Viewers into overdrive as Seven delays Bathurst
Angry motor racing fans hit out at the Seven Network's coverage of Bathurst 1000 on Twitter yesterday.
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Angry motor racing fans hit out at the Seven Network’s coverage of Bathurst 1000 on Twitter yesterday, after advertising commitments saw the “Live” telecast pushed out by up to 20 minutes.
As Craig Lowndes was crossing the line in his Holden with co-driver Mark Skaife, viewers on Seven were still 10 laps behind the action. The network’s coverage of Bathurst started out live, but the broadcaster paused and restarted the action to suit its ad breaks. Despite the race finishing at 4.53pm, they were still “racing” on television until 5.20pm.
“This 20 min delay in Bathurst telecast is a major fail for ch 7, this is why I don’t watch commercial TV any more,” race fan DDsD tweeted.
“Channel 7 are absolutely atrocious!!! Disgusted, V8Supercars please give the rights to someone who will broadcast Bathurst live, please,” said Riotness–99.
Seven defended the network’s decision.
“The closeness of the race, the reduced number of safety cars in today’s race, advertising commitments and our desire that viewers not miss a single moment of the race led us to time-shift our coverage,” Seven spokesman Simon Francis said.
“Our objective was viewers not miss a moment of action.”
He also addressed criticism that the event was not in HD.l
“(The) decision on HD was made by Seven and V8 Supercars Television based on available equipment and in-car cameras, cameras buried in the track and barriers and the like: a total of 168 cameras (not all cameras were HD),” Mr Francis said.
“Any chance you can sell the TV rights to someone else? Ch7 is pathetic,” BigAlRoss tweeted on the V8 Supercars page.
Source: Daily Telegraph, The Australian
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59 Responses
As a regular citizen of the city of Bathurst, I was certainly a bit confused when the monstrous roar of the V8’s emanating from the mountain ceased a half hour ahead of channel 7’s broadcast. Why advertise the broadcast as being live when it very obviously isn’t? I don’t mind the idea of it not being live, but why lie?
As for the lack of safety cars, pfft. There were at least 4 or 5 that I saw that lasted several laps, what are they complaining about? Not enough people got injured in order for them to fulfill their advertising commitments?! How may were they planning on? Ha.
ohh boo hoo, people are really crying over spilt petrol 😉 get over it
To the last few comments – I don’t think anyone is saying there shouldn’t be ads, so well done for completely missing the point of the discussion.
The issue is that it wasn’t Live. Seven should have kept it live during ads, replayed anything noteworthy during the ads after, and then straight back to live coverage.
Seven doesn’t time-shift for the viewers it time-shafts the viewers to shift more money into its pockets. Simply… everyone is upset because Seven was not upfront with the viewers about it and did not give people the option to not answer phones, SMS, Twitter etc before they saw the race finish.
@ Nathan – Sorry mate, but I’m sure if it was a celebrity wedding and they cut away to go to a commercial, you’d be complaining about it..
Social media means sports really do have to be live. Cut away from the action for ads, and if anything particularly notable happens during the break, replay it after the break then cut back to live coverage.
Didn’t Seven actually invent the in-car camera?
Anyway, I’ve got to say that really, a 20 minute delay is pretty insignificant, particularly to the core demos that will be watching the broadcast.
Free TV can’t be expected to be completely free.
Delayed 20 minutes? So What! They have to slot in commercial breaks. To all the petrol heads out there…hey guess who pays for the coverage? The advertisers! That is why it is called ‘Free to Air TV”. You can watch a multi million dollar broadcast for nicks, zilch, nothin, Free! I’d rather watch a superbly produced telecast of the race that is delayed for 20 mins for free than pay 80 bucks a month for technically live telecast (that still has commercials). Come on, are we becoming a nation of whingers?? Get a Grip!
@Bogesus
When Nine covers live NRL games, you get about 5 ads during game-play and they’re all after tries. You never miss anything except maybe a conversion. When nine plays it delayed, e.g. Fri and Sunday they do the same as what Seven did yesterday with Bathurst. I dont see that many complaints on here about Nine’s coverage, people have just learned you cant go near a radio or the net if you don’t want to know the result.
