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Oh ok Anthony. I thought she’d moved on.
Top presenter. Racing has FAR more need of her than football. And poker.
Oh ok Anthony. I thought she’d moved on.
Top presenter. Racing has FAR more need of her than football. And poker.
I take your point though. Presenters don’t have to be deeply involved in the sport they’re presenting (although a keen interest wouldn’t hurt) I take someone like Colin Murray. Not a football man, nor a darts man but someone clearly excited by both.
Then there’s someone like Clare Balding who does have a background in racing but applies herself to whatever sport the BBC send her to.
Can anyone suggest a ‘racing man’ or woman that could add to the Morning Line?
Colin Murray was brilliant on EPT coverage, Anthony. His irreverent enthusiasm dripped in irony and he singlehandedly made watching nine men enjoy a game of cards compulsive viewing.
A game of cards. Compulsive viewing.
A game of darts. A pastime for pub men. Compulsive viewing. Unbelievable.I’d say aside from a solar eclipse, satellite pictures of the earth by day, the Manhattan skyline, "Money" by Martin Amis, the album "Dark Side of the Moon", the Brazil side of 1982, the Watchmen graphic novel, or a David Gower cover drive, nothing has a compulsive aesthetic like the climax of a magnificent horse race.
Picture, say, Tiznow versus Giants Causeway at the Breeders Cup in 2000, or the heroic defeat of Dancing Brave at the 1986 Derby. I’m filling up, Anthony.
Why are we not putting this across? What are we doing wrong?
I’d say aside from a solar eclipse, satellite pictures of the earth by day, the Manhattan skyline, "Money" by Martin Amis, the album "Dark Side of the Moon", the Brazil side of 1982, the Watchmen graphic novel, or a David Gower cover drive, nothing has a compulsive aesthetic like the climax of a magnificent horse race.
Picture, say, Tiznow versus Giants Causeway at the Breeders Cup in 2000, or the heroic defeat of Dancing Brave at the 1986 Derby. I’m filling up, Anthony.
Why are we not putting this across? What are we doing wrong?
I don’t know. The interesting thing to me is that you have a programme like The Morning Line & it would have previews of the big races but there was never really a look back over previously run races (that weren’t involved with that days big race, so we get a few clips of Desert Orchid on King George day, or at look at Kauto Star’s old Gold Cups)
Classic races tend to be run, discussed but then never shown again except in flashes.
Channel 4 should show the best race they can find from the previous week at some point in the show & a classic race in full at the end.
Maybe during the flat season when races are shorter though I suppose.I agree, Anthony.
In the old days, it was a horse show, before a personality show. Wouldn’t it be novel if they actually took us through an exciting race? There was a race at Lingfield yesterday where seven horses entered the final furlong in a line, all eventually finishing within a length of each other. I couldn’t call the winner. Must have been terrific to see live. I’m sure there was an equally exciting NH race to show this weeks viewers.
I like your idea about a weekly "classic" horse race. RUK had a slot when I subscribed where the presenters discussed their favourite races. Good stuff.
Anthony, do you think the current presenters should go en masse, Radio One style?
Max,
There’s a difference – Radio 1 can trawl hundreds of local radio stations, commercial and publicly funded, to find suitable replacements.
But local TV simply provides no opportunity for anybody to learn the art of presenting a sports program. Of course they all have a sports reporter and I suspect your local representative is much like the one down here on HTV, or BBC West. A smart but casually dressed media studies graduate, who laughs vacantly at the newreaders jokey link, rattles off a hundred words about how unlucky Rovers or County were this weekend behind a jerky clip of a League 2 striker hitting row Z, then reads the rugby (or cricket in season) scores sounding like a robot as he tries to ignore the director counting down in his earpiece.
It’s a point rarely made in any of thse discussions of Ch4, ATR, RUK, but it’s worth repeating that even from my brief experience at the old Racing Channel, I learnt that doing live TV is b*****y hard. And doing it at eight o’clock in the morning, a time which precludes any possibility of a rehearsal, must be just as difficult as the live coverage when you’re at the mercy of events.
AP
Colin Murray is an excellent presenter.
During his Friday night show on Radio Five he would preview the following days racing with “Honest Fitz” (Mick Fitzgerald) and they would they would take live commentary of the last race of the day, usually from Wolverhampton.
Each week both “Honest Fitz” and Perry Groves would choose a fancy for the race. Murray & Groves soon cottoned on that each week Mick always choose the favourite and I can’t recall him ever picking the winner. Great entertainment.
The whole feature lasted less than five minutes but the sense that racing was fun probably did more for racing in those five minutes each week than RFC will ever achieve.
- Total Posts 17716
Do any specialist Sky Sports programmes suffer from stuttering presenters/pundits, prolonged periods of silence due to complete incompetence or inane waffling borne of a basic lack of knowledge, personality or character? Paul Merson and his ‘beans on toast’ aside, I’d venture the answer is probably ‘no’.
