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so what’s the answer AP? No bars at the racecourse? A quick quiz at the gate & if you can’t answer some simple questions about racing then you can’t come in?
It seems to me that a small portion of the "racing fans" are complaining about
1) there is a much larger group than themselves who go to the racecourse & enjoy themselves and aren’t that bothered about whether a horse stayed the distance, went on the going, who it was bred by etc
2) a small portion of the that crowd every now & again misbehave themselves.
As usual it’s the minority that get reported in the media & the minority that spoils it for the rest.
And it’s the minority of racing fans who are concerned about the "everyone is drunk" nonsense but are being the most vocal. Leading us to believe that our racecourses now resemble a war zone rather than a day’s entertainment.
That same minority also seem unable to grasp that the likes of Newmarket, Newbury etc would go bust if they didn’t have the concert days, even if it’s on a Group Stakes day!
But hey, maybe it will take a few racecourses being turned into housing estates before the "genuine racing fan" can work out that he alone cannot keep the racecourses in business
Nobody’s discouraging anyone, deep sensation. I love crowds and I love the massive attendance figures. I like a drink too, as my landlord knows only too well. I could watch pretty girls in nice dresses, hoop earrings and St Tropez every day of the week and I’m well used to hanging round big gangs of lads in my football incarnation.
How are we going to get them into the racing itself? Or is it just the cash that the likes of, say, Northern Racing are interested in. Hmmm? What do you think?
Even you have would have to admit that us "regular enthusiasts" have not been particularly well served by RFC and that the Grockles there to watch the boy bands have had the red carpet treatment. There’s a balance and Laura’s point is it isn’t being achieved.
How are we going to get the average joe interested in racing? Just leave them be, they’ll either like it or they won’t. Why did you get into horse racing?
Also, when I hear the phrase "get the public interested in racing" and suchlike I’m not sure what anyone means, including RFC. Do they mean they want to get people interested in watching a load of brown horses running up & down a field for no apparent reason? Or do they want to get them betting? Now that’s a completely different animal than to just going to the races & having a nice day out!
The problem racecourses have is that there are not enough racing/betting fans out there, especially when there is now no reason to go racing as you can watch all the races in the comfort of your own armchair & bet on the internet.
So what would you do to boost turnover? Put on a concert & get 30k through the turnstiles, who may have a few bets, some food & some drink? Or knock that on the head, only get around 3k through the door, most of which may only place 1 bet & have a couple of drinks? Which one of those situations is good for business and which one isn’t?
If I’ve understood Laura’s piece correctly, Newbury should now tell 30k people to sod off next year because 1 old duffer didn’t like it?
And, interestingly, my point about not everyone who doesn’t know or appreciates racing but has a great day out and doesn’t get incredibly drunk and starts fights etc was easily passed over with more nonsense of everyone is getting drunk and starting fights etc! Should The Racing Forum be sponsored by the Daily Mail? Who’s going to be the 1st to blame the immigrants?
When are the "genuine racing fans" going to realise that racecourses cannot survive by just attracting the genuine fans alone? If they don’t go out of their way to attract "normal" people to their events they will go bust, then you really will have something to moan about!
And this snobbish view of the race fan is really annoying – "how dare they encourage people to come to our sport just to drink & enjoy themselves and not bother looking at the horses or even having a bet!"
Plus the all-sweeping statement "people just go to the races to drink" is absolute nonsense. It’s like saying that all teenagers are knife wielding, old lady mugging morons. They’re not, it’s a small percentage of them that gets reported in the press.
Only a small percentage of the crowd at a racecourse gets far too drunk & makes a nuisance of themselves & they’re the ones that get reported. Not the thousands who went to the races, behaved themselves, had a good time & didn’t drink to excess.
Going to the races is a day out, where the horse racing is PART of the entertainment, not the ONLY entertainment (Cheltenham Festival excepted). It gives a chance for the guys & girls to dress up in their best togs, regardless of which day or enclosure they are in. They have a few drinks, maybe a few bets and, even better, a few winners & a good day out.
If the racing fan gets their way & the racecourses discourage the average public from going to the races, then the sport is dead.
Aaah, I thought the OP was talking about RUK. He’s talking about what Alex was saying on Betfair radio right?
Well, that’s not too difficult to answer is it?
No one in their right mind is going to make comments about the rights & wrongs of the appeal when they are working on Betfair radio are they?
I’m still unsure what the OP wants? Would he go on radio & start pontificating on the Findlay case? Especially when Harry has obviously got himself a good lawyer?
From what I saw yesterday, the facts on the case were reported & then Alex & Jonathan Neesom gave a reaction to something there was little detail to (there was no comment on RP website from Harry at the time).
