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After Synchronised’s superb performance in the Gold Cup, it was reported something like this on the BBC: "A cloud has hung over Cheltenham this week, but still thousands turned up…etc etc"
That tells you everything you need to know.
As far as the upper echelons of the Beeb are concerned, their organisation is showing a sport where brightly-coloured midgets beat horses to death with sticks.
With the greatest respect, O’Sullevan’s remarks about the sport being ‘woven into the fabric of the nation’ are those of a ninety-four year old white male. To the overwhelming majority of this nation, the sport means precisely nothing.
We have two dedicated racing channels and a national broadcaster with a strong commitment to the sport (for however long that may be!).
We don’t need a robustly ‘anti’ BBC. We’re better off out.
Mike
Claire balding was doing crafts coverage on more4 so getting her shouldn’t be too tricky.
I think c4 do, for the most part, cover racing infinitely better than the BBc
Just think, no more puffy fashion shows, no more little and large, handy pozees. Brilliant…
Just think, no more puffy fashion shows, no more little and large, handy pozees. Brilliant…
There will still be the fashion rubbish – cast your mind back to the appalling C4 coverage of Glorious Goodwood last year.
Due to the Grand National coverage last year I think more members of the public are against racing than ever before. You just have to scan down one of the comments pages on the Daily Mail or The Guardian when a "fatality" is covered. These people have in the main no interest in the sport & know nothing about it or horses in general. However these are the people that make up viewing figures for the BBC.
The BBC pulled Crufts & continue to criticize it with documentaries, no such campaign has taken place against racing by them in an overt manner so far & I think that the discontinuation of coverage is financial but it will be perceived by many as significant & a victory for those who oppose racing.
Watch out for headlines like "The BBC see the Grand National Light" in the tabloids!This is, however, the crux of the problem. For many people, the central tenet of racing is, in their eyes, the abuse of horses with whips. The other is the sight of a horse losing its life in a race.
We saw last night from the reaction of people when a footballer was struck down that people don’t like to see pain and suffering whether to another person or to an animal. They believe that hitting a horse with a whip causes it pain – the logic is if a person got hit with a whip, it would cause them pain.
The corollary of that is that because they care they assume that we, who watch and enjoy the sport, don’t care.
I find the sight of a horse flailing around with a broken leg after a fall as distressing as anyone and I’m sure everyone on here does as well but the problem is it appears sometimes we don’t.
This failure of understanding leads to mutual suspicion and antipathy – some racing people retreat into bluster, turn their backs on a potential audience and claim only they understand.
Claire balding was doing crafts coverage on more4 so getting her shouldn’t be too tricky.
Clare Balding has been freelance for a few years now so could quite conceivably join the C4 racing team – although I imagine she would want to pick and choose her gigs as she still does a lot of work on a number of sports for the Beeb.
I find the sight of a horse flailing around with a broken leg after a fall as distressing as anyone and I’m sure everyone on here does as well but the problem is it appears sometimes we don’t.
This failure of understanding leads to mutual suspicion and antipathy – some racing people retreat into bluster, turn their backs on a potential audience and claim only they understand.
Bang on the money, Stodge.
Racing must be the worst sport going in respect of its inability, and perhaps disinclination, to educate, or communicate with, those who aren’t existing fans.
Take a look at this article from today’s Independent:
http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/racing/the-last-word-kauto-was-a-star-but-humanising-him-masks-the-inhumane-side-of-racing-7576323.html
With RUK now on the digital freeview platform there’s no good reason why one racing channel couldn’t cover all British racing on a FTA basis as RUK originally wanted to do when it started up but were stopped from doing so by the BHA.
Every viewer in Britain has to have to access to digital by the end of this year, some of us have had no analogue for 3 years.
RUK is only on freeview for people with IPTVs. That isnt cool, and serves to look down on 99% of TV viewers who have no intention of buying an IPTV
edit- I just checked on RUK website and it STILL costs £20pm to watch it on IPTV! To say it is on freeview without adding that fact is rather misleading. I could get RUK on Sky if I wanted to stop eating. But, like most
average
viewers I decided that £20pm for one channel is taking the piss. I agree it should be FTA, but it has become apparant to me that RUK has no intention of ever going FTA as they originally promised.
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