I can understand it being difficult for someone ‘doing a job’, AP, but those in the employ of TML are not just presenters; they’re fans. How hard can it be talking about something you love for all of 55 minutes?
The Morning Line is an amateur production and nothing more. Perhaps we’re wrong to expect better, but any ‘re-branding’ is going to require more than a Blue Peter-here’s-one-I-made-earlier set and different seating arrangements to be successful. The lack of substance is encapsulated by Leslie Graham’s rather depressing single-minded intent to rip in to Big Mac at every available opportunity, even if he hasn’t said anything.
I think half-a-dozen friends and I could knock up something more professional in my shed. And that’s without removing the muddied lawn rake in the corner; infinitely more entertaining and informative than the aforementioned Pinky (Graham) and Plunkett.
Frankly, I don’t give a four X what hair cut Tanya has this week, or what she wears.
I do. I used to dream of having endless hours of passion with her, then rolling her over, lighting a cig, and talking for hours about the racing. Leave me alone with my fantasies Ginge, and Tanya, get a wig till it grows back
Come to the Cheltenham Festival Preview Night at Newbury Racecourse, Wednesday 9th March at 8:00 pm; and meet her, Diamond. She’s even more attractive "in the flesh". Tell Tanya yourself.
Value Is EverythingFrankly, I don’t give a four X what hair cut Tanya has this week, or what she wears.
I do. I used to dream of having endless hours of passion with her, then rolling her over, lighting a cig, and talking for hours about the racing. Leave me alone with my fantasies Ginge, and Tanya, get a wig till it grows back
Come to the Cheltenham Festival Preview Night at Newbury Racecourse, Wednesday 9th March at 8:00 pm; and meet her, Diamond. She’s even more attractive "in the flesh". Tell Tanya yourself.
I wish mate, though I think she’d put a restraining order on me
Point taken, AP. But I would say that you can train people up. How many Media Studies graduates did the UK produce last year? How many of them enjoy racing? Our own little outpost has produced a radio presenter and a Timeform apprentice this past year alone.
Have a look at T4. Completely untried talent, most of it. Why not racing?
If I didn’t have a face for radio, I’d do the gig for travelling expenses and a fried breakfast. I’m sure there are twenty regular posters on here who’d chop a leg off for a pop.
If you’re going to revamp something, revamp it. Don’t skimp on the production values (I’m surprised that I’m the only one who has commented on the cameras and mics), and go for glory. There are a lot of good kids about who have a buzz on for racing.
The old guard, who I’m sure we both love and respect, are starting to look really tired and grey: The gang are currently looking like an audition for "Last of the Summer Wine."
As the Morning Line stands, no-one wins. The grizzled vets on the forum who’d watch donkeys race up Skeggy beach. The horsey set. Pathological gamblers. Hungover students who like Big Mac. Newbies who went to Epsom to see an Oasis tribute and got hooked on the horses. Who are C4 aiming for? It isn’t clear.
I’ll have the Morning Line job.
‘Welcome to the Morning Line on Cheltenham Gold Cup day, and don’t forget there’s a quality card at Wolverhampton later.’
Seriously, I’d love that job.
The girl who currently presents T4 had no journalism or presentation experience or qualifications at all. She won an X Factor style competition.A word of warning though, T4 isn’t live.
Our own little outpost has produced a radio presenter
Who’s that then?
Have a look at T4. Completely untried talent, most of it.
Apologies for appearing out of touch but where do I find T4? Is it a satellite channel?
Thanks
Foggy
T4 is the collective name for the programmes immediately after The Morning Line, Drone/Foggy.
Focused on teenagers, the sub-channel is bright, breezy and irreverent with presenters as young as the audience they aim to attract. As Anthony points out – one of the presenters won a talent contest.
Our own little outpost has produced a radio presenter
Jeremy "graysonscolumn" Grayson who analyses/summarises on Timeform Radio – or he did the last time I looked.
Thanks Max
long time since I was a teenager, and I was an honorary miserable old git thenI knew GC and Rory were on Timeform Radio, thought you were referring to a more recent recruit
Yep, I was on there again at the weekend, Max. Nearly four years and counting in its various guises now, and (to paraphrase Terry Pratchett) still occasionally get accused of punditry.
Rory’s next on this Saturday, by the way, for Totesport Trophy, AON Chase and all.Suspect I’m too old and saggy to be considered for a hypothetical T4-literate re-tread of
The Morning Line
– it’d be as excruciatingly incongruous as Ann Widdecombe reading "booyakasha" off the
HIGNFY
autocue that one time.
Innit.
gc
Adoptive father of two. The patron saint of lower-grade fare. A gently critical friend of point-to-pointing. Kindness is a political act.
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