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Can’t agree RD.. The £3 a month includes other services doesn;t it? If it does your skewing the argument. Say it includes 3other channels thats 75p, which will buy you half an RP. The other alternative is to go to the bookies.. It’s hardly the pinnacle of broadcasting but it’s racing and the irish coverage is not bad. Gareth O’Brien and David Duggan are two of their best (duggan’s a cr@p presenter but a good pundit)
£3 a month for ATR is a misnomer, depending on your view it is either a minimum of £15 a month or free, as I have the sky package solely to receive ATR it costs me £15 a month.
As for racecourses expressing a prefence with regard commentators, how could anyone have a prefence for the likes of GG or Hickman? Newbury are guilty on both counts.<br>
It’s a bit like complaining that ‘Buy one, get one free’ is false advertising because you have to pay for something else to get the free one, so the free one can’t actually be described as free…..
Surely the gripe should be with Sky, not ATR?
ATR is a Sky channel Sal, just like Sky Sports.<br>By criticising ATR, I also criticise Sky. I have always criticised Sky’s business ethic, all the way down to the way a new customer gets Sky+ for £49 but an existing loyal customer pays £299.<br>£3pm is not too bad to see the races. If you can ignore the barrage of ads all the way thru the day, and the teleshopping that runs thru the night. In an average 24hr period, there are more ads than coverage. Therefore, is it more an advertising channel with sweeteners thrown in to get you to watch the ads?<br>Something that initially excited me was the use of the red button to watch alternate coverage. Until I noticed that you can only watch it on quarter of the screen :(<br>You can get the normal live feed to go full screen, but not the alternate coverage. How inconvenient is that? And the alternate coverage STILL breaks off for ads every five mins.<br>Sorry, but I gave ATR the benefit of the doubt for a long time. I was a stalwart of the cause. But given the standard of the coverage that you get, it really is no less than a chore to watch it. All those banners and scroll bars just give me a headache.<br>All I want is a channel that shows the racing. I don’t want ads that take precidence over the main coverage. That is closer to the US TV model, and I would scrap my Sky box if all channels went that way.<br>The old addage applies, what get what you pay for. If you pay for dross, you get dross.<br>As an aside, does the broadband coverage take ad breaks? I’d gladly subscribe to that to get a proper racing channel.
Quote: from yeats on 12:27 pm on Oct. 12, 2006[br]
As for racecourses expressing a prefence with regard commentators, how could anyone have a prefence for the likes of GG or Hickman? Newbury are guilty on both counts.<br>
<br>As far as I can ascertain Ian Bartlett is Newbury’s first choice, but they’ve had 11 days of him already this year. He called on Hennessy day last year and I presume will do so again this. That’s already nearly a seventh of his allocation and there’s plenty of other tracks after his time, as well as the Beeb.
Messrs Cattermole, Hoiles and Hickman (who still appears to be first choice at Bath and very near the top at Chepstow, I notice) have been the other commentators at Newbury this term, but without access to the course’s list of preferences I don’t know which of these were asked for.
gc<br>
Adoptive father of two. The patron saint of lower-grade fare. A gently critical friend of point-to-pointing. Kindness is a political act.
Quote: from Racing Daily on 1:11 pm on Oct. 12, 2006[br]<br>The old addage applies, what get what you pay for.  If you pay for dross, you get dross.
You’re wrong RD, i agree no-one likes the adverts, but that stop you making a cuppa in the adverts during a film on tv. ATR is not great, it is not even good but its cheap and shows me what i want at the price i want. Kempton only during the winter just ain’t worth £15. If the channels merged i would begrudgingly cough £5 pm for the pair, sorry the product just aint worth it. From the sky point of view, i watch the cycling on eurosport and sky sport news on a saturday afternoon for the footy, i don’t see you moaning about the BBC licence fee, you’ve still got to pay that even if there was only a racing channel to view.
RD, just tell them your cancelling and they’ll give you the Sky plus on the cheap. Good old fashioned bartering is not dead, neither it seems is whinging. £180 a year for how may channels, compared to £120 for 4?
