The fact is that ITV bought formula 1 to sell advertising to men. There's no way they were ever going to show a race advertising free. AIUI TV companies aren't allowed to show adverts and programmes simultaneously.
'Buffering' the action would be a possibility , but they always have shown anything important from the breaks after them. I can only remember 1 occasion where something really crucial has happened during an ad break and that was in the first couple of weeks of ITV F1
Re: ads. The OFCOM rules state that advertising is an average of 7 mins an hour over 24 hours, with a maximum of 12 minutes. With ITV not screening ads overnight, this bumps up the average minutes during the day.
The maximum break length within a programme is 3 minutes 30 seconds, plus a 20 second trailer and any sponsorship stings - so a total of 4 minutes. The general rule is that 20 minutes must pass from the start of one part to the start of the next.
The maximum break length within a programme is 3 minutes 30 seconds, plus a 20 second trailer and any sponsorship stings - so a total of 4 minutes. The general rule is that 20 minutes must pass from the start of one part to the start of the next.
Sorry to go off topic, but just reading through the guidelines I stumbled across this...
Quote:
6.9 Programmes with Prizes
A break may be taken at the point where one competitor leaves the scene and before a new competitor is introduced. Where there is no change of competitor, a break may occur at the end of one complete round of questions.
How do this affect "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" when Chris is guided to a break before revealing the answer, thus not completing the round of questions?
Could broadcasters not "timeshift" the race to fit in adverts?
ie: when adverts are on, the video is stored in a buffer, and can continue from the same point after the adverts- the downside would be that the further into the programme you are, the less live it becomes.
ITV wanted to do this when they won the rights back in 1997 - Bernie Ecclestone refused them permission to do it.
As for an RTL style PiP - Not allowed.
Ofcom only allows text during breaks a la Sky Sports Gillette Soccer Saturday/Special.
I think people are forgetting how unbelievably boring F1 presentation was on the BBC before ITV got hold of it. I wouldn't exactly say ITV revolutionalised it, as Channel 4 did with Cricket, however they breathed life into a tired format - and made it interesting.
BBC only went over to the the race about only 15 minutes before it started, and even then - there was no gridwalk, little in the way of pitside commentary, no on-board commentary of lap dynamics with Martin Brundle, and the analysts were pretty much ALWAYS in London.
During the race itself, although the commentary boasted Murray Walker, that was about it. There was little in terms of conveying the technical side of F1 to the viewer as they didn't even know much about it, they hardly linked up with pitside, like they do now, etc. I could go on.
I really wouldn't want my license fee being spent on even more sport by the BBC. They got the Premiership rights back and are getting less viewers than ITV did, and I don't think they'd do any better with F1 to be honest. I think it's got to stick to commercial TV now.
The ad breaks are annoying, but sport is free on ITV. It's only ten minutes out of a 2 hour race, and usually, nothing happens in that space of time anyway - they have learned to strategically pick their times now, unlike - as aforememtioned - the first couple of weeks, where it went to pot.
Now Formula One's more popular, I think the BBC would put a lot of effort in to make a really good show out of ot though.... and it would remove the scourge of James Allen. He's not exactly held in high regard by people, especially those at the 'Sniff Petrol' website. This is what I found when I saw the site a few days ago....
Sorry to go off topic, but just reading through the guidelines I stumbled across this...
Quote:
6.9 Programmes with Prizes
A break may be taken at the point where one competitor leaves the scene and before a new competitor is introduced. Where there is no change of competitor, a break may occur at the end of one complete round of questions.
How do this affect "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" when Chris is guided to a break before revealing the answer, thus not completing the round of questions?
Ha - isn't it just true, although I admit that my mum and I had to laugh at his "he's going to Saudi Arabia!" comment to describe a racer going off the track at Bahrain. I still miss Murray - I've got some older races on tape, and JA just pales into insignificance. Martin Brundle sounds like he's enjoying himself a lot more too back then than nowadays.
To be honest though, whilst ITV could do so much better, from what I have seen they are superior to both Italy and Australia in how they cover F1, particularly the latter. Italian race coverage itself is pretty good; however there is not much pre and post race stuff. Australian coverage is just bizzare - granted that most of the races do take place late at night there, but for a start races are shown on a delay of at least an hour (I know that because I was watching the British GP and my mum texted me to say "Well, they got away okay, didn't they?" and I was like, "Eh? I'm watching two blokes sat on stools!") That's Aussie pre race coverage; two blokes perched on stools in the middle of a room that looks like the lounge of an overenthusiastic F1 fan. They chat for a little bit about how things are going so far in the championship, what expectations are in the race, etc, a la Rosenthal, Jardine and Blundell here. The two Aussie blokes (I'll call them that although one was English) were very knowledgeable, but there were no driver interviews, no video clips, no behind the scenes stuff. Just them yakking away.
After they've done their bit, they go straight to the grid. I mean the proper grid, not the so-called "dummy grid" that is formed before the drivers do their warm up lap. The commentary of James Allen and Martin Brundle is faded in, about ten seconds before JA does his infamously unfortunate "GOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!" Walker-wannabe shout. Australia takes the ITV coverage, as do several other countries around the world. They keep the ad breaks, though I am not sure if they time them with ITV or not. Anyway, upon returning from a break, instead of returning straight to JA and MB, the two Aussie blokes do a voiceover, telling you what has happened in the race so far, before coverage fades back into JA and MB, usually picking them up when they're mid sentence.
After the race, they cut straight from the podium back to the two Aussie blokes who chat for a bit longer on their stools and then it's goodbye. Not even an interview with Aussie driver Mark Webber. No wonder people don't follow the sport so much over there.
So yeah, whilst there are things I don't like about ITV's coverage, it looks pretty good after sitting through that!