What did you think of the Channel 7 coverage?!

[Rhys_00]

They interviewed Melinda Price and only put it in a little window at the top of the TV, while showing her smashed up S2000 or whatever it was cruising around getting passed... i wouldve preferred a full screen of her.. Thats the only coverage I saw, considering I was at bathurst for 18 hours of it and only got back to watch the end on telly..

[Forbesy]

At least Beretta is better than White.....

[The Snout]

"The first ever 24hr race at Bathurst, with Australia's Monaro leading the World" . I was inches from driving to Bathurst to do a Mark Chapman to that f*ckin commentator when he came out of the booth, if that's what he calls himself. Every bloody 5 mins. Yes it was different to watch but there were laps between each car for christs sake. I'd like the event to succeed, but it needs real depth, real teams, real international talent. What we saw was 24hrs of demostration laps. Channel 7 probably did well to make the thing look remotely interesting.

[rocket]

what the showed was better than nothing, some of the commetory was dodgy & why didnt they call it the monaro 24hr advertising campaign i was sick of seeing & hearing about that P.O.S.

[Crash Test]

I only saw the 9pm update (at the Noosa hillclimb for the rest of the weekend) and all of the footage was taken from a camera at Murray's during the day..

[Rhys_00]

That 'POS' you spoke of won the race, mate.

[The Snout]

There was a race too ? Where.

[Rhys_00]

about 24 laps back.

[racer69]

Originally posted by JohhnyRacer
Absolute ****. I would have thought they would show a bit more that just the last 1.5 hours. What about the start. What about overnight coverage. I dont expect to see the whole race but maybe an hourly update during the regular programs or something. When they did start the telecast at 2.30 this afternoon they didnt even have the decency to give a race update or highlights from the previous 22.5 hours. I hope they do better next year, or someone else televises it.

erm, channel 7 showed the start and first hour live on the saturday, and on the sunday they did a brief review of the previous 24 hours.

I agree the constant Monaro stuff was a bit much

The Snout - Anyone who was expecting wheel to wheel racing obviously doesn't know much about endurance racing. If anything i thought the TV coverage made the race look abit duller, due to the fact that all the action with the leaders happened after they had finished the first telecast (Bowe Ferrari dropping out, Monaro spending 15 laps in pits), or just before crossing back (leading Cirtek Porsche crashing), it was actually a good.

The problem was abit though that the hours shown showed the Monaro leading, i was speaking to some people today who only watched the coverage, and they thought the Monaro had led the whole way, when the Cirtek Porsche led for more than half of the race and was looking a good bet for victory.

[The Snout]

Anyone who was expecting wheel to wheel racing obviously doesn't know much about endurance racing. If anything i thought the TV coverage made the race look abit duller, due to the fact that all the action with the leaders happened after they had finished the first telecast (Bowe Ferrari dropping out, Monaro spending 15 laps in pits), or just before crossing back (leading Cirtek Porsche crashing), it was actually a good.

My point which you missed was that 7 were playing it up to sound a hell of a lot more exciting than it was. The reference to demostration laps was the promo type coverage of the Monaro.

[PEPSI]

Originally posted by golem
No, the race was interesting enough if you looked at some of the other battles. It's not an exciting race, it's more interesting. But when they harp on and on about the same contrived mousetrap it gets boring and annoying. I didn't see the initial hour but caught the last half hour of the first stint and caught all the last stint.

I didn't see any coverage on the RX-7 team, the Go Karts Go car, the compuware magna, David Borg's car, That Bilstein Sube... Nada.

I also didn't mind the tech specs while watching the car in question popping up. Interesting enough. But, again, don't just cover one car.

The coverage was less than B-grade. But some of the sound edits (too and from add breaks) where good quality, so to ME it means the producer and team are good at making shows but knows sweet diddly about making racing broadcasts. To me, these are what appear to be key areas they need to work on. Commentator training / breifing to improve their knowledge of all teams but more importantly, of the machinery involved because this event is mainly driven by interest in the vehichles not the drivers, Timing of coverage of which cars, preset topics to cover during the race quiet points etc.

I tend to think SBS has more informed commentary on Speedweek's coverage of GTP but not so great on the audio-visual side of things due to budget I'd say.

