for the hardcore fan, perhaps the additional exposure in the usa is worth the sacrifice. consider:

first: only a few teams actually showed up to compete. as much as i like the new panoz (and the old ones), i wasnt expecting anything but a dominating audi win. the race was a blowout in both the lmp and gts class (viper formation flying). honestly, did we really need to see six solid hours of that?

also: there was considerable griping this year about the timing of this race. perhaps for the privateer teams the timing is too close to the rolex 24 (four weeks away!) next year the adelaide race is scheduled earlier, and should attract more teams. this year the new years theme seemed like the right way to do things - at least for the adelaide fans. next year we need more diversity and competition among all of classes. that may help the championship battle to extend to the end of the season, ensuring that everybody sticks around (team schnitzer and alex job racing come to mind).

also: the nbc sacrifice may have been worth it to showcase the new navicam system, which i felt did an excellent job. if none of you noticed, the satellite linked cameras zoomed in on the cars like no mortal could. as a competitor, having the sponsors on your racecar door displayed clearly on network tv is a relief. remember, speedvision isnt available everywhere (we just got it in september). if the nbc coverage helps to attract bigger sponsors with more money then it cant be totally bad.

navicam link:
http://www.americanlemans.com/pages/...ms001014b.html

navicam photo:
http://www.americanlemans.com/pages/...ust/m-012.html

i agree that the nbc on air people are less than appealing. personally, i would like to see derek bell in the announcers chair.

my two cents

Kipling Hugh Taylor

[Liz]

If a race runs for six hours, Speedvision shows six hours. If it runs for 12 hours - we get 12 hours. And of course they run the entire 24 Hours du Mans. Perhaps some of it is boring to people who don't know what they're looking at, or don't care about anything but accidents, broken cars and crashes. Some of us like to see what they do on the track - how they take the corners, how close they get to each other, whether the GTS cars are moving over on the LMPs and if anyone is getting away with the BTCC type stuff they were pulling in Laguna Seca ... if anything or anyone runs across the track - you know ...

"Do we really need to see six hours of that?" Erm, yes, we do. I don't especially trust people who don't know anything about racing to pick out the best parts of the six hours to show me - especially when their main interest appeared to be zooming in on the weird looking Audi driven by McNish, so they could make jokes about kilts and talk about the paint job and how it didn't show up so great at 200 mph but it was a really good job, if you saw it standing still, and they really thought it looked like a crocodile ... etc. etc. bla bla bla. I happened to know that the new Panoz went out early with gearbox trouble, but although it was out after 5 laps, it took most of an hour for us to see it actually pull into the pits and then to see them work on the car and finally to hear what happened. I never figured out if the second Panoz (O'Connel and Katoh) was in the race or out of it; they kept on talking about it as if it was in when it was out, and then when it got back in, they couldn't find it - stopped at Pit Out with no gears - When McNish passed Biello to take the lead, the broadcast team said he passed Biello on the 5th lap, then the 25th lap and finally the 17th lap. (The latter was correct, I think.) And two seconds after the winning car crossed the line - ZOOM OFF TO A GOLF MATCH!

If people were tuning in for the first time to see the generally awesome ALMS race on NBC, it's possible they might wonder what the big deal was. These races are awesome in person and on Speedvision. The race on NBC was a mess.

[meatballeyes]

Originally posted by Liz
[B]"Do we really need to see six hours of that?" Erm, yes, we do.[B]

my comment was not meant to imply that the entire race should not be shown. if that is how i came across then i apologize. personally, i want to see every minute of every race. (no commercials!) however, given the interest of the average north american sports fan it will never happen on nbc. perhaps the best remedy is to show live coverage on speedvision, and then a taped delay highlights show for the masses on nbc. dont you agree?

Originally posted by Liz
If people were tuning in for the first time to see the generally awesome ALMS race on NBC, it's possible they might wonder what the big deal was. These races are awesome in person and on Speedvision. The race on NBC was a mess.

i just finished comparing video tapes of the las vegas camera work against the adelaide event. while you are absolutely right about the cheesy commentary, my comparison of the actual camera work convinced me that the new navicam system works extremely well. i could barely make out the sponsor decals during the las vegas event. the decals were much easier to read during the navicam shots at adelaide. if anyone has tapes of these events - compare them yourself. you will be impressed (until they start talking). people like us who have attended sportscar races know that nothing can compare to the real thing. but i felt that the navicams helped to heighten the tv experience. do you feel that the additional exposure provided by tighter camera work on nation wide network tv will fail to help the series in the long run? im not trying to pick a fight with you, liz, but i do value your opinion (after all, you do have 10000 posts !).

the alms has a hard time attracting privateers. im sure that everyone would like to see a unified sportscar championship in north america, if not the world over. on one side, i think that the commentary was excruciating. on the other side, i feel that any network coverage that may attract sponsors and teams and helps to bolster sportscar racing is worth suffering through weak commentary. (brings me back to derek bell - please hire him!)

i guess that i love watching sportscars enough to excuse the fools behind the nbc microphones.

good night!

KHT

[elephino]

The Panoz 2001 went out with alternator problems, but that is beside the point.