This is a daft thread. I can’t see what your complaining about. Personally i’d rather watch theracing than watch the result come up on ceefax.
Does no-one see what I am ultimately saying?
Yes, £3pm is an OK deal.<br>Yes, without Sky TV would be crap.
No, ATR is NOT free to view.<br>No, Sky DO manipulate their existing customers.
That is all I am saying. Anyone who doesn’t agree is free to think that. Sky offer package of channels, knowing full well that most customers merely want one or two channels from the package. Why can I not choose to have ATR, Eurosport, E4, Discovery, etc. I am forced to either have a cartload of stuff I don’t want, in order to have the few channels that I do want. That ain’t on. ATR have nothing in common with The Golf Channel. Yet they are bundled together.
RD, your obviously not a commercial person. It’s blatantly obvious why.. If you can’t see it, have think about the consequences of Sky doing that from a commercial perspective. Then ask yourself, if you were in charge of Sky what would you do..
From a commercial angle it is obviously a good ploy. But it shows no respect for the customer. It treats the customer as a paying guinea pig for inferior channels.<br>In effect, they are saying that if I want the good stuff, I have to buy the trash too. That is surely an unethical sales practice.<br>If I had to buy peanut butter bundled with my bread, I wouldn’t buy the bread. Why? Because I hate peanut butter. Why should I pay for something I hate, just to get the product I want? It ain’t on.<br>I had a similar problem with Sky Sports a couple of years back. I started subscribing to SS1 because The Winning Post was apparantly shown exclusively on that channel. This was just after ATR folded the first time. <br>That was great until I discovered that, a couple of weeks later, it started alternating between SS1 and SS2. So I was forced to subscribe to both channels just to watch The Winning Post. Needless to say, I told them to stuff it. However, I was forced to pay for the whole month subscription before I could cancel :angry:<br>Sky have no scruples and treat their existing customers like effing morons. They know that we have no choice in the matter as Sky have a monopoly on digital satelite.
But the thing is that people do want some of the channels that come with ATR. And they have to make a way of charging for it. They can’t just give a free channel . Personally, I don’t understand your problem. I used to pay £15 a month for 2 channel packages (the minimum for Sky customers), and I got ATR in the bundle. So I was paying minimum and I GOT ATR.
"But the thing is that people do want some of the channels that come with ATR"
Let them have the option of purchasing them individually is what i’m saying :)<br>I am also asking, is ATR FTA or not? Obviously it is not.<br>Let’s not make the mistake of thinking I am bothered by £3. I’m not. It’s the principle of a ‘FTA’ channel that gets switched off if you don’t pay a certain amount of money for your subscription.
I watch atr/ruk most days normally just when they show the ‘live ‘;) racing.<br>However yesterdays fiasco on atr has made the channel look a joke.<br>I noted the first two races at Worcester started on time.<br>The station were showing ads up until 3 seconds before the advertised start time yesterday so once the ads stopped they were unable to even complete 1 betting show before the race was off. There was not one single word about what horse may or not win.<br>The 2.50 race for example was likely to start on time as the earlier race had started exactly on time and at 2.49 and 57 seconds they were still showing ads.<br>The channel yesterday were showing the 4/11 chance Leading Contender fighting out a finish with Mountain Approach and it was not until the last few seconds Richard Hollies announced that Bradley Boy was about to win. <br>I dont play ‘in running’ ever as one does not know the time delay but Leading Contender was a 1.01 chance and Bradley Boy traded at 1,000 /1 just before jumping the last. <br>Richard Hollies was it seems not watching the actual race but a monitor that the director had decided that just concerened Leading Contender and Mountain Approach.<br>After the race they showed a replay but with a different camera angle this showed that although Bradley Boy had jumped the last in 3rd place the horse was making up substancial ground after the last. They failed to even show the horse until he flew past Leading Contender.<br>Why did they not show the better camera angle in the first place?<br>Why could the tv director not see the third horse closing the front two down fast after they all jumped the last?<br>Why not schedule ads after the race instead of just before a race?<br>
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