Oh, and Morris, you're right about dumb statements. Oi. Like I said. EMBARASSED.

Ditto!

I am curious as to why Ch 10's vision didn't carry the usual Ch 7 watermark, was it a joint effort? I know a few of the people from the Ch 10 team were there working (tech's).

Also agree with all of the comments re commentary, David Addison was ok and Richard Hay is always value but that Mark guy was lame

[Buckshot]

Channel 10s version did have the watermark but it was hidden away kind of almost half off screen as Channel 10 blew the image up to try and crop it out.

[racer69]

I've noticed in the V8 coverage on 10 that whenever they do the 'circuit breaker' segment on the history of some of the drivers, and have no choice but to use channel 7 footage, they always blow it up in size to avoid the 7 watermark in the corner. 7 had a good look through the archives for the telecast didn't they, great stuff.

Originally posted by The Snout
[B]My point which you missed was that 7 were playing it up to sound a hell of a lot more exciting than it was. The reference to demostration laps was the promo type coverage of the Monaro.

I agree about the Monaro, they went on about it way too much, i expected them to talk it up abit, but not that much.

Trust me though, it was a good race.

[silvervsix]

The coverage was bad, but if you start at the bottom it can only improve.

[Crash Test]

But the thing with a lot of the historic footage, is that it was around in the days when CAMS owned the rights, and watermarks weren't invented

[racer69]

How old though? Any 70s, 80s and early 90s footage that is played on 10 that was done by 7 always has a watermark on it nowadays, the footage they re-record and give to 10 to play is re-taped with the watermark on it.

How could CAMS own the rights if they didn't record it?

[275 GTB-4]

Originally posted by racer69
How old though? Any 70s, 80s and early 90s footage that is played on 10 that was done by 7 always has a watermark on it nowadays, the footage they re-record and give to 10 to play is re-taped with the watermark on it.

How could CAMS own the rights if they didn't record it?

A disturbing "story" I heard once was that Mr Wilko had cornered the market on a lot of the early Bathurst footage and was refusing to release it to anyone.

If this true - shame on yo Gazz :banghead
If this untrue - I apologise for any slur on Gazz's character:

[keeper]

10 ripped off all the old vision off the "history of bathurst" video package. there is a fight going on about who owns the rights to those days, bathurst council or the seven network.

[racer69]

Surely 7 would own it, they had the rights to the race and filmed it using there camera's.

Is Garry Wilkinson in charge of the distribution of the archive footage? Judging from the 24 hr telecast that had heaps of old footage, so the problem would be no other networks having access to it. Seeing as 7 own (presumebly) the rights to it, then surely other networks don't expect to get the footage for free

[keeper]

the broadcast recordings to most of the past bathurst races are owned by network seven, the rights to replay them were owned by C7, the now defunct pay tv arm of 7. Due to a sh#tfight over Sportswatch broadcasting 9 and 10's footage, rugby league on delay and even the v8 shootout from philip island, 10 decided to take a chance during the bathurst telecast using footage ripped off those videos. I think seven have the right to take legal action but thay won't due to the sportswatch scuffle.

[racer69]

Thanks

C7 apparently used to show a fairbit of the old Bathurst races, proper highlights (1 hour or something of late 70s and early 80s), not the review video's. I only found out they showed them though after C7 went bust

[William Dale Jr]

I don't know about a fair bit, but I do remember that right before C7's second channel was put to bed, they showed a 12-hour (IIRC) marathon of Bathurst highlights! I tried to get a mate to tape 81-88 (about 5 hours!) but, sadly, no-one had the channel

[keeper]

Mabye with the Pay tv joint venture, C7 may return?

[racer69]

Originally posted by William Dale Jr
I don't know about a fair bit, but I do remember that right before C7's second channel was put to bed, they showed a 12-hour (IIRC) marathon of Bathurst highlights! I tried to get a mate to tape 81-88 (about 5 hours!) but, sadly, no-one had the channel

shame i missed it as well, the 80s are my favourite period of the race. If only channel 7 would show this over the christmas/summer break as opposed to old black & white movies, seeing as they are already edited, it is no extra work to put them on.