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I think that the main stay racing people will use RUK and ATR, what is left as viewing figures will continue to diminish. Ireland will suffer due to the lack of old folk having Sky TV. You can put who you like in front of a camera and I believe it will make little difference. Outside of racing who really knows ‘Colin Tizzard, Alan King, Harry Fry, Nicky Henderson et al (I exclude Henry Cecil), some may know the star horses, none will know any owners. Its all sounding depressingly like the demise of dog racing to me. TV is trying to make TV out of very indifferent characters, on CH4 yesterday, there was a view of Nicky Henderson mouthing ‘F Off’ to Willie Mullins after he won with Yorkshill, in jest or not, who needs to see that sort of low grade behaviour on CH4. Take away the racing and what do we have left, presenters trying to make story’s out of a selection of racehorse trainers, jockeys, the odd owner and some stable staff. They do not make good television and most not able to handle a TV interview, the public are not interested in Mr Wylie having a shed load of money to spend on horses. When Claire Balding moved on that was a fairly big sign that there is not much more left in the tank for mainstream racing TV. I don’t think ITV will turn this around. 25/1 of Ant and Dec is the most appealing option.
I agree with the above … I don’t think 90% plus of the population are interested in watching anything much outside of the Grand National regardless of who presents the programme.
I like the majority of what C4 do re horse racing currently and I think it would be hard to improve on very much but the fact is that unless people have had a bet they are not going to be interested in watching a racing programme.
While your general point – that ITV will seek to put together a diverse team – is fine, your use of the word ‘ethnic’ as a noun is not.
Thanks for putting this so succinctly ….a discussion on ethnicity of presenters is totally irrelevant to this discussion and people like Steve who take the opportunity to shoehorn it in and suggest that ‘ethnics’ being represented is a fact and a truth are basically taking a racist position in the sense that they have an inappropriate fixation on an irrelevant aspect of a discussion using unenlightened dated and dehumanising terms .
Rubbish, we still have freedom of speech in this country and channel 4 will pick someone based on their colour and gender because that is how it works.
Today’s RP quoted a list of the expected 34 racedays to be scheduled for ITV1. Chief casualty seems to be Newmarket with only the 2,000 Guineas pencilled in for prime ITV1 coverage.
Newmarket unsurprisingly not too happy about it:-
http://www.racingpost.com/news/live.sd?event_id=14171724&category=0
The list (barring one other day which I can’t remember as I didn’t buy the paper) if I recall is:-
MAR – Cheltenham Festival (4 days)
APR – Aintree Grand National Festival (3 days)
APR – Ayr Scottish National (1 day)
MAY – Newmaarket 2,000 Guineas (1 day)
JUN – Epson Derby/Oaks (2 days)
JUN – Royal Ascot (5 days)
JUL – Sandown Eclipse (1 day)
JUL – Ascot King George (1 day)
JUL/AUG – Glorius Goodwood (5 days)
AUG – York Ebor (4 days)
SEP – Doncaster St Leger (1 day)
OCT – Ascot Champions Day (1 day)
NOV – Cheltenham Open Saturday (PP Gold Cup) (1 day)
NOV – Haydock Betfair Chase (1 day)
NOV – Newbury Hennessy (1 day)
DEC – Kempton King George (1 day)
plus one other which I can’t remember
Biggest omissions from this list include:-
1,000 Guineas, July Cup & Future Champions Day (all Newmarket)
Welsh National (Chepstow)
Tingle Creek (Sandown)York Ebor gets 4 days
So itv racing mainly gets one day a month on itv no racing on itv in January or February, the best racing at St Leger festival is on Thu & Fri of the meet.
Ayr Gold Cup also gets missed off, All Weather Championships missing as well
ATR track gets one day only.
As someone who doesn’t have racingUk I m not bothered which channel the races like future champions day but can see why many folk are annoyed. Maybe my memory is playing risks on me but I thought itv did a great job covering racing. Let’s see how they do come next year.
