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I’m a ‘genuine race fan’ and I watch Ch4. Their coverage of Cheltenham was excellent. I can’t afford RUK or ATR anyway. People pay to see racing on RUK and ATR. I watch racing for free on Ch4 because the people who advertise on it pay lots of money. Perhaps Ch4 Racing should just cease to exist completely if it’s so awful. I just don’t see what all the fuss is about.
I am surprised given that this is a racing forum that you can’t see what ‘all the fuss is about’. It has something to do with Channel 4 making a decision to show a repeated cookery programme rather than give the result of the ricest race in the World. The repeated cookery programme is deemed more important. Will you see it as a fuss if Channel 4 were to pull the plug on racing altogether – this is a step in that direction.
For the last time, it’s called a schedulde. All tv stations use them. For a sporting event that’s likely to over-run they factor in extra time but an over-run could hardly have been anticipated in this case.
Why is all the ire being directed a Channel 4?
If I were organising the richest horse race in the world, I’m damned sure I’d get it off on time!Sporting events from all over the World are shown all the time, and you can’t just monkey around with the schedules because of them. People would get irate. You can only sensibly overrun if it’s a mainstream sporting event, like Murray at Wimbledon or a Cup final. A horse race nobody’s heard of from the other side of the globe isn’t going to get a look in. It’s common sense.
Those of you denigrating the Dubai World Cup are behaving a bit like King Canute on the beach.
The horse racing focus appears to be slowly shifting toward the southern hemisphere and Sheikh Mo isn’t going to stop until the change is complete. It might take ten, fifteen years, but that will be one serious horse race targeted by everyone.
I don’t think the Maktoum family will be happy with the way Channel Four behaved either
For the last time, it’s called a schedulde. All tv stations use them. For a sporting event that’s likely to over-run they factor in extra time but an over-run could hardly have been anticipated in this case.
Why is all the ire being directed a Channel 4?
If I were organising the richest horse race in the world, I’m damned sure I’d get it off on time!It is not unique for races to be delayed for all sorts of reasons, a horse may spread a plate or bolt, the official result can also be delayed by a stewards enquiry as the BBC found out to their chagrin in the Arc one year.
What defenders of C4 seem to be forgetting is that they are handsomely paid by racing to broadcast the sport, so really they had no excuse to give preference to a repeat pap programme on this occasion.- Total Posts 17716
Those of you denigrating the Dubai World Cup are behaving a bit like King Canute on the beach.
The horse racing focus appears to be slowly shifting toward the southern hemisphere and Sheikh Mo isn’t going to stop until the change is complete. It might take ten, fifteen years, but that will be one serious horse race targeted by everyone.
I don’t think the Maktoum family will be happy with the way Channel Four behaved either
Given this winter’s grudging, last-ditch bail out by the Emirates, I should think that the Maktoums are happy enough that the racecourse opened at all.
As for the future, I fear my vision is of the desert sands sweeping swiftly over the last, broken relics of a once-proud turf track, all too soon after the current generation of Maktoums has left the stage. Think Shelley’s Ozymandias:
[i:3fgpg8fp]I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies……And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away”.[/color:3fgpg8fp][/i:3fgpg8fp]Just one word for poor old Canute: we shouldn’t forget that he put on the show as a lesson for his sycophantic courtiers, a graphic illustration that all power has its limits. There was nothing hubristic about it. Sheikh Mohammed is I’m sure quite as aware of the dangers posed by flattering advisers.
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What defenders of C4 seem to be forgetting is that they are handsomely paid by racing to broadcast the sport, so really they had no excuse to give preference to a repeat pap programme on this occasion.
In this case they weren’t handsomely paid by Racing (BHA), but by Sheikh Mohammed, which is quite a different thing. You and I didn’t pay anything towards the broadcast, beyond the small portion of our licence that goes to Channel 4.
There seems to be an impression here that some individual within C4 made a decision to cut the Dubai coverage in order to show Come Dine With Me.
I’d be fairly sure that, in common with most of the pe-recorded stuff shown on C4, the following program would be set up on a tape machine and the start would be controlled by a computer, with no human influence at all.
C4 doesn’t produce the racing coverage, it just provides air time to an independent company that books a slot well in advance. That’s one of the reasons why they will cover almost any racing on a Saturday afternoon, even if the planned meeting(s) are abandoned.
On this occasion, the following program was going to start at 18:00 regardless, and the producers of the racing program had no way of altering that fact, whatever the circumstances.
AP
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It’s also said that Hitler made the trains run on time, AP, but that doesn’t excuse the way he achieved it.
ps I’ll swear I heard the course commentator calling out "number 5" as the transmission ended. If so, just a 30 second delay would have been more than adequate.
Any schedule that doesn’t allow that is patently mismanaged, imo.I think that it is disgusting that there is no terrestrial coverage of the trials for the first classic of the year. Tofay, for example, people who are not privileged enough to have an RUK sub are missing out on coverage of two G3 races, a listed race as well as the Wood Ditton.
Dire for the average racing fan, and a sell out to a pay TV regime.Could you explain what you mean by "privileged" in this context?
I mean everyone who finds a £20pm subscription a little too much to warrant paying for, just to watch a couple of big meetings per month. I only watch the primary meetings, like Newmarket, York etc.
I subscribe to Sky Sports and ESPN and yet still cannot watch the Craven meet nor any of David Haye’s fights. There is something wrong with that, surely?
As a non-gambling, born again purist, another £20pm is beyond my means. Obviously, some can afford it, but I (and many others) cannot.Considering that all the Newmarket races are available for a totally free replay on the Sporting Life site within minutes of the finish, the level of deprivation for the under privileged seems rather minimal to me.
AP
ESPN is part of the BT Vision service
BT Vision encompasses a wide range of content which I subscribe to, a whole lot more content at £7.99pm than RUK considers "value" at £20pm.
I certainly wouldn’t consider myself privileged to have BT Vision.
But that is bye the bye, if C4 is even slightly committed to a base racing curriculum then they would include the Craven as a must have. But they consider a 1966 romantic thriller starring Gregory Peck, and Countdown, as more worthwhile programming. That is an effing joke.
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