It would be great if Australia got coverage which went for 6 hours of a 6 hour race..the only time we do is for the Bathurst 1000. There was a 12 hour production car race for a few years and that got the first hour, 2 minutes of highlight for a while and then the last 2 hours.

As for current Australian coverage of ALMS races, the actual racing would be maybe 10 minutes if that after the ads, prerace rubbish (and it is the way it is done on the show) and constant mentioning of the Adelaide race. So no wonder we don't really get to see anything of the Sebring 12 hour for instance.

ALMS needs to find more entrants, which the new LMP675 category is trying to do and also to get more teams to go to Australia. Only 25 cars made the start of the race with a meagre 4 in GTS. Then they might be able to get spectators which should increase the number of cars, etc. At most events the crowd is smaller than the number of team members. The Adelaide event had the 2nd largest crowd of the series and that was partly bolstered by the fact it was nye.

At least an Australian made it into 2nd

[Heeltoe6]

"And of course they run the entire 24 Hours du Mans"
Uh, try 23. They cut away for F1 qualifying.


Endurance racing will never work on network TV. But Panoz desperately needs it to keep the sport growing. It'd be better if NBC limited themselves to the 2h45m races which they should be all means show live and complete(although have condensed some to 2 hrs mixed of taped and live), and leave the true endurance races to Speedvision. However, Adelaide was a big deal and was only 6hrs, and not as hurt by condensing as a 10h/12h/24h race would have been; it was in Panoz's best interests to get as big as tv audience as possible as well as in NBC's interests to keep promting the sports. Speaking of which, NBC is currently slotted to broadcast 3 2h45m raes next year and 1 4h race, with 3 races having TBA tv deals.

As for the on air talent, it's a mixed bag. Bestwick is a Nascar guy, pure and simple. He does try to get energetic about the broadcast and I can say with certainty he does know a lot about the current series itself, but he does lack that passion and historical perspective of road racing. Bill Adam is adequate, not much more you can say. Not sure if it's just being paired with Bestwick or if that he's just not that great of an analyst, but yeah, I'd rather have Daly, Hobbs, Posey, de Cadenet, Scroeder, Sullivan, or any of the other of the SV crew. Calvin Fish would probably work better in the booth than on pit road for NBC. I'm surprised they didn't sign on Dorsey Scroder, because he had worked with NBC in the past as a pit reporter; maybe he expected a full time ride this year, which was why they did not sign him initally, but he still could have joined later telecasts. In any case, Bestwick won't be around anymore, since he'll be doing a lot more Nascar races for NBC which would conflict, so maybe they can fill that void next year. Since SV/NBC do have some sort of partnership(SV picking up replay rights of NBC races), I'm surprised there aren't more crossovers(like Fish), and maybe there will be more next year. But I'm sure NBC wants to have its own identity which might preclude that, but ALMS could certainly influence the decision if they wanted to.

[Liz]

I agree 100% about the cameras - should have mentioned it but I forgot - when we get those new cameras in the regular season broadcasts it will be only one step below being there in person. It will also make it much harder for that BTCC punting to be overlooked, so perhaps we will get back to some gentleman racing again. One can only hope. The new cameras will be especially good at Le Mans if they use them there, are they planning to?

I was talking to someone about the ALMS race at Tremblant this year and he says Turn 3 on that track is only 33 feet wide and he doesn't think they'll get those LMP cars through there without a major crash.

Elphino, you are right about the New Panoz' being an alternator problem - it was the Katoh/O'Connell one that went out with the woozy gearbox. Sorry I got a bit mixed up.

We get that kind of truncated, weeks-late coverage of the BTCC and World Rally, so I know what you mean. And Speedvision covers F1 much better than TSN does but we can't see it - it's blacked out.

I guess I should be glad I get to see it on the same day, even if it's not very good coverage.

[elephino]

I have heard that Channel 10 will not be showing the race this weekend due to golf.

[Liz]

I was at Le Mans in person this year so I saw all 24 hours. Danny Sullivan did a nice job on Radio Le Mans during one of the night stints; he seems to be especially knowledgeable about what happens in the pits and whether it was going well or ill for the team in the pits making repairs. But there is someone who came from NASCAR and he keept on saying "Just like NASCAR" or "Not like NASCAR" which I thought was specious as I'd guess most of the people at Le Mans wouldn't know NASCAR from first base. However, he might have been saying that for the benefit of people watching in the United States on Speedvision....

But in 1999 Speedvision showed the whole 24 Hours. That was what convinced me I had to see it in person.

[Heeltoe6]

The guy who kept talking about Nascar was Allen Bestwick. It did get a bit tiring, but I think he was doing it as much as for himself as he was for the domestic audience, cause up until this year the only thing he's ever covered was Nascar.

On the positive side, the race got a 1.1 rating, which is in itself good, but is even more phenomenal when you consider the race was taped delayed and was only highlight coverage.

[Liz]

Even when it's not properly showcased, it's still some of the finest racing around!

P.S. We would have got the whole 24 hours here in Canada - we don't get F1 coverage on Speedvision. It's blacked out.