Thanks

Spanish Grand Prix in 90 seconds

Is anyone of the opinion that Louise Goodman was underrated? She was bloody quick at getting interviews from drivers, especially when they were still angry, Lee seems to wait a bit longer till they've calmed down a bit.. for the worse imo.

Not sure it's her choice really. I doubt she is sat there saying to the BBC control people "Can't I wait a while, he looks angry".

Well if she wants to do her job well she'd be saying "Can I go now, he looks angry".

It's probably that she has other things to do. Like, er, drink coffee and humour Eddie.

Also the drivers seemed to like her, well she did let herbert cop a feel i seem to remember

And let DC talk about her nipples.

Personally, didn't like her that much and find Lee better, despite her style of questioning.

meh, the FOM ones are much better

Without doubt. Fixed the list as well.

I don't know if he has any relatives in Czech Republic, but I'm sure he has one in Poland and ....... (what a surprise ) he is one of our commentators. The difference is that our 'polish JL' is much much much worse than anything you have ever heard or imagine about mr Legard. The other commentator is some retarded F3 driver. They never go to races, nor even send anyone (they used to attend but TV decided to utilize the money in some better way). There is not much to say about level of their commentary (it would mainly consist of *s). Basically they are sitting in front of two monitors, one with FOM coverage and the other one with live timing. They usually have no idea what is happening on track (sometimes I wonder if they are watching the same race as me), commit very very silly mistakes, talk bullshit etc. But you can always mute your TV . If you think this is a nightmare, then most probably you didn't see our 'F1 studio' .....

The difference between BBC and POLSAT( ) coverage is like day and night.

From Lee McKenzie's site:

"The summer break is over and we are ready for the final charge of the F1 season!"

Her questions though were all closed questions. A driver, were he being bloody-minded, could have answered her questions "yes, no, yes, yes, no". Mackenzie tends to ask more open questions to let the driver speak.

I'll give you that, I don't think anyone has forgotten her interview with Webber at Fuji!

Seriously though, as ensign14 says, her questions were even worse than Lee's because they were normally closed ones. Personally, I didn't really like her.

And there was also the matter of her bangles...

By the way, I'm finally catching up with last weekend's coverage, halfway through the raceday build up now. Did anyone count how many times EJ managed to get the phrase "People's Favourite" in over the weekend?

Yeah, but are they fun to listen to and at least animated? Legard's mistakes aren't the problem - it's just that he sounds like Dimbleby commentating on a royal wedding.

No they are not fun to listen at all . 'The Legardish one' sounds like .... an elderly playboy with white shining denture and 'the driver' sounds like ...... retarded sheep on it's way to a slaughterhause (I know these comparisons may seem a little strange but Poles will understand ).

Last weekend, I was the happiest man on the planet while watching whole F1 weekend on BBC. I do watch races on polish TV ONLY when there is no other way . That's the indication of how fun it is ...

You're a lucky man if you can laugh at that. I can't anymore. I'm not able to really compare him with Legard, but... try to imagine Legard's twin behaving like a horny teenager every time there's some woman in the FOM feed trying not to stop saying something for the whole lenght of the coverage and without Brundle's help. Than you might get some sort of an idea.



It's pretty much the same here. But I have to admit I can understand that, because as I said - they were not able to deliver almost anything else then when they're sitting in their studio.

edit: BTW, there's one thing which maybe hasn't been said before. Our TV (just like many other TVs I believe) doesn't have any Ted or any Lee. There's nobody to interview a retired racer and nobody to ask about strategy or something in the pitlane. And you can trust me that sometimes it's like watching a different race.

Did Brundle really have a bet to mention the word 'kumquat' during his commentary?

I'm surprised he hasn't mentioned it before considering he stands next to one.




Yeah, this is the same setup we had in the UK before 1997.

