[LM24] Speed TV coverage of Le Mans

[deggis]

Originally Posted by the sniper

http://theracingnetwork.com/index.php

(Funny how much I know about this, seeing as I live on the other side of the Atlantic )

EDIT: Looks like more people in Britain know about this channel then in the US!

But apparently they don't want interested people from certain countries as at least couple of countries are IP banned from the forum.

[prototype]

It can't hurt.

It blows my mind that one of these early practice sessions would draw more viewers than Le Mans.

[porsche45]

Originally Posted by prototype

It can't hurt.

It blows my mind that one of these early practice sessions would draw more viewers than Le Mans.

That's because no one is in Le Mans watching in person, they're all at home, but come race weekend, they'll all be at Le Mans.

[Aysedasi]

Just the odd quarter of a million of us..........

[prototype]

A lot of us Americans cannot make it over there, so we watch it on the Television.

When the channel devoted to racing decides to not show Nascar analysis shows.

[The359]

They're a business. They show what's popular, or what they have to in their contract.

[fazzaz]

Or what sponsors will pay for.

[dj4monie]

Originally Posted by The359

They're a business. They show what's popular, or what they have to in their contract.

Stop making excuses, which sport does FOX make money from?

Not NASCAR, its the NFL otherwise they wouldn't play those ridiculous rights fees for it.

NASCAR thinks they are big time because they can charge a little over 7 digits for broadcast rights. Hello NFL charged FOX and CBS in the high 8 digit range.

MNF hasn't been good since ESPN/NFL set the teams before the season starts and because of "parity" a team that is 11-5 and a playoff team withhin one victory of the Super Bowl, could be 5-11 next season due to a key off season lost, retirement or bungled draft pick.

But on Sunday, the TV rating have been at all time HIGHS the last several years. NBC felt it was more important to have the NFL than NASCAR and said "C'ya" by not renewing their rights package.

I'd venture to day the Bowl Championship Series also makes a better return dollar than showing half the NASCAR season and Speed see no direct benefit from it. You have to order digital cable, Dish or Direct TV or have a flying saucer in your backyard to even get Speed.

All we ask as ALMS fans is -

Flag to Flag coverage of TV friendly races (3-5 hour sprint races with post and pre-race coverage)

Full coverage of PLM, Sebring and 24 Hours of Le Mans.

12 races in 2008, compared to how many Craftsman Truck races? Not to mention unimportant coverage of practice, final practice and the half dozen shows related to NASCAR.

NASCAR is popular, but man its not THAT popular...

These NASCAR "lifestyle" shows are NOT in their contract, its self created content to lock in the NASCAR fan base that is looking for extended coverage of races and other "fluff" after FOX, TNT's and ESPN's coverage has quit for the day.

Speaking of ESPN, they have NASCAR related content shows.

When will the madness stop???

I just want the Le Mans race ON in its entirety and don't insult my intelligence by showing me LMS races 2 months after the final LMS race of the season is shown, like there is no INTERNET and no TORRENTS.

The new NETWORK will SAVE us, Speedvision was doing just fine, they were not in the red, they were in the black showing us what we want and not Speed's version of Speedvision which is wall to wall coverage of NASCAR, with some lifestyle shows thrown in and then they tape delay Grand Am (A Nascar series) and show us semi-live coverage of extended events.

[prototype]

Where do I sign?

[AU N EGL]

Originally Posted by dj4monie

But on Sunday, the TV rating have been at all time HIGHS the last several years. NBC felt it was more important to have the NFL than NASCAR and said "C'ya" by not renewing their rights package..

Darn close DJ

NBC had an option for an additional two years. NBC told the NASCAR that

- they would only PAY X amount, about 1/2 of the current rate,

- Team Sponsors would have to pay NBC for close up of cars ( advertsiing or purchase comericals )

- Interviews would only be done of the drivers head, and any mention of the car or teams sponsor would be censored.

- and the big kicker, NBC would only give NASCAR 4 hours total for pre race, race and post race. Anything over that would not happen and would be cut off. even with 3 laps to go, race cut off and going to comercail and next paying show.

NBC told NASCAR to shorted races to 2 1/2 to 3 hours plus add a 15 to 30 min halve time ( you read that right for sponsors comercials ), so a 30 min pre race show and a 30 min post race show.

No wonder NSCAR said Bye

[Fogelhund]

Originally Posted by prototype

Where do I sign?

There is nothing of relevance to sign at this point. For now we just sit, wait and hope that this channel gets off the ground. There should be an update in the next few weeks on their forum as to the status.

For good or bad, the American Le Mans Series is signed on with speed, until the completion of the 2010 season. There is a possibility that The Racing Network, could show some archived races of the ALMS, once they get going.