I’m not sure what the OP wanted anyone to say on the matter.
Does he want Alex, or anyone else for that matter, to start making wild allegations about all & sundry?
I did’t see ATR, how did they cover it? Big Mac come steaming on, ranting & raving?
The question is how RUK choose to cover it. For the channel not to take advantage of Red Button technology – which is available to everyone who subscribes to the channel – over the summer months at least, is a failure of courtesy as well as imagination.
This often quoted "red button technology" really needs to be cleared up. The red button isn’t some marvellous invention of technology, it is simple another television channel that that viewer accesses via a different button than the usual method, ie pressing 101 on your remote control. Paying for another channel for viewers to access races that may clash is very expensive. Would you be happy for RUK to increase the subscription so that you can get a clear view of a race, that is probably being shown on C4 anyway?
You are beginning to sound like The Fat Controller of Channel 4!My point is quite simple! Life is not always Black and White,there are times when a bit of grey is the appropriate measure.This was one of them! You know,flexibility,move the Goal posts etc! Had a spaceship from Mars just landed in the middle of Meydan during the race,it wouldn"t be "Come dine with me",it would be "For Mash get Smash" we"d have been watching and the rigid Schedule would be out the window!
OK, I asked this question a couple of time & received no answers yet.
So A-P King, You are now the "Fat Controller" you’ve given C4 Racing 2 more minutes to over-run. This makes their off-air time, say, 17:58. The ad break that was due to run at 17:56 to take you up to 18:00 for Come Dine With Me, is obviously now taken at 17:58 & will finish at 18:02, when C.D.W.M comes on (no you can’t lose 2 minutes of the ad-break, that would mean refunding the advertisers – bosses won’t be happy with that).
So now C.D.W.M (is it an hour long show?) now has an off-air time of 18:58 and we are back to the 4 minute break between that programme ending & the next one starting, and so on & so on.
Where do you find the 2 minutes to get the schedule back on track?
Over to you Mr Fat Controller!
lol you hate whingers to complain about trivial matters & here you are complaining about a trivial matter. "Left a nation of gamblers high & dry"?? what are you on about? the race was shown on Sky, At The Races & Racing UK plus it appears that C4 actually gave the result out before come dine with me started. So the only thing you didn’t geton C4 was Emma or Mike giving the result or the celebrations.
The people who took the time to email Tanya to complain, wouldn’t it have been quicker to log on the Racing Post website, bbc sports, sporting life or any other sites to get the result? Or, assuming they have sky, turn over to one of the other THREE channels showing the race!
I totally agree it’s an unsatisfactory way to end a programme but it’s no fault of the C4 Racing Team. Circumstances went against them & what appears to be a very rigid C4 schedule that doesn’t allow for an over-run.
And to the guy talking about the days of cricket on C4- yes I remember them. I’m not sure what your point was about the racing but C4 did the right thing by staying with the Test & binning the racing. As for the over-runs, it’s easy to schedule. Each day’s play starts at 11am (or it did in those days). It’s in the rules that play can go beyond the scheduled finish time (6:30?) so when it came to scheduling the tests, they would have stand-by programmes ready to re-jig the schedule. And they would know the over run long before it happened, not 2 minutes as in the case of the Dubai World Cup.
There we go, but hey let’s not let logic get in the way of us all complaining about something that really is of little consequence!
let’s not let logic get in the way of a good argument, just descend into name calling – another Great British tradition!
I wasn’t looking down my nose at anyone, just trying to point out that over running a tv programme isn’t as simple as you make out!
Kop,
when the schedules are made up months ago, I hardly think they would know that the races would run late. Yes, maybe they could’ve had a 6:15 off air time, which would’ve led to more time for the events unfolding as they did, but hindsight is a wonderful thing. In the grand scheme of things, if either the race had gone off on time (or at least 3 minutes earlier than it did), or it hadn’t been such a close finish then the result would’ve been broadcast.
As Emma Spencer says, it will have been highly frustrating for all concerned with the production that they had to go off air before the result was known. It doesn’t look good for anyone. But I think it’s a bit unfair to go blaming them for circumstances out of their control.
Also, can I ask a question of the people complaining, especially of anyone e-mailing in to Tanya to complain. Did not knowing the result before C4 went off air cost you any money? I mean, if you are at a pc to email in a complaint or on here posting, then surely you had access to Racing Post.com, or any other website, to get the result?
Or is it the Great British tradition of complaining for complaining’s sake?
Crepello:
As someone just pointed out the coverage on Saturday will not impress the sponsors. A back handed way for the company to have their sponsorship withdrawn early?
