Future Rally Media Coverage

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Originally Posted by bopApocalypse

fellas - the commentary on the english-language eurosport day 2 & 3 coverage has been Carlton Kirby.

You know, the one who has done:
* all the IRC coverage as long as I can remember [didn't follow the first year]
* Eurosport's dakar coverage
* some other racing coverage on Eurosport as well (can't remember what it was)

Certainly a different style than his usual commentary - but his pronunciation of these names has always been a bit... different.

They sure do seem to have their review and primary coverage backwards... Their previous day(s) reviews includes the front runners in detail, and a fair amount on the rest of the pack. Then, their primary coverage lightly covers the frontrunners...

It was nice that it felt as though they mixed the coverage up with day 3, until you realized that whomever they covered first won the stage, then second was second fastest, etc.

one can hope things will improve as time goes by.

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Is the WRC coverage season long?

Eurosport will so far only cover Monte and Sweden to my knowledge... Eurosport could potentially become the promotor and broadcaster for the WRC.... unless it has been 100% confirmed, someone update it here.

I thought Day 3 coverage was the best, I forwarded the first 12 mins of coverage from Days 1/2 so then watched 3. It was good. Good to see MINI in there a bit, but Day 1 & 2 had good showing of lower down the order and S2000 cars.

They should try Andrew Coley for the commentary. He does the live stuff for IRC and he's very good.

I much prefer this type of factual review programme that Eurosport have been doing than trying to make some kind of fake excitement pretending-to-be-live-when-it's-not-live that NOS did. I'm guessing that the majority of people who watch the daily reviews probably already know what has happened and don't need to be told when to be excited e.t.c.

I can kind of understand why NOS did that, to try and make it seem exciting to new fans but I still think the only way to truly get serious numbers of new fans to WRC is to do more live tv coverage.

Note that the Eurosport coverage starts in a an hour.

This guys are doing show for Eurosport.
ellegy.com

what i didn't like about the eurosport coverage was the 15min recap every night. I under stand that they didnt have much time to prepare. But it was a pain to sit through what you'd seen the night before.

Day four footage was actually very good. Still the silly recap but after skipping that the rest was actually pretty good. The commentary was TERRIBLE on day two. Keeps telling who was fastest as you see the first car rolling out. The scripts used/made? by Paul King at least talked about how they went on in the stage then revealed the fastest driver at the end.

Does anyone know who is updating WRC.com? I was under the impression NOS own/owned the rights to the website, so surely it can't be them...

Must be some of that guys.

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Originally Posted by J4MES

I've been saying it for years but every type of media coverage we need can be found online. We have instant timing, forums like this, rally radio, apps, YouTube videos, people Tweeting instant pictures. Sure it is nice to sit down in front of the TV with a coffee or a beer and watch the review show but if you want instant information then online is the place to be.

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Daily coverage is still needed. I have a friend who doesn’t follow rallies online. Last Saturday we where discussing and I mentioned that I’ve been following Monte online. He said to me “don’t tell me any results, I wont to know the results by watching the coverage.

I drag this one here from the Monte thread..

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Originally Posted by Livewireshock

I must admit I am more than a little disappointed with the Motors TV and Eurosport highlights show for each day. In a >30 minute show (considering ad breaks) to have a third to a half of the show dedicated to previous day/days action, it left little room for actual highlights from any given day. There was prolonged periods of the top 4 or 5 drivers, lingering on 3 to 4 sequences of shots, going through the stages. However you never got to see much further down the order. If a car is in the top 10, they deserve at least a 5 to 10 shot in action. Hardly saw Henning or Wilson, Aroujo & Nobre in the WRC cars, let alone a mention of P.G. in his Proton or Abbring in the S2000 cars, I mean there was only 3 of them for most of the event, how hard could it have been to show a quick shot.