[mattcat]

Originally Posted by AU N EGL

Darn close DJ

NBC had an option for an additional two years. NBC told the NASCAR that

- they would only PAY X amount, about 1/2 of the current rate,

- Team Sponsors would have to pay NBC for close up of cars ( advertsiing or purchase comericals )

- Interviews would only be done of the drivers head, and any mention of the car or teams sponsor would be censored.

- and the big kicker, NBC would only give NASCAR 4 hours total for pre race, race and post race. Anything over that would not happen and would be cut off. even with 3 laps to go, race cut off and going to comercail and next paying show.

NBC told NASCAR to shorted races to 2 1/2 to 3 hours plus add a 15 to 30 min halve time ( you read that right for sponsors comercials ), so a 30 min pre race show and a 30 min post race show.

No wonder NSCAR said Bye

That sounds ridiculous. Where did you come across this information? I would have told NBC to take a long walk as well.

[dj4monie]

Schedule is out of my Media Center and it shows list Pre-Qual and Test Day twice and then Cup practice and that darn Truck race. On top of that 1 hour of Lucas On Edge and a repeat of Kendall's Test Drive series with the Lexus IS-F.

Not sure if the race is going to run advert free on Eurosport. If it does, or has minimal adverts, less editing and the faster its a t*****t -

I will get that block of 8-9 hours of the race!

I know ALMS just signed a contract with Speed and I knew of the new set of rules NBC put in place for Cup. That was purpose Matt, they didn't want NASCAR back. NFL makes them more money and they needed to clear budget for that...

They can charge companies more to run ads on NFL night games than any other game (or NASCAR) and it also puts them in the mix for future playoffs and the Super Bowl which I can't even remember the last time it was actually on NBC. Which is good because NBC Games are 1080i and light up my "Dolby" on my Surround Sound (well every channel above 480p does that - )

Hopefully this is the last year, it won't be in HD as well on Speed, at least on my "box" there's a new USB Dual Tuner solution coming from Microsoft and Direct TV we are all hoping will be available around Christmas time.

All the more reason to dump your DVR and build a MCE machine, with HD prices continuing to drop like a rock, you can build a nice 6 tera bite PVR, quad tuner system, yikes! Internet TV in MCE is increasing as well -

Finally TV the way you want it, now if only content providers would comply to our whims!

[the sniper]

Originally Posted by dj4monie

Not sure if the race is going to run advert free on Eurosport. If it does, or has minimal adverts, less editing and the faster its a t*****t -

Something I have learnt from live broadcasts of US motorsport that are shown over here, we get alot less advets in Europe then you poor guys in the states. For some NASCAR and ALMS races it seems like you miss half of the race because the ads.

Another thing that really annoys me about SPEED, they do not understand the meaning of a world feed, for example during the 12hrs of Sebring when SPEED was showing NASCAR Qualifying. We got to see some guy warming up for an interview for 10 minutes talking to the people in his ear piece, oblivously not knowing he was being broadcast live around Europe! As well the picture kept going black for long periods of time, Motors had to cover these with a static helicopter shot of the circuit.

[dj4monie]

Originally Posted by the sniper

Something I have learnt from live broadcasts of US motorsport that are shown over here, we get alot less advets in Europe then you poor guys in the states. For some NASCAR and ALMS races it seems like you miss half of the race because the ads.

Another thing that really annoys me about SPEED, they do not understand the meaning of a world feed, for example during the 12hrs of Sebring when SPEED was showing NASCAR Qualifying. We got to see some guy warming up for an interview for 10 minutes talking to the people in his ear piece, oblivously not knowing he was being broadcast live around Europe! As well the picture kept going black for long periods of time, Motors had to cover these with a static helicopter shot of the circuit.

For all this talk of consolidated media has done nothing but gives us ****ty content.

When a few million are interested in something, everybody kicks into OVERDRIVE to try and out do one another to gain market share.

Speed is providing the feed and shouldn't cut away for some "extra" NASCAR content. If Fox wants to show that BS, take off the millionth re-run of "I Love Lucy" and put it on your regular OTA channel!

On both sides of the Atlantic we need to PUSH back on the media. I don't know if its happening in Britain yet, but here Comcast was just caught slowing torrent downloads on purpose because its direct competition with its On Demand services.

Much like Microsoft limits how many peer connections you can have in Vista, if you use software like my personal favorite - VUZE/Azures

If I have more than three streams running it crashes my connection and the only thing that will bring it back is a soft reboot (restart).

I'll be sending Speed a nice long letter, their boards appear off line to me when I try to log on, they are blocking me....

[JHamilton]

I am thankful for what I get to see. If it wasn't for all that Nascar coverage and the people who watch it, we might not get to see LeMans at all.

