Schumacher

During the San Marino Grand Prix.

Well?



-Schuey

Diablo

f*cking outrage IMO.

I fully appreciate the need for advertising revenue to fund the rights to televise the races, but I'd love to see them running adverts in the last few minutes of a closely fought premiership football game.

Completely unnaceptable.

Patt@firstime

What choice do we have? No, but what difference does it make?

Scoob99

iTrader: (1)

Hi Guys this is the E-mail I got from ITV.
Subject: Re: Yesterday's coverage of the San Marino Grand Prix
Date: 26 April 2005 11:38


ITV would like to apologise for cutting to a break at the climax of
yesterday's Grand Prix and we are sorry that it affected your enjoyment
of the race.


As you are probably aware, we always try to cut to adverts during the
least contentious parts of the action and update viewers with anything
they may have missed as soon as possible after the commercials.


ITV is contractually obliged to include a certain number of adverts
during the race - we are a commercial channel and Formula One is a
commercial sport.


On Sunday, the race was very exciting throughout and it was a tough call
as to when to cut to adverts - for example, we didn't want to interrupt
the race when Jensen Button was in the lead. Our production team make
these decisions and have done so since we started F1 coverage in 1997,
by and large they get it right.


In the event we delayed taking the break until the last moment but had
to do so with three laps to go. Yesterday's race was a particularly
difficult one to call as Michael Schumacher caught Fernando Alonso so
spectacularly. It appeared that he would take the lead at any moment
and we were reluctant to cut away from the action.


Unfortunately, the pass moment never came and we were forced to take the
scheduled break too close to the finish. Coverage returned for the
final lap to see Schumacher and Alonso battling for the lead. We know
it is of little consolation but their positions didn't change hands
during the advert break and we screened the final three laps in their
entirety after the race finished.


Nonetheless, we are well aware that the timing of this advert upset many
viewers and can only apologise to you again.

Whilst the strategy for cutting to adverts is not an exact science, we
will do our utmost to ensure that this scenario does not happen again in
future and your comments have been passed on to the production team plus
the Controller of ITV Sport.


Thank you for writing in to us.

From the Duty Office, ITV

Patt@firstime

In other words sorry but it's done now

julian N/W wrx my93

put it back on the beeb...........

astraboy

innit!
astraboy.

SJ_Skyline

bunch of -

Blairc

It`s quite ironic how they go on about how they have contractural obligations to their sponsors but do you think their sponsors would be signing up if we the viewers werent watching? As the viewer we are the reason for the adverts and thus are more important than them!

Chris.

Daz34

How can it be good for the sponsors during that commercial break? When it cut to the ads I wasn't exactly in the mood to view them constructively & positively. They were the reason for ruining the programme so I am not likely to buy their products am I?

Schumacher

The choices you have are yes and no. It's only a poll. Doesn't hurt anyone if they vote.

-Schuey

D70

Yes I can forgive them. I just switched over to local TV from my digibox and watched the laps ITV decided to cut.

mart360

as far as i am concerned they can have all adverts and no racing.. do they do that these days??

sorry but F1 lost the plot after Senna and Mansell went...

all you hear is bernie moaning about how teams are poor etc and the costs they must stump up.. he should be doing all he can to make it easier for them




touring cars every day for me .. far more fun

M

Iain Young

ITV were contracted to show a certain number of adverts during the course of the grand prix, and if they didn't they would have been in breech of that contract, (thus costing them rather a lot of money I suspect).

The placement of the final ad break was unfortunate. They took a gamble that Schumi would have gotten past Alonso, but the gamble didn't pay off, and so eventually they had to cut away from the action to fulfill their contractural obligations to their advertisers (who all paid vast sums of money to get their ads shown during the race).

They apologised for the mistake, and that's the end of it as far as I'm concerned. If you want the ads to not be in there during the race, then I suggest you ask the bbc to raise the tv license fees so they could afford to buy the rights...

Leslie

It seems to me that touring cars are scarcely removed from the old type of stock car races where the idea is to "nerf" your opponents off the track. You may think thats entertaining but it is certainly not track racing as it should be.

This was a particularly fascinating F1 race of course and putting a series of advertisements on at the time they did can only be regarded as gross incompetence and lack of forward planning. It was pretty obvious for quite some time that Schumacher was so much faster and that he was going to catch up with Alonso.

Its all very well to run those three laps later but the moment was completely lost since we all lost the thrill of watching to see if Shumacher could overtake. It is obviously not the same to watch it later when you know the result.

Money rules, as ever!

Les

davyboy

Yeah great - a field of 12 cars.

BTCC has lost its way. DTM and Oz touring cars with huge fields of cars show how it can be done.

Iain Young

Agreed. I find Touring cars pretty boring actually. Just glorified bumper cars really

Ah, the joys of hindsight. How could they have known what was going to happen in the future of the race? They aren't clairvoyant are they? They have said that they were expecting Schumacher to catch up and attempt to pass Alonso and gambled that he would do it soon, so they stayed with the action. It's not their fault if it didn't happen. I bet you lot would be moaning just as much if they had cut away from the action earlier and missed the overtaking maneuver if it happened...

Why would you expect anything else from a commercial tv station?

Leslie

Yes I agree Iain Young, but they are also there for the viewer and they have a responsibilty to give the best possible coverage. This was not the way to do it. I still say it was foreseeable from some time earlier if they had been following the action.

I bet they are a bit more careful in the future though.

Les

GrollySTI

They made a decision - it turned out to be the wrong one - therefore they will get criticized - thats life!
There is no real defence just an excuse