Crep, I think that Sheikh Mohammed is an intelligent man & will probably be more disappointed that Meydan couldn’t get the race off to time & then couldn’t provide a result quickly enough.
eddie case
29 Mar 2010, 07:13
deep sensation, there was no excuse, racing pays good money to C4 for coverage, which other sports do? What was the rush away for? A REPEAT of Come Dine With Me! No more needs to be said.
Despite what you say football matches frequently kick off late and have extended half time breaks.Eddie, live tv football matches have a floor manager who instructs the referee when to get the players onto the pitch and then when to kick-off! Extended half-time breaks don’t eat much into the analysis built in at the end, so they are not a problem.
As I’ve tried to explain to you, the "rush away" was that the schedules obviously did not allow for an over-run. If the producer had got the extra 2 or 3 minutes, there would have been a knock-on effect for at least the rest of Saturday’s C4 programming, if not onto Sunday. Where do you suggest they found those extra minutes to get the schedule back on track?
The way most TV stations work these days, over-runs aren’t as easy as they used to be. It can be a case of "the computer says no" and trying to sort out unscheduled over-runs can be a major headache, which is why the terrestrial stations are loathed to do it.
So is your gripe with C4 as a TV Station or with the production team, Highflyer, for not being able to give the result?
Also, in a world of quick information, the result would’ve been freely available to anyone with a pc, i-phone or even tele-text. Not very convenient and very frustrating for the World Cup production team but it’s hardly the end of the world, is it?
It really is quite unbelievable that you guys can’t understand why the TV programme C4 Racing, Dubai World Cup went off air without giving the result, despite a couple of explanations! TV channels have to adhere to their schedules. TX cannot just agree to give any programme an over-run of a couple of minutes, especially as there was no real time frame as to when the result would be known. The knock-on effect of those couple of minutes can be a nightmare. Where do you find those extra 2 mins? Cutting already packaged VT programmes, losing a few adverts, which the advertisers have to pay for & therefore be entitled to a refund?
I see the quote of "other channels can over-run" – let’s take that apart with some logic shall we?
Sky Sports – a sports broadcaster that can pretty much over-run if need be – but will still have to request the time from transmission control – or move on to another channel.
BBC – Main sports are F1 and Football plus a few other special events, eg Golf, World Darts, Olympics etc as well as horse racing. The BBC pays heavily for the rights to F1 & any live football they show (& other sports), so they are not going to go off air before the event finishes. Besides, they generally run to time & usually have 30 mins analysis at the end, which can take in any over-run. After that, they will have to request permission from TX to over-run & they may not be able to allow the extra time needed. If I remember correctly, a couple of years back BBC had to go off air from their horse racing coverage while a stewards enquiry was going on so that a recorded Rugby League match could be shown. The result of the enquiry had to be crawled along the bottom of the screen.
ITV – Mainly Champions League, FA Cup & England games. Again, a kick-off that will generally go off to time (apart from the odd travel delays, floodlight failure etc) and the match will finish on time with analysis built into the end of the programme. If the rules of the match mean that extra time or penalties are a possibility then that will be accounted for months before when the schedules are drawn up. Therefore, no problem with over-running.
As annoying as it was for the Dubai World Cup programme to go off air without giving the result, there was very little the producers could do. And, as suggested on here, saying to the guy in TX "but Dubai sponsor our coverage" isn’t going to cut any ice!
To be fair to the C4 Racing Team, it’s not in their hands to over-run the allotted time slot. That decision lies in the hands of whoever is in charge of transmission at the time. If the C4 schedule is rigid, there is nothing the producer can do to get the extra couple of minutes needed. Also, they were slightly victims of circumstance. The World Cup was due off 17:45 GMT but didn’t go off for around 10 minutes later & then they had the closest of all finishes & Meydan obviously doesn’t have Hawkeye technology as we do at our racecourses.
The Racing Channel was indeed £20 per month & that didn’t included the races that were on TV (& in some cases, depending on contracts, it didn’t show the extra races that weren’t on tv ie, cheltenham festival etc).
It only scrapped the subscription when it lost most of the racing to old ATR.
So it was £20 per month in 1995(?) and it’s still £20 per month in 2009!
The striking thing about all these articles about Setanta – and there have been plenty over the past few days – is that virtually none of them make any mention of horse racing and Racing UK at all.
None of the articles mentions Arsenal TV, Liverpool TV or ESPN America. Maybe because those channels, as with RUK, are not OWNED by Setanta Sports? They are simply part of the Setanta package, they have nothing to do with Setanta’s business plan or have any involvement in their current financial woes.
Is racing such a "little world" that even it’s own fans are incapable of working out these things? I’m sure there aren’t any Arsenal, Liverpool or American sports fans pontificating about the demise of their favourite channels!
