- This topic has 13 replies, 10 voices, and was last updated 14 years, 11 months ago by
.
- Posts
Continuing the thread about the madness of having Newmarket, York and Chester etc racing on the same day – next year it will be even worse as Newmarket, York, Chester and Newbury will be racing on the same day!
According to the Racing Post, Newbury are bringing forward their Super Sprint meeting by one week, so that Ascot’s King George meeting is broadcast by the BBC before the start of the Olympics. If owners and trainers are up in arms now, I hate to think what their reaction will be next year, its absolutely crazy.
Welcome to the party Phil , its saturday free for all , with the other 6 days being utter rubbish
Racing fans have a lot to look forward to …..not
Racing for change is the driver , the courses are the passengers , and the punters can take it or play on the roulette machines ….most will probably choose the latter
Good innit
Ricky
Continuing the thread about the madness of having Newmarket, York and Chester etc racing on the same day – next year it will be even worse as Newmarket, York, Chester
and Newbury
will be racing on the same day!
Newbury can
aspire
to do that, but isn’t there still some way to run before the 2012 Fixture List is anywhere near finalised? September was the latest projection.
The piece in the
Post
will elicit some emotive responses, and not without some justification, but to what extent its contents represent a fait accompli I have my doubts.
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.
While obviously still farcical, I’m not sure you would actually class it worse, as we had Ascot instead of Newbury last Saturday.
The Guardian article regarding the fixture list on has been referenced on the Alan Potts led ‘Fixtures-2012’. However, it’s worth referring to Paul Struthers’s quote ni teh artcle since you can almost hear the frustration coming out:
‘Even under the present system, however, the BHA does not have complete control over the fixture list, and its spokesman, Paul Struthers, said on Tuesday that it was powerless to prevent last weekend’s pile-up of high-profile fixtures that caused so much frustration to racing professionals. Trainers complained of the difficulty in finding jockeys for their runners as Newmarket, Chester, York and Ascot all staged racedays on the same afternoon.
"We have responsibility for the fixture list but without any really significant power," Struthers said, pointing out that Newmarket had been able to move its fixture from a weekday to the Saturday without having to obtain the BHA’s consent. "It has been well documented that that was almost too strong a day’s racing, particularly when looking at the Saturdays on either side of it.
"But Saturday is the most accessible day for people to go racing, to watch racing and to bet on racing. In the current climate, with the levy system broken and offshore bookmakers not paying towards it, racecourses have to try to maximise
revenue." ‘Sadly the BHA is hostage to a combination of the bookmakers through the Levy, or avoidance of it, and the OFT. The classic ‘rock and a hard place’ situation. Paul is a regular contributor to TRF and I get the impression he’d change a fair few things if they were within his powers.
Rob
Events this weekend demonstrate that bringing the King George forward by one week to avoid the Olympics would be pointless.
The BBC will not reduce their coverage of the Open golf just to accomodate a horse race.
AP
‘Even under the present system, however, the BHA does not have complete control over the fixture list,
and therein lies the problem – there is no unified leadership in the sport and it defies credulity that a multi million pound business is able to survive.
In most other areas of business the industry would go bust if it was "run" by a such a disparate group with conflicting vested interests.
Indeed it is a great credit to the sport that it does somehow manage to survive with such a model.
Just imagine how the sport could potentially prosper if it had a single unified organisational structure?
Though surely the Open golf will be on BBC1 and the racing on BBC2?
I believe the whole country will be Digital by summer 2012 with Analogue consigned to history; that being the case why don’t the BHA (or whoever) and the terrestrial broadcasters get together and ensure that whenever there’s a ‘marquee’ event such as The Open and Olympics set to clash with a big race/meeting, the racing – in its entirety – is available ‘behind the red button’ which will then be a facility available to all
It would then not matter one jot what the KG or any other race throughout the year clashes with
It strikes me that the Red Button ‘channel’ is an underused facility and could become a
de facto
‘minority interest sports channel’ or indeed a conduit for any other minority interest
That apart, there is also BBC3 and BBC4, both of which don’t broadcast in the afternoons
Why the need to move the KG anyway? Do Ascot/BHA/XYZ believe the stands will be empty if up against the Olympics. Horse racing and Track ‘n’ Field strike me as sports with a largely mutually exclusive fan base
I don’t understand how the BHA can say they don’t have complete over the fixture list.
Surely, if they’d rather a course didn’t race on a certain day, then all they have to do is to not give them any prize money subsidy for that particular meeting.
If the course wants to go ahead anyway and fund the prize money themselves, and make a net profit from gate and catering income, then fair enough. But I think that most would back down.
- Total Posts 17716
Though surely the Open golf will be on BBC1 and the racing on BBC2?
Given the flack that the BBC get for filling both channels with sport, to the exclusion of anything else, on quite a few summer weekends as it is, I’d guess that the management is not too likely to be happy with that solution for the "mere" running of a
King George
! I’d think a ten-minute slot, mid-golf, is more likely – or something behind their rather well-utilised Red Button on freeview.
Why the need to move the KG anyway?
Its at the request of the BBC who are showing the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics, and obviously can’t be bothered to spare a camera or two for Ascot
Thanks for the clarification. I’d wrongly assumed it was a Racing plc decision.
Sorry BHA etc
Though surely the Open golf will be on BBC1 and the racing on BBC2?
Given the flack that the BBC get for filling both channels with sport, to the exclusion of anything else, on quite a few summer weekends as it is, I’d guess that the management is not too likely to be happy with that solution for the "mere" running of a
King George
!
It goes deeper than that now, I think. A pointy-head who was wheeled out to explain the Oaks / Andy Murray French Open clash of a few weeks back advised that it is not current BBC policy to have sport showing on BBC1 and BBC2 at the same time as a first resort (if at all).
I’m pretty sure he or she was quoted on one of the salient threads on here back then, but it’s a position that bears repeating for them as may have missed it.
Only regional variations appear to be waived through. A glance at the quite useful sports schedule Auntie Beeb maintains (http://www.bbc.co.uk/tv/programmes/genr … /schedules) reveals that, for example, BBC2 in Scotland (but nowhere else) enjoyed coverage of the Melrose Sevens rugby union tournament at the same time as BBC1 covered the Grand National.
Whether or not Andy Murray similarly represents a niche interest for Scots, I’ll let others decide.
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.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.