How bad is Sky coverage

[foreversideways]

Just watched the latest race this weekend and i can only say, could Sky make a worse job of covering it. Did that Scotch woman know anything about Indy cars at all and what sort of qualification is a "racing expert" or a "US racing expert". Then half way through we loose the feed. Pathetic !!

[Hazard]

Well, the feed loss wasn't their fault - though it was very annoying.

Lee Mackenzie is the pit reporter for the A1 GP series, and ex-presenter of the ITV Motorsport Sunday (name of which I forgot, it was mainly a BTCC programme). So she knows a bit of motorsport, but maybe not Indycars so much.

Chris Tate worked for Lola & Panoz so could be considered to be very much an expert on US Motorsport.

I don't know who that driver was.

It was live coverage - the panel bit's not so important, as long we had Gary Lee & Larry Rice on the commentary - and to give that racing guy credit, he did his best to keep up with what was going on during the outage (during which I switched to the indycar.com video stream).

So - considering, in answer to your perhaps rhetorical question, I think they're doing fine and disagree with you entirely! But that's just my opinion.

[foreversideways]

Oh come on, people complain about ITV's coverage of F1 on other threads, but it's light years ahead. I have no complaint with the US side of things, i just think the UK end look like a load of rank amateurs. Actually i don't mind Keith Hewen.

[mattcat]

Well as long as you don't have to listen to Scott Goodyear's asinine comments, it has to be better than U.S. coverage!

[Hazard]

Originally Posted by foreversideways

Oh come on, people complain about ITV's coverage of F1 on other threads, but it's light years ahead. I have no complaint with the US side of things, i just think the UK end look like a load of rank amateurs. Actually i don't mind Keith Hewen.

I suppose putting F1 in perspective, I'm thinking about the budget being spent or available considering how many viewers they get.

[Knowlesy]

Miss Mackenzie was dropped from ITV's Speed Sunday for not speaking a single word during one installment. So perhaps not the ideal candidate then, but in fairness she does a fine enough job on A1 GP.

The Sky coverage of US Motorsport is a touch hideous in some ways. I don't understand their desire to keep going with the mundane UK studio bits. The presenters and expert panel, if they can really be referred to as such, soldier on admirably but its so very pointless. Sky could save a lot of money by simply not bothering with it and handing us to the US guys from the start.

It's particularly annoying missing post race stuff to hear Keith garbling on about something that happened that was actually very dull indeed.

On the plus side, we get to see the races which is most important. But they perfected that part years ago, so why not work on the crap bits?

[JamesRamone]

Agreed. I know it's not their fault when the feed goes down, but it never seems to happen with other US sports on tv. Paul Cherry is good when they have him, but the presenters are all abit general. I'm happy we actually get to see the races, but its annoying when we miss half of it due to lack of picture.

I'd like to see Jeremy Shaw presenting it.

[Amar7605]

Isn't there a way where the IRL can have similar TV coverage like Formula 1 has?

[Steevp]

I was pleased as punch to see Lee Mackenzie, I'll happily admit to quite the crush, dampened not one jot by her bizarre Scottish pronunciation of "Castroneves"..

But every time that posh drip so called "racing driver" spoke I wanted to punch him, I looked him up and a couple of formula ford races does not an expert make.

I'm actually spending more time watching the indycar.com feed and using the TV as an adjunct rather than the other way around.

[foreversideways]

I use the Indy car site as well but i have Sky HD so it's attractive to watch it in HD. Just needs Sky to have a look at what there doing. I find with Sky they are either excellent or rubbish.

[JamesRamone]

The coverage went down again ! It rarely seems to happen with other US sports, but why so often with the IRL ?!?! It's getting very annoying

[Mystery]

Originally Posted by Amar7605

Isn't there a way where the IRL can have similar TV coverage like Formula 1 has?

I doubt it. If we're relying on international coverage which itself has ad breaks worked into it which are longer or more frequent than the ad breaks permitted over here then Sky are stuck with dead air to fill (which they replace with barely-above-dead air)