As someone who got up at 7am yesterday, watched Bathurst, F1 qualifying, 125cc race, F1 race, MotoGP race and spends a whole lot of my life watching motor sport – this was terrible at very least. My website was inundated with complaints about it, as visitors were wondering where certain highlights were, and all I could say is “what? when did this happen?” only to discover it hadn’t yet, on our “live” broadcast.
Channel 7 advertise it as live, but then gradually keep slipping behind live. It’s annoying when mates in England are watching it live and we’re not, it’s annoying when clips are appearing on youtube before the event has even been shown in our ‘live’ broadcast *facepalm*. But, having said all this, it’s not the first time Seven have done this to Bathurst, I think this is number 3 or 4 now.
The race was a rather dull Bathurst, so all that rubbish about ‘not wanting the viewers to miss the action’ is hard to believe, when there were 5 lap blocks of racing that could have easily been cut out during the ads. Either they didn’t have enough post-race to fill in the time, or they strategically wanted to cut into ONE’s coverage of F1 (which has been gaining more and more viewers).
Finally, ‘lack of safety cars’? We watched one go around the track for at least 15 minutes during the last half an hour, so pull the other one Seven. Don’t you know viewers like me can sit in front of our computers, watch a live web stream, watch two TV channels at once (Seven / ONE) and sit on motor sport websites, and watch live timing too.
Ah well, Seven have been screwing over V8 fans since they first got the rights and started making it all fit in around it’s existing schedules (AFL on Sundays, Horse Racing, etc), should be used to it,
“The closeness of the race, the reduced number of safety cars in today’s race, advertising commitments and our desire that viewers not miss a single moment of the race led us to time-shift our coverage,”
Please….! The decision to time shift would most certainly not have been made ‘on the day’ according to the race unfolding the way it did. It is not as simple as ‘hitting the pause button’ and would require an additional crew to facilitate.
I watched it via PVR (and skipped said ads) so it didn’t matter to me, but when advertised as live it should be shown as such.
How on earth could they have telecast in in HD when 7 have dumped HD broadcasting.
Poor petrol heads!
I watched it all day, and got the result from Twitter 30min before the race ended on TV. They have to realise they can’t get away with things like this anymore.
There seemed to be an awful lot of ads as well. Or maybe it’s just me not used to watching commercial TV. They seemed to come every 10mins. And it was the same block of ads played over and over and over and over…
lame excuses from 7
Unfortunately this is a no win situation for Seven. They have advertising commitments, and that is understandable. If they time shift the broadcast, then people complain that it is not live. If they cut away from coverage, then the complaint is they are missing the action. The third option is to put it on pay tv, and then complaints will be that most people won’t be able to see it.
Personally, I would prefer to see it live (and miss things in the ad breaks) than time shift it out. That’s how Nine cover the live NRL games.
Nothing ever makes them happy, if they left the footage for ads there would be complaints about ad placement as if channel 7 is supposed to have visions of the future to know where to place them. If they did picture in picture advertisers would want a discount and viewers would probably have a problem with it to. Just no pleasing sports fans.
20 minute delay, big deal. If you wanted it live, go to the event instead of watching it on TV. I’m a V8 fan and I’m glad that it’s on TV at all.
I find it unbelievable that there was not ‘enough’ HD camera and that they were all taken by One HD for the commonwealth games. What, all the stations Hire the same cameras in Australia?!? If there was a perfect te to show the 1000 in HD, it would have made sense to show it at 7mate. It’s that why 7mate was created in the first place, the ‘blokes’ channel. I am sure V8 Supercar will be listening to this and how its clear now that fan will turn off, especially all the overseas broadcasters such as Speed Asia and Speed US were showing it Live. Now, that is no excuse…
I’ve seen many US gold broadcasts where the main cameras are HD and roaming cameras are not. That sort of thing is done all the time.
Seven went for the cheap option, it would seem.
I didn’t know and probably wouldn’t have cared but this is just wrong!
Don’t they (Seven) know the viewers come first not the advertisers, if people stop watching it doesn’t matter how many advertising commitments they have