As I read the article, the above are those meetings pencilled in for ITV1, with either a further 26 to be shown on ITV4, or a further 60; it’s a tad ambiguous
Presumably such as the York and Chester May meetings (or parts of them) and perhaps other days at such as Doncaster St Leger meeting will be on ITV4
Plenty of time for tweaking and wheeling out of speculative duff information before the actual schedule is announced
My bit of duff speculation is that racing will be on every Saturday which, of course, includes the Tingle Creek; and as I’ve mentioned before why anyone gives two hoots whether they be on ITV1 or ITV4 is beyond simple lil’ me
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I think lots of “horsey” people watch the racing, many including myself, rarely having a bet. Many of these people have become alienated from the coverage because the horses seem so low down on the agenda. I frequent a number of horse racing/equine groups on Facebook and the lack of “horses” in Channel 4 coverage is mentioned regularly as a negative and also on Horse and Hound’s news forum. It is maybe a proportion of non betters moving away affecting the figures.I’m in the very rarely bets camp and love to see how the horses are looking especially in the big races. In many cases how a horse looks and is behaving can give you a good guide to how it will perform. Gleneagles looked a ball of muscle and gleaming before the Guineas and won easily. Sire ge grugy has looked terrific in his last two races before the race but wasn’t looking his best the race he got beat. It’s not the sole reason a horse runs well but it is part of the jigsaw and I prefer what I can see to the so called experts tipping the first or second favourite.
Drone, there are still many people who only watch the terrestrial channels especially BBC and ITV. You will see the difference in the viewing figures for racing between ITV1 and ITV4 next year. You would think that racing would want as many people as possible to watch racing on TV to expand it’s popularity. In fact the racing negotiators stated that viewing figures were the main reason for the switch from C4.
SC, I only bet around 6 times a year, partly for financial reasons but mainly because I fell in love with jump racing as a kid because it is such an exciting and spectacular sport. I want any TV coverage to reflect and glory in the excitement and drama. I thought that Nick Luck and C4’s coverage of Knockara Beau’s wonderful effort at Cheltenham last Friday was exactly what we need to attract non betting tv viewers.
RMG made sure Matt Chapman was banned from commentating on their courses he has few friends in the RUK circle.
Regardless of which, I imagine he made the decision not to offer him an extension on the Racetech roster beyond his initial 15-meeting trial back in 2012 an easy one for a number of reasons, notably an apparent over-reliance on the monitor which caused him to misinterpret the stopping error and slither of Jolibob as a fall two out in a four-runner Hereford chase (the 14.05 on Thursday, May 3rd, if anyone’s checking).
gc
Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
Inevitably a lot of the talk has diverted down the route of the merits of the presenting teams past, present and future.
Whoever IMG had got in (or retained) for the relaunched Channel 4 Racing would have had to follow the same editorial, presentational and stylistic remit. Unless we can be unequivocal that this current remit would have suited the Highflyer-employed team any better than the IMG-employed one, the conclusion I’d draw is that the current incumbents are the best people for the job at hand.
How good or not they are isn’t the issue – they’re meeting the expectations of them. The show’s producer Carl Hicks doesn’t ask the team for knockabout irreverence. His on-screen employees don’t provide it.
I had to wince at one comment made at the weekend in the Racing Post by Andrew Franklin, head of Channel 4 Racing for its first 28 years of existence, praising the former Highflyer team for maintaining a dignified silence in the years since their replacement.
This almost a year to the day since he’d torn a strip off IMG’s falling ratings in the same publication, and barely 48 hours since John Fairley, his former wingman on the show, had done the same in much more abrasive terms.
All this without forgetting, of course, a certain Mr McCririck’s ultimately doomed legal challenge – hardly quiet, meek acceptance.
Loyalty to Franklin, incidentally, was the key driver behind John Francome’s decision not to accept any offer (were any forthcoming) to join the IMG-produced product, and it’s improbable that his position will soften with the move to ITV and ITV4 unless Franklin is at the helm. The 5/1 price quoted in places for the return of Francome thus represents dire value as far as I’m concerned.
As for the aforementioned McCririck, I expect that the relative lack of interest in the opinion pieces that John McCririck has uploaded to his Youtube channel won’t have gone entirely unnoticed by the would-be employers at ITV, with a number of pieces still struggling to rack up even a triple-figure number of views a month after upload. Mention of the channel in Robin Gibson’s column in the Post last Sunday doesn’t appear to have made any material difference.
There’s appreciable desire on one other forum I frequent for the emphasis on betting to be reduced once the coverage of racing passes to ITV/ITV4. For better or for worse, that’s the very last thing I expect will happen.
ITV simply isn’t able to adopt that same lofty position as the BBC could during the 1970s and 1980s in particular, whereby they didn’t so much as acknowledge the existence of SPs beyond any mention Sir Peter O’Sullevan may have made of them and had no commercial imperative to do so (q.v. a useful historical piece on TV racing coverage by Brough Scott in last Sunday’s Post).
