TV coverage gripes

[Gaz.]

You may have noticed that there's a vast difference in sound levels between the movie you've been watching and the ad break.

In the U.S. they now have rules against that. I didn't think they did. I thought they were fudging. My Decibel meter proved me wrong and that they abide by the rule.

Could it be that advertisements accentuate the vocals at the expense of everything else but movies appear to accentuate sound FX? As my wife is profoundly deaf we messed about with the sound levels so she could hear speech properly, even if it means that Kevin Bacon can shout louder than a gun shot, since doing this we've noticed that advertisements are rarely much louder than the programme we've been watching.

[Kiril Varbanov]

My 2 cents on the matter - http://f1framework.blogspot.com/2014/06 ... ernet.html

[xxChrisxx]

The thing thats been pissing me off the most is the awful camera angles at the start.

It's like they placed the camera covering that on the moon with an ultra long lens. You cant tell whos had a good start.

The kicker is when they switch to the start line gantry cam after they are all moving.


The Canada coverage was the best there has been all season.

[beelsebob]

Haha, the Canada coverage was by far the worst there's been all season. The director had a fascination with not showing you the action. Some examples I remember clearly...
In the opening laps, when Hamilton was *right* behind Vettel, he was following back markers who were separated by over a second
A couple of times when the Perez train was in action, he chose just as they entered the straight to switch to the crowd, so you couldn't see if anyone was getting a tow, and in some instances even stayed with the crowd until they were after the chicane.
He repeatedly showed pit stops in favour of showing action that was happening right that second on track.

This race generated by far the most "&*%F!#*%^ING DIRECTOR" yells in the IRC chat that I've ever seen.

[BanMeToo]

Haha, the Canada coverage was by far the worst there's been all season. The director had a fascination with not showing you the action. Some examples I remember clearly...

Yes. One more is when he showed Button's pit stop /at length/ when Hamilton first caught up to Rosberg, all they way from pit entry to turn 4......... who cares man what if Hamilton makes a dive while we watch Button trundle around.

[MercedesAMGSpy]

Haha, the Canada coverage was by far the worst there's been all season. The director had a fascination with not showing you the action. Some examples I remember clearly...
In the opening laps, when Hamilton was *right* behind Vettel, he was following back markers who were separated by over a second
A couple of times when the Perez train was in action, he chose just as they entered the straight to switch to the crowd, so you couldn't see if anyone was getting a tow, and in some instances even stayed with the crowd until they were after the chicane.
He repeatedly showed pit stops in favour of showing action that was happening right that second on track.

This race generated by far the most "&*%F!#*%^ING DIRECTOR" yells in the IRC chat that I've ever seen.

I can't - can't understand why we are following two cars (the leaders) the whole lap, arriving in the sector where you can expect some overtakes and then he switched to some boring pit stops or other stuff.

By the way I am not a fan of the replay of the start. The start of the race is exciting, but I want to see the first laps too. The gaps are small, so you can expect some action. Show the replay of the start after the finish.

[strad]

I want rid of the stupid split screen commercials.
1. they give the small screen to the action and the large one to the commercial.
2. since they show the split screen, in their eyes you aren't missing anything and they can cram in another 10%
3. again since THEY figure you've seen it, they often do not replay stuff that happened during the split screen commercial.

[BanMeToo]

You sound like a fellow U.S. citizen. I always torrent the SkyHD feed a few hours after each race.... I prefer to avoid spoilers and watch the race hours late than suffer our awful coverage

[xxChrisxx]

Haha, the Canada coverage was by far the worst there's been all season. The director had a fascination with not showing you the action.

Ok coverage may not be the right word as the direction was a bit dodgy.

But in terms of the camera placement, the action somehow felt more exciting.

Im convined that more close placed static cameras are needed. It just gives a much better sensation of the speed and dynamics.

[djos]

My 2 cents on the matter - http://f1framework.blogspot.com/2014/06 ... ernet.html

Good article Kiril. Sums things up very nicely!

[RZS10]

Why can't they implement the turning cam they have in indycar? Those are awesome, especially when they follow the car in front on a street course. Instead they give us that very slowly turning crap that only seems to be on Bottas' Williams and captures...his left front tyre...

[Cam]

But I think the change that is currently taking place is very shortlived, as these social media people are starting to think it is not as good as they thought."

When asked if he believed F1 needed to change its approach, and officially embrace social media like other sports have done, he said: "No. We're commercial... If they find people to pay us [to do that] then I will be happy."