[AU N EGL]

SPEEDTV will provide 17 hours TV coverage Sat-Sun of the 2008 24Hrs of Le Mans. It was also advertized on the 6/8 edition of WindTunnel that SPEED would broadcast Le Mans Test and Qualifying shows on Sat. prior to its race coverage (these shows are not listed on SPEEDTV's schedule). Radio Le Mans will broadcast live audio coverage of practice/qualifying on Wed. and Thu. Link to Radio Le Mans website is provided below

Wed 6/11 Le Mans practice/qualifying

7PM-9PM local, 1PM-3PM EDT

10PM-midnight local, 4pm-6Pm EDT


Thu 6/12 Le Mans practice/qualifying

7PM-9PM local, 1PM-3PM EDT

10PM-midnight local, 4PM-6PM EDT


All TV times Eastern US


Sat 6/14

7:30AM SPEEDTV - Le Mans Test Day*

8:00AM SPEEDTV - Le Mans Qualifying*

8:30AM - 12:00PM SPEEDTV - 24 hrs of Le Mans

9:00PM - 12:00AM SPEEDTV - 24 hrs of Le Mans

* shows advertized on WindTunnel,
not listed on current SPEEDTV program schedule


Sun 6/15

12:00AM - 9:30AM SPEEDTV - 24 hrs of Le Mans

[The359]

Speed's website also says that the race will be broadcast in HD.

[deggis]

" In concert with the race’s French world feed, the SPEED broadcast team will be a large one as Leigh Diffey and Greg Creamer share play-by-play duties with color commentary from sports car racing veterans Calvin Fish and David Hobbs, who has run this auto racing marathon 20 times. On pit road will be former racers Brian Till, Chris Neville, Justin Bell and sports car announcing veteran Andrew Marriott."

http://auto-racing.speedtv.com/artic...nter-stage-on/

Where's Dorsey?

[Craig]

Originally Posted by AU N EGL

Sat 6/14

7:30AM SPEEDTV - Le Mans Test Day*

8:00AM SPEEDTV - Le Mans Qualifying*

8:30AM - 12:00PM SPEEDTV - 24 hrs of Le Mans

9:00PM - 12:00AM SPEEDTV - 24 hrs of Le Mans

* shows advertized on WindTunnel,
not listed on current SPEEDTV program schedule


Sun 6/15

12:00AM - 9:30AM SPEEDTV - 24 hrs of Le Mans

Please excuse the stupid question but I got myself all confused with the timezones...! I am in California at the moment -- so if I'm right the times that I need to tune in are:

4:30AM SPEEDTV - Le Mans Test Day*
5:00AM SPEEDTV - Le Mans Qualifying*
5:30AM - 9:00AM SPEEDTV - 24 hrs of Le Mans
6:00PM - 12:00PM SPEEDTV - 24 hrs of Le Mans

Sun 6/15

12:00PM - 6:30AM SPEEDTV - 24 hrs of Le Mans

Is that right? I'm all confused...!!!

[deggis]

http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html

[keelan]

We found a stream online that worked really well. In fact, we continued to watch the stream after Speed restarted it's coverage of Le Mans. Coupling the feed with the Radio Lemans broadcast was definitely the way to go.

The stream wasn't real bad quality in comparison to the Speed broadcast (except in the pits), plus we didn't have to deal with 20 minutes of commercials every hour, and didn't spend 15 more minutes watching useless interviews with Doug Fehan and Johnny Mowlem.

Not that i mind listening to Doug Fehan or Johnny Mowlem, but I'm into Le Mans to watch the race, not to watch interviews.

I'll be doing this again next year for sure, unless they offer it as a pay-per-view.

[skycafe]

The Slovenian (someone pointed out that is what it was as I had no clue) video feed combined with Radio LeMans, once I had a good link, worked a treat for me and added to the fun. Mind you, I would rather have had Speed covering it the entire distance, but, you take what you can get.

I've come a long way from the days of the Autoweek delivery to know who won the race!

robert

[prototype]

Originally Posted by keelan

We found a stream online that worked really well. In fact, we continued to watch the stream after Speed restarted it's coverage of Le Mans. Coupling the feed with the Radio Lemans broadcast was definitely the way to go.

The stream wasn't real bad quality in comparison to the Speed broadcast (except in the pits), plus we didn't have to deal with 20 minutes of commercials every hour, and didn't spend 15 more minutes watching useless interviews with Doug Fehan and Johnny Mowlem.

Not that i mind listening to Doug Fehan or Johnny Mowlem, but I'm into Le Mans to watch the race, not to watch interviews.

I'll be doing this again next year for sure, unless they offer it as a pay-per-view.

That widescreen feed was the way to go. Once it was plugged into the TV, there was no reason to go back to Speed.