The main point of this rant is not just demand variety in the drivers so far as coverage goes. My point is that it is the media coverage that will satisfy the sponsors for their drivers. No point is spending X amount of Euros on a campaign if it is not going to get some TV time in front of the millions of fans watching. So while it is good to celebrate the efforts of the top drivers, but with out supporting the others drivers competing in the championship, you will lose them and thus will have no championship at all.

So please, the grand powers that be, limit the reviews to 3 to 6 minutes maximum and that can give you time to show a passing shot of Driver X and help him keep his sponsor further into 2012 and beyond. Even if it during the cuts to ad breaks, rather than looking down a misty mountain valley. The simulcam shots were nice but only use it once or twice with a relevant car battle, not three or four times plus an extra time with them all combined. Also there is no need to repeat the showing the maps of a stage, when it is exactly the same as the morning pass. Added up, some shots of the other drivers could have been included and it would have proven to have been just as entertaining, while providing the drivers with the exposure they need in these tough times.

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I disagree. There should be a strong and clear insentive, also based on the amount of coverage, to get inside the top 5. You pay to achieve performance and results, and the payback is better coverage. You don't want to encourage complacency and lack of competitiveness, by promising tv-coverage just for putting a car on the start-line. You should rather make the coverage more attractive in other ways, to grow the sport popularity/fan base. You suggest imo very defensive strategy, to cuddle too much with small sponsors. I think there is a lot more potential existing, and more aggressive and inventive promotion should be the aim. Make the sport more popular, and money flow again.

About simulcam shots I think they are awesome. If there is anything the tv-coverage should try to achive it's to give the viewer better ability to compare drivers, speed and performance, outside just the stage times. The coverage should aim to project the competitiveness, that's what makes it interesting to watch. So the more the better of simulcam imo.

I would like to see:
- Longer onboards, with split-screen of two drivers.
- Short interviews with leading team managers and drivers at mid-service.
- driver stage interviews (of those who are in a close fight)
- Obviously heli-cam is priceless, but already prioritized, so no problem.

With that said, I still must admit that for me personally a 20 min coverage of one day gives me absolutely nothing of what I want to see. What I really want is full-stage onboards, and live coverage. The tv-recap I doubt I will ever enjoy. But with some serious changes I think it could attract a lot more viewers.

I agree!

The Simulcam was fantastic, especially when watching how different and how much more flamboyant Petters corners was when directly compared to Sordos clean lines.

But where the TV-coverage should excel is the places we can't see online. Inside the servicepark, interviews with team leaders and others, as well as some friendly rivalry. That's what really adds to the experience and is a hundred times more interesting to watch rather than just hearing how many seconds apart the drivers are.

Example: Henning Solberg was in a tight battle with Sordo? at some point a few years ago. The next stages were real nail-biters with regards to what kind of tires they should go for. Henning played the mind-games to perfection by stopping by Sordos car in the service-park, turning the wheel all the way over to reveal what he was running on, and then drove off. The mind games worked, Sordo put his Citroen off the road in the third corner of the next stage. Those kind of "behind the scenes" stories is what get you fans. If in doubt, look at F1, they do it to perfection.

ive always found the coverage of the lower orders a bit hit and miss. As said above i think the pwrc and swrc cars should get a bit more coverage. As some people may like the wrc cars but follow drivers from over classes. with the time they had they could of covered the other classes briefy. with the lack of results on wrc.com if it wasnt for the fourms and FB I'd have no idea where the lower orders was..

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Originally Posted by gtimad73

what i didn't like about the eurosport coverage was the 15min recap every night. I under stand that they didnt have much time to prepare. But it was a pain to sit through what you'd seen the night before.