Thanks for the perspective, TURU. I think in the UK sometimes we fail to appreciate when we have it good. Our whole team is genuinely into F1, they all attend every race (including the second-feed commentators), and all get their noses around the paddock to find out what's really going on so they can speak knowledgeably. There are three ex-drivers, an ex team boss, and some amazing insight and experience from the team as a result. We get all on-track running every weekend, qualifying and race with two possible audio feeds, a long post-race analysis show. Most of this is available online for a week after the event, plus two podcasts are produced. But no, there's too much 'on a charge' or 'up the hill' and it totally ruins everything every weekend, apparently

Well GT1 World provides the GT1 World Championship with commentary by Ben Edwards, as well as a ton of video features for zero cost (£0, $0, €0 ) for the end user as promoted by this very website. So all this 'don't know how good we've got it' stuff is nonsense. Time FOM moved into the 21st century with f1 and not the old-hat broadcasting world of the 20th!

So yeah having to pay for Legard and his irritating commentary does ruin it for some!

Well if GT1 was actually popular enough to be shown on TV we wouldn't have the free broadcasts you have now. It's kind of a shame really it isn't properly promoted.

Fwiw, I'm German and wouldn't watch F1 if there was no BBC coverage .
ITV wasn't too bad, compared to what Geramn TV has to offer - those guys don't even speak my language properly ...
But the Beep took it to a new level, no matter what there is left to be criticized, and isn't there always someting ?
The Leg of course is a bad apple, he'd be out of place commenting a cock fight .

Lee, well she's shallow, and doesn't understand that the BBC can always get away with asking some real questions , but what's getting really embarrassing is how she seems to believe she's hot .

ITV F1 was free to air, as is BTCC now.

The future of broadcasting of major sporting events is going away from the normal TV broadcasters though, which is a good thing because a sport like F1 which is exclusively for only the very wealthy of the world should not EVER be subsidised by a poll tax imposed on the less wealthy in society.

The license fee is paid equally by everyone. It's not imposed on any particular segment.

And nothing is free in TV land. ITV has ads. Money is a unit of time, you have to part with it one way or another to watch F1.

Same here.

I live in Russia, and all we get are FOM translations with commentaries by Aleksey Popov. He is not that bad overall, but he is not the best either.
Aleksey often goes off-topic, talking about some old races or yesterday rumours when a driver overtakes another. Sometimes he doesn't stop talking when they turn team radio on, and then he is like, "Blah-blah-blah-blah-blah, oh this was Fernando's radio, I can't tell you what was said, okay, so, blah-blah-blah....". Man, if you weren't talking I could hear and understand it myself, even with my poor English skills. I wonder, does he pay any attention to stuff they show on the screen?
Yes, he knows some drivers and paddock people, so sometimes he can share some gossips we don't already know. But most of those are usually wrong. He can tell that A said B to C when it was actually D who said B, and A was just one of people asked the same question.

Again, I am not saying he is really bad. Guys who used to do this work couple years ago were worse.
But no matter how good a single commentator is, a show with a team making pre-race footages, interviewing people on field, bringing post-race discussions and so on will always be more entertaining.

The only problem is that he's not really that good at commentating sportscars.Though I admit that he's doing better job than Johnny "this is what GT1 world championship is all about" Herbert and David "can't recognize Lamborghini from Maserati" Croft.

Exactly, the licence fee is a set price, so the poor pay a disproportionate amount of their income for it over wealthier people. So the wealthier in society, those who will benefit most from F1, pay a tiny amount to watch it. And when you understand that this tax is subsidising an industry that is exclusively for only the very wealthy in the world you start to scratch your head a bit. It's Robin Hood in reverse. Welfare for the elite as it were Big corporations benefit profit more and more from the tax of the poorest in society. BBC's coverage is very good, not disputing this, but it's morally corrupt that the poorest in society are subsidising our elitist hobby.

This thread is not about the Licence fee, the merits or demerits of Welfare States or the perceived injustices of such. Please keep it to the BBC's coverage of Formula 1. Thanks.

Not many people watch the pre-show and not the race. Since the commentator speaks for 75% of the time, there's a potential for 75% of the broadcast to be poor.

I'm not having a go at all the other great stuff and thankfully we have alternative commentary (most, but not all of the time).

And of course, Legard's failings does affect the enjoyment, but due to far more than facetious reasons. Why else would a commentator be employed if he had no effect?

However, the people that are less likely to watch the pre-show build up probably aren't too fussed about the commentators so the enjoyment isn't reminded for them.

Classic Italy - Choices
- 1987
- 1991
- 1996
- 1998

Oh man, 1996 was terrible. Those tire stacks in the chicanes were silly.