MrE has a point about social media - I don't use it - never will. A lot of my friends and associates have stopped using it too. Facebook is for mum's who think that's how they talk to their kids now and developing countries who are finally getting smart phones - we've all moved on. But that doesn't mean Online Media is no good - in fact it's totally separate from Social Media. That's just one component of a large infrastructure. I think his advisers have missed that aspect.

FOM simply doesn't 'get' how we want to watch now. TPB killed traditional tv and media folks. Deal with it. Stop fighting it and start embracing it.

For example, rather than paying nothing for a TPB version of something, Foxtel thinks I'll be happy to pay about $80 a month for Pay TV - even though I will not watch anything else on there except F1. So no Foxtel for us - ever.

Why can't I pay a small price per show that I want - no contracts!? Apple iTunes has done this beautifully. We don't go to the cinemas to watch movies anymore (can't justify 4 x $20 tickets, 2 x $15 popcorn, 2 x $12 watery sugar drinks and parking, just to sit in old sticky seats with kids talking over the movie), so we wait and pay about $6 for all of us to see it in the comfort of our home in HD - perfect. That's a reasonable cost to see HD content when I want and we're happy to pay it. Sure, cinemas are dead - but that doesn't mean income is lost to content creators. They must adjust.

If you don't bring the movie it to iTunes? We don't watch it. Full stop. We've not going to the cinema - ever. We're not buying your Blueray either (disc drives are dead guys). So content delivery either works how we want as a consumer or they don't get our money - very simple. Charge too much - you don't get our money. Poor quality - you don't get our money. See the pattern.

Are you listening FOM?

An ad free, basic live HD stream for $6 in my home, on demand, is doable and affordable. If FOM wants to charge extra for the 'fries & cola' (different content, camera angles, etc) go ahead - I'll choose if I want that. Can't give me that - you don't get my money.

MrE - TV is struggling everywhere. When the pensioners all go and just us tech head kids are left - what do think will happen? Our attentions spans are short and our time limited. Boring, costly, complex things are going the way of the dinosaurs - either get on board the tech train or there'll be a TIL about another extinction soon enough.

[thedutchguy]

I think some of the critism here should be directed at the local broadcasters instead of the FOM. For instance, spilt screen commercials are a choice of the local broadcaster, not of the FOM. As a matter of fact, the FOM forbids the addition of any graphics / camera angles to the world feed and offers a continuous full-screen feed before, during and after the entire race.
The lack of pitlane / onboad channels is - as far as I know - not a FOM limitation either. I live in the Netherlands and we do have both of those channels on Sport 1. Furthermore Sport 1 is available as a subscription channal, but you can also watch races on pay per view without a subscription.
And lastly, on the world feed which is broeadcast bij Sport 1 we can select a audio channel with local commentary, as well as a channel with only natural race sounds... So a lot depends on the local broadcaster.

Some things FOM should definitely do better IMO

-Upgrade the onboard camera's to HD. At the moment, they are not. Unbelievable imo.
-Fix the (onboard) sound. I think they are currently experimenting with something. In Canada the onboad sounds from the two McLarens were vastly different, with one sounding much better than the other.
-Show more tech info. The onboard channel shows telemetry all the time, on the world feed we hardly get to see any.
-Show more info about use of the engery systems on the car. Surely they can do better than the lame slow-updating bar-graph which is now shown a few times per race.
-Fire whoever directed the Canadian Grand Prix

[SiLo]

-Fire whoever directed the Canadian Grand Prix

I second this.

I'd love to see a proper redesign that is just a lot simpler and easier to read. Currently I feel the data that we do get looks a bit messy on the screen.

[Kiril Varbanov]

I think some of the criticism here should be directed at the local broadcasters instead of the FOM.

I agree with 95% percent of your post, Dutch guy, it's just the quoted part which is somewhat correct, as there's a flipside of that coin. Because, as usual, with the strictly commercial model FOM follows, everything is money. I can certainly tell that the prices are sky-high. Moreover, the cost of the licensing schemes has increased in the last three years and that includes anything that has the 'F1' sign on it, be it online, TV or print media. Think of millions of euros.

There's no way that a TV would survive without having a paid subscription, or having split-ad screens. Otherwise there wouldn't be simply F1 on the TV. And I said in the article, that's not necessarily a bad thing. But FOM will never shoot themselves in the leg by selling individual pay-per-view deals. This will mean an end of their money from the TV channels. Certainly, negotiations are possible, but FOM means monopoly...

On a related note, the Canada GP highlights are online - http://www.formula1.com/video/?uid=2014060807R - pretty good job, considering the previous ones.
Finally, I have updated the original article with 30 minutes of onboard action, delivered by Canal Plus - it's much more exciting, as usual.