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It was too much, Day 4 had over 10 minutes of recap about what had happened, some of which I was watching for the 4th time. Obviously it's important to inform people of what was going on, but not going into details like shots of road signs and repeats of the simulcam (which is so much better than that ****ty Virtual Specatator idea)

FWIW I think that coverage of the lower order is important for a number of reasons, firstly because I want to know about more than the top 5. Secondly because sometimes those guys are doing something fantastic (like getting an S2000 high in amongst the WRC boys). But mostly because what manufacturer or team is going to enter a series where you can only get attention if you're immediately on the pace? Even MINI, who have started quick and with a lot of publicity, are struggling. You need incentives for new drivers and teams, hence why showing the lower half of the top 10 regularly is important for the health of WRC.

The MTV3 coverage didn’t have any reviews of previous days and if there was, it was very short. In short it went this way:
JML explaining the stages. Interviews of the drivers after each leg. Other interviews after the first leg of the day. More onboards compared to Eurosport.

Day 1:

Jaques Morelli explaining the tyre rules. He says that every car in a WRC rally can use 45 tyres????? Michelin have 84 different choices. He said that 36 soft tyres (S1), super soft tyres12 (SS1) and hard tyres 8 (H1), 20 tyres with studs and 8 tyres without studs. Three different tarmac tyres. Studded tyres had 240 studs.

Day2:

Interviews with Denis Giraudet and Francois Delecour.

Day 3:

Interviews with Toni Gardemeister and Jouni Ampuja who acted as gravel crew for PGA.

Day 4:
Interview with Tommi Mäkinen explaining Turini stage and some old footage. After the two first stages the interview with Tommi Mäkinern continues when he explains his Monte adventures. Interview with Yves Matton. Interview with Kim Vatanen. All the interviews about 8 last min.

Btw, Yves Matton said that when Citroen still had the both Sebastians, they were considering Mikko as the third driver but the as Yves said “we had to integrate the team”.

Day 5:

Day 4 night stages. Onboard of PGA when the car caught fire. Petter told in the interview that he won’t get a single point from the power stage. About 6 min. driving & onboards from power stage. Interviews with the team bosses. Interview with David Richards.

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Originally Posted by MrJan

FWIW I think that coverage of the lower order is important for a number of reasons, firstly because I want to know about more than the top 5. Secondly because sometimes those guys are doing something fantastic (like getting an S2000 high in amongst the WRC boys). But mostly because what manufacturer or team is going to enter a series where you can only get attention if you're immediately on the pace? Even MINI, who have started quick and with a lot of publicity, are struggling. You need incentives for new drivers and teams, hence why showing the lower half of the top 10 regularly is important for the health of WRC.

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+1

Only showing the top 4 or 5 also makes for extremely boring television, because the way the WRC is at the moment we will be seeing basically the same 4 or 5 drivers every rally. But more importantly, it really does not do justice to the character of the sport; in the 90's for example, you would see the coverage taking in drivers from across the spectrum, from local specialists like Aghini and Cunico, to Puras in Grp N, to the F2 cars. I think we would be going down a very dangerous (and boring) road just covering the top 5 cars. That is the same sh*te that NOS has been doing for the last few years, and look where that has got us....

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Originally Posted by Barreis

This guys are doing show for Eurosport.
ellegy.com

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Barreis, to Montecarlo, only 2 persons from Ellegy... the others editors, are from other agencies...

Since media is more than TV.
What do you wish for in terms of internet functionality for fans to get more out of the rallies?

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Originally Posted by Sulland

Since media is more than TV.
What do you wish for in terms of internet functionality for fans to get more out of the rallies?

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I'd say we don't need split times, IF ...
... the radio coverage is from all the stage ends.
... live stream of action (helicopter and onboards is enough)
... live tracking

Because all of those have actually been done, then I don't see any obstacles which could stop them from happening (if I exclude money).

According to today's Autosport magazine, it looks as if the rumoured UK tv deals with ITV4 and ESPN will still go ahead with Eurosport footage. Power stage should be covered live again too, not sure if from Sweden onwards or not.

Some live coverage of days one and two is also in the plan.

All sounds very positive.

