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Watched a replay of the programme last night. 2 things apart from the usual hopeless Stevenson and adverts stood out for me. The tedious De Sousa feature you know and the absurd crowd sound effects (are they really necessary, I just find them a distraction).
After a biggish race the other day the first comment analyst Jim McGrath made was “First of all well done Jamie Lynch for tipping that winner this morning on the Morning Line”
What various individuals have tipped should be a minor irrelevance, certainly just after a big race and of course the same prominence is never given to the multitude of losers tipped.
PS
Mustn’t forget the pointless running clock a la RUK style during the races. Tells you absolutely nothing during the race because you never know far they have gone.Damning view from Quipco on C4’s coverage.
http://www.racingpost.com/news/horse-racing/#newsArchiveTabs=last7DaysNews
Question is could ITV do any better, given that they haven’t covered the sport in decades.
I don’t think that it is fair comparing viewing figures to 2012 as that was Frankel’s farewell and also the last broadcast of horse racing on BBC.
I do believe that C4 is the best channel to show racing going forward but the current product under IMG Sports Media needs sorting – I feel they are trying too hard to cater to a new demographic with the new innovations at the expense of the hardcore viewer and I do hope that Highflyer Productions (who were responsible for C4 racing for the last 28+ years) throw their hat back in the ring when the contract comes up for renewal.
For me, we need to go back to seeing the horses in the parade ring for more than a few seconds before the race, maybe include a spot for new viewers which explains about the commonly used horse racing terms and most importantly get rid of the bland presenters (Persad, Stevenson and Fitzgerald) and replace them with people with actual personality – Alastair Downs, Mike Cattermole, John Francome, Brian Gleeson (sometimes appears alongside Stevenson) and dare I say Matt Chapman etc
Well, what else could you compare it to? No other terrestrial channel has shown racing for years if at all. And anyway it’s not as if this is a one off figure, C4’s coverage of the same event has fallen year on year. Coverage of all the major racing events has fallen year on year under C4. Like it or not C4 is a minority channel which attracts very few viewers no matter what they show. ITV may be able to reverse the trend if they take racing over, but I’m not sure that even they can do it. They don’t do much sports coverage on ITV1, except for the inevitable football, preferring to leave most other coverage to ITV4 – and that won’t have enough viewers either.
Sky Sports, BT Sport et al – no good either. Sports that move to pay TV lose viewers, happened with cricket, happened with MotoGP. It becomes a vicious circle. These channels pay a fortune to the governing sports body, viewing figures decline and eventually the channels will stop paying as they don’t get the viewers so the sports lose both money and fans.
Well, David Redvers is spot on about one thing. Racing is first and foremost a sport which is capable of having you punching the air in delight without having a financial interest(Coneygree, Kauto Star etc) and secondly a series of betting mediums.
The only way to attract new viewers to the TV coverage is to sell the sport as a spectacle rather than to assume that people are only tuning in to see if their bet will come up. I actually think that C4 do a good job conveying the drama of the big races.
I still maintain that the viewing figures aren’t accurate as such a small sample of viewers are used. Oh, and if Francomes comes back I’ll become a full time RUK viewer.
Spielberg could produce it under a billion pound budget and it would make no difference. It’s a minority sport these days and will never again be a major one
BG – the new style IMG Sports Media has introduced has caused the fall, by the sounds of it you seem to intimate that there should be no racing on terrestrial TV at all?
The days of terrestrial TV pulling in big numbers (like it did back in the day) in any genre are long gone due to increased choice/channels and back in the day horse racing (except maybe on Derby and Grand National days) would never pull big numbers as it was seen as a minority sport.
Yes C4 have a problem but given their history of broadcasting racing (discounting the BBC you would have to go back to the days of World of Sport to find the last time ITV broadcasted racing) I think they are still the best option albeit with major changes to the current product.
I agree LD73, the change from Highflyer to IGM has been a disaster and C4 should realise that.
I disagree though on the terrestrial TV and the viewing figures. Most people still watch TV as their choice for viewing anything. Yes, this is changing, but it’s going to be years before other media overtake TV, if they ever do.
Unfortunately, my gut feeling is that without the BBC horse racing on any terrestrial channel will only continue to see falling viewing figures. If ITV take it over they may improve a little bit, but will never be near even the last viewing figures the Beeb brought to the sport.
The other problem and this exists in both terrestrial and pay TV channels is that the people running the sports side are narrow minded in the sense that they only cover certain sports period. Football, rugby, cricket, tennis in various forms are more or less it. They simply don’t want to cover anything else because these are the ones they think people want to watch and so pay big money to obtain the viewing rights to. So viewers don’t get the option to try anything else. We watched the Formula-E series on ITV4 last year and frankly it’s much better viewing than F1. But I wonder, if you asked people in the street if they’d seen it, how many would say yes?
David Redvers has lost me on this one.
I watched both The Morning Line and Channel 4 Racing yesterday. In the morning I saw Paul Nicholls talking about his horses for most of the hour, and then an interview with Racing’s current “narrative” ambassador Victoria Pendelton. I heard little mention of betting in any of it. Of course whoever is on there is asked for a selection in whatever race is “analysed” but that’s been the case since the Highflyer days.
In the afternoon I watched a visit to Colin Tizzards yard, no mention of betting on that either. The format seems pretty much the same as its always been, quick pre-race analysis in the studio, betting “jungle”, down to post/at the start shots, show the race, winning jockey interview, winning connections interview, ad-break, start all over again. Where’s the “almost entirely devoted to the betting on the racing that day” in that??
Channel 4’s YouTube channel which admittedly could do with an update has at the top, videos on Richard Hughes, Sir Peter, Sir Henry, great renewals of the King George, Frankie. No mention of betting there anywhere either.
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