Comments on: The BBC Blow Me Away From As Far As Brazil

By: TED BELL

TED BELL — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 14:45:01 +0000

Here in America we don’t get the BBC and our races are shown on the Speed Channel. For those who don’t get the coverage I feel it is pretty good.

Bob Varsha is the host and does a good job. His sidekicks are David Hobbs and Steve Machett. Hobbs is excellent and has an appealing style to his race description. Machett is a techincal guru and as a former F1 mechanic who uses his knowledge and ways to communicate to really add to the broadcast. They are charming ,fair and willing to tell the story the way it is happening.

The three of them cover the race from their studio base in Charlotte and use live race commentary from the exellent Peter Windsor who is now off to run USF1. He is top notch and will be sorely missed once this season is over.

I thank all four of them for how they choose to cover F1 here in America.

By: Claire

Claire — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 17:12:00 +0000

Me and my dad like the pre-race stuff they do, but some of the rubbish they talk about is useless. I don’t like Eddie Jordan. His team was useless. I remember my brother asking me to remind my Year 2 teacher about one race weekend because THEY WERE THAT RUBBISH THAT A SEVEN YEAR-OLD COULD MAKE FUN OF THEM!!! I don’t like Jake Humphrey either. Considering he was a CBBC presenter, BBC’s choice was childish (My pathetic attempt at a joke). I’ll give David Coulthard the benfit of the doubt (Whatever that means) considering he knows what it’s like to be an F1 driver and how tough it is. Jake Humphrey knows jack all!

By: Brazil Qualifying – Throwing Out the Baby With the Bathwater « Making Up The Numbers

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 00:43:34 +0000

[...] to see if conditions improved. There was a lot of “will they or won’t they” guessing, and the BBC did a marvellous job filling in the time and even switched to BBC2 after delaying the start …. However, this did little to appease the viewers of Merlin who seem to think it’s the end of [...]

By: Oliver White

Oliver White — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 23:47:32 +0000

Unfortunately they didn’t put the BBC2 segment on the internet.

I noticed that too. It currently says Unavailable on the iPlayer site, which is quite annoying. But then, I imagine the post-live viewing of it will seem a little odd, the programme just starting in the middle.

I’m surprised they didn’t stitch it all together for the BBC1 listing (which is what I presumed they would do).

By: Alianora La Canta

Alianora La Canta — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 23:33:40 +0000

I thought it was great that the F1 live coverage got switched. The effect on programming on BBC2 was:

The first episode of “Life” (a wildlife show narrated by David Attenborough) was postponed.

Gandhi started 15 minutes late and a five-minute additional delay that developed around Have I Got More News For You means that the planned stuff listed in the Radio Times for BBC 2 will finish 20 minutes later than scheduled. In other words, Inside F1 (the last programme listed in BBC Two) will be 3:50am-4:05am.

For some reason, nothing is listed between then and 6am, so there appears to be some slack to take this unexpected additional programming…

Unfortunately they didn’t put the BBC2 segment on the internet. This meant that people like me (who couldn’t watch the qualifying due to swimming club being in the way) never got to see what happened on-track after Liuzzi’s crash

Still, that’s a relatively small problem compared to the vast increase in quality that is the BBC’s overall effort and achievement. The channel clearly cares about F1, which is great to see and shows in just about every aspect of its coverage.

By: Keith Collantine

Keith Collantine — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 21:48:49 +0000

Hear, hear. I was massively impressed with them for doing that. Every race they show ITV up for the embarrassment they were. Well done BBC.