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Originally Posted by MrJan

It was too much, Day 4 had over 10 minutes of recap about what had happened, some of which I was watching for the 4th time. Obviously it's important to inform people of what was going on, but not going into details like shots of road signs and repeats of the simulcam (which is so much better than that ****ty Virtual Specatator idea)

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The old Top Gear Rally Report approach, whereby each day's RAC programme just covered the action from that day, until the final day when a recap was provided, seemed eminently sensible.

Was MonteCarlo PowerStage shown anywhere?
Will it be shown in Sweden?

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Originally Posted by Franky

I'd say we don't need split times, IF ...
... the radio coverage is from all the stage ends.
... live stream of action (helicopter and onboards is enough)
... live tracking

Because all of those have actually been done, then I don't see any obstacles which could stop them from happening (if I exclude money).

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Live straming would be nice. And possible due to the the repeaterplane in the air !
Live tracking, and splits are easy if they want to!

A couple of snapshots of the incar camera angles used in the Norwegian rally championship coverage:

http://img813.imageshack.us/img813/5...3017h34m27.jpg

http://img10.imageshack.us/img10/695...3017h30m17.jpg

http://img684.imageshack.us/img684/9...3017h31m54.jpg

http://img140.imageshack.us/img140/3...3017h37m05.jpg

I have a hunch it isn´t as easy to get good angles from a WRC car compared to the lower class cars, but surely the WRC can also produce better camera angles than those we have seen for the past decade or so. *counting on Eurosport*

It looks like Eurosport is going to do Sweden - with Neil Cole! Deal is not signed yet.
https://twitter.com/#!/neilcole

Seems like there are some big problems regarding the Eurosport deal, according to some tweets. Peter Baert and Colin Clark saying things 'are very bad.'

Nevermind the camera angles then, if the only things covering the events are radio and newspapers.

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Originally Posted by EightGear

Seems like there are some big problems regarding the Eurosport deal, according to some tweets. Peter Baert and Colin Clark saying things 'are very bad.'

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Oh dear FIA.

Stumbling blindly from one disaster to another.....

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Originally Posted by EightGear

Seems like there are some big problems regarding the Eurosport deal, according to some tweets. Peter Baert and Colin Clark saying things 'are very bad.'

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very bad for who? for themselves probably? CC is one of the reasons I dont listen WRR (the other is becs). some new faces are needed! WRC is not a comedy show, neither a place for british propaganda!

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Originally Posted by SlowSon

very bad for who? for themselves probably? CC is one of the reasons I dont listen WRR (the other is becs). some new faces are needed! WRC is not a comedy show, neither a place for british propaganda!

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Well Becs is gone now. ;)

This is all just a big mess and makes everybody involved look like a bunch of children. It will only be justified if the solution (which, eventually, I'm sure will be found) is so good everbody will understand it took a lot of time.
Peter Baert is a Belgian doing racing and rally commentary on Dutch and Belgian Eurosport, so yes maybe it is bad for them (only).

He should go also.

I've got a question for all those who say that certain people should quit their current job and a new people should do that job.

Who are the persons who you'd like to replace with all those people/companies? A list of names and supporting arguments would be a good start for some proper discussion.

All NOS and tied people should leave 'cos they destroyed WRC in last decade.

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Originally Posted by Barreis

All NOS and tied people should leave 'cos they destroyed WRC in last decade.

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I'll repeat myself: World Rally Radio had nothing to do with NOS.

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Originally Posted by Barreis

All NOS and tied people should leave 'cos they destroyed WRC in last decade.

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Better NOS than nothing Barreis. ;)

Why talk about it, we all have nothing to do with CSS, NOS, or FIA and rally Teams.
We are still only the spectators and rally fans. ;-)

Neil cole just tweeted that he is no longer going to Sweden.

Very good.

I don't quite understand your sentiment. I personally would prefer suboptimal coverage than no coverage.

Colin Clark tweeting: "Hearing that Eurosport have withdrawn from discussion with regards to any element of filming/promoting WRC. Hope FIA know what theyre doing!"