Just to put some more perspective this is what I wrote back in the ITV days;

[2006]
s a person who knows ITV coverage only from divx files, i really can hardly believe how low rated their coverage is. you get extended pre race shows, martin ****ing brundle, and this james allen guy clearly knows his shit too. it's about 100 times better than what we get in poland. rtl coverage was pretty similar to itv, but it was focused on msc even more than on the race, which will obviously change. but you really should appreciate itv more.

and

[2008]
Thanks to that justintv page which was only about 3 seconds delayed to my TV I watched quali with ITV commentary (hey, it rhymes!). I said it before quite some time ago, you (UK viewers) should really appreciate what you have. From other channels, only RTL has a buildup with people on track doing interviews and knowing what's what almost instantly. Polish crew consisit only of two guys sitting in the commentators box, we don't get any news from the pits during the rac, which is a really important feature, It would suck for you if BBC won't have that.

As for Allen, when is not jabbing about Hamilton he makes a decent job, he is enthusiastic and he knows more about F1 than Polish pundit. Brudnle is simply great, but he does makes mistakes too. I recently re watched the 2007 Canadian GP when he was wondering why cars are not taking the stop and go penalty during SC, it was Allen who said it's illegal.


And it still applies: I don't get FP's in the tv, there is no way of watching them online, out of the two commentators one is a complete muppet and the 'pundit' is way below Allen's level (Better than Legard though, but that's not saying much), entire coverage is focused on Kubica to an insane degree, which magnified by the fact of no interviews with people in the paddock/garages/pitwall during the coverage, so all we get is commentators praising Kubi or saying he must have technical problems. The pre and after show is available only on channels I'd have to buy a satellite dish to watch and that's not even an option as installing it would be illegal in the building I live, but that's no loss as people in there are ABSOLUTELY clueless, you wonder whether they were actually watching the race, or any race. Remember when Massa spun out in Malaysia 2 years ago? That was said to happen during the braking as the bit was shown, it is really this bad.

So with a swap to BBC the only (but sound) downshift is Legard instead of Allen, but I think all/most of you can avoid by turning on 5 live commentary. I usually check all the available proxy sites to listen to 5 live, which is far easier to trick than the F1 site, but recently I have no luck with that so I'm stuck with Tv card with sound off and delayed commentary from one of the justin.tv links as long as FOM is kind enough not to take them down.

Damon Hill just called to fully agree with you.

Have the beeb stoped making inside f1? i have'nt been able to find any episodes on iplayer for a while now

They still do it I believe, but don't put them on iPlayer anymore for some reason. I haven't watched it since Australia, I never know what time its on.

I watch the races outside the UK, after it has aired, and hear Jake talk about alternative commentary including 5 Live and CBBC. Has anyone got a copy of the CBBC version? I do want to hear that.

The CBBC (Children's BBC) commentary was shelved at the end of last season.

It's on 6.30 PM on the Friday of the race weekend. I think! It's one of those programmes that I'll catch if I'm home at that time and I remember it. Not essential viewing in my opinion, but still worth it if you can catch it on the night.

Here's a sign that I've been reading this thread too much: I was watching the ITV4 BTCC coverage from Knockhill this weekend, and every time Ben Edwards said "up the hill", which he did quite a lot since the main straight goes up a steep incline, I winced

me too

I think so. My friend did a small amount of commentating for local football on local radio. There was a bet that he couldn't get the word, cactus, in his commentary. Listening in the pub later, we all let out a mighty cheer when we heard the words, 'That was a cactus of a shot from him."

Kind of suggests they must get pretty bored. I'll do the job if that's the case!

In that scenario you should have to use it in context, as Brundle did with kumquat. You can't just replace words at random with your prize word.

nothing will ever beat Graeme Le Saux though..

1998 world cup the england squad had a bet to get the most redicilous song title into televised interview, but in context..

somehow le saux managed to get in 'i've got a brand new combine harvester'

Not true. I think you can cucumber it.

Yeah, just squash it in.

See kids, that's how the master does it.

This is getting as bad as the "Bertrand Baguette bad pun" thread.

...


OK, maybe not quite that bad

I think I yam better at punathons.