ITV Racing will get the bookies and exchanges onside, be that directly through the making available of advertising slots or indirectly through extensive lip service to betting mediums during the programme itself, because they daren’t not.
Furthermore, consider just what the provenance is of ITV4. To all intents and purposes, this is the TV channel formerly known as Granada Men & Motors, which should give away plenty about whom it regards as its target audience. If in any doubt, however, a helpful information sheet buried within the ITV Media website contains a few salient lines, reproduced verbatim:
***********************************************************
ITV4 is a haven of sport and cult classics, feeding your inner fan.
At its heart, ITV4 has an extensive range of incredible sporting action including the UEFA Euro 2016 Qualifiers, French Open tennis,Tour de France cycling, Isle of Man TT motorbike racing, Formula E motor racing, Masters Darts, Aviva Premiership rugby and Rugby World Cup. Sporting documentaries such as Sports Life Stories also offer unprecedented behind the scenes insights into the lives of sporting legends.
Other important channel offerings include cult classic Magnum P.I., US acquisitions Storage Wars and Pawn Stars, and action-packed blockbusters such as Bond films and Fight Club.
The channel’s core audience is 25-44 year old males looking for great escapism that’s an antidote to the everyday.
Channel Highlights
– Weekly reach of 10.6m, 6.2m Men
– Strong Male profile with 62% of all viewers being Men
– Tour de France final day was watched by 1.2m and a 7% share
– ITV4 is the 6th biggest digital channel for Men
– ITV4 had its highest ever all time and prime time share for 16-34 Men for Q1 in 2015
– ITV4 is having its highest ever prime time share for 16-34 Men since launch so far in 2015***********************************************************
Those, like I, who have enjoyed the channel’s coverage of the tennis and cycling will already know that ITV4 manages to ply its trade nowadays without being quite so unwittingly (and almost parodically) Clarkson-esque, Blokey Bloke Bloke as it did during its Men & Motors incarnation. Knuckles have finally been picked up from off the ground, and by some distance.
Nevertheless, that doesn’t alter my view that the sort of people ITV(4) is gunning for with the racing broadcasting are far less likely to be the more mature or bucolic devotees among the Highflyer-era Channel 4 Racing viewing audience, and far more the blokes who pop up every 15 minutes at the moment telling us that this is the Ladbrokes Life. It’ll be after people (men and women, one hopes, despite the channel’s marked male reach) of a certain age, with as much of a propensity to spend the leisure pound on a punt as on anything else.
I’d expect the temptation will be great to cast people of a comparable age as presenters and pundits, too.
I don’t even think it’s too far-fetched to suggest that there may yet be some eyeing up (if there hasn’t been already) of what works on Sky Sports’ flagship Soccer Saturday, with a view to tapping in to the same sort of market or even tempting some of it into channel-hopping between it and the horses.
The news that the ITV4 coverage stands a strong chance of being studio-based does immediately suggest an in-house presenter-pundits-presenter model, albeit with the one big difference to Soccer Saturday of still showing the live action rather than have said pundit screaming excitedly at a monitor visible to him/her only.
gc
Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
Regardless of which, I imagine he made the decision not to offer him an extension on the Racetech roster beyond his initial 15-meeting trial back in 2012 an easy one for a number of reasons, notably an apparent over-reliance on the monitor which caused him to miss a faller two out in a four-runner Hereford chase.
gc
It’s common knowledge Tommo only uses monitors and I’m sure he’s not alone. He rarely mentions anything out of camera shot. How often have you seen him at the races using a pair of bins?
It’s inarguably disappointing that Tommo uses monitors alone, and I’m sure that if he were also a newbie commentator trying to win a place on the roster a similarly dim view would be taken of that. I suspect, though, that better was expected of Chapman as a modern would-be entrant to the roster, and that the example I gave (one I was radio punditing on at the time and recall in all its horror) must have proven particularly hard to forgive.
gc
Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
Although I`ve found the C4 coverage broadly acceptable, Carl Hicks has been involved in racing coverage failures on two different channels already. Whatever the direction ITV aim for, I hope the Hicks curriculum vitae goes straight to the shredder.
ITV4 has moved on a bit from when it first started with a lot of ITC series from the late sixties, early seventies like The Strange Report and The Protectors. Minder, The Professionals, The Sweeney and Magnum PI still fill a lot of the schedule and those programmes suggest a higher age target audience than the core demographic stated.
Bazalgette admitted the Sky bid had come close to winning, suggesting strongly it will be the preferred bid on the next renewal.A lot of us will be pleased to have some coverage of racing continuing on free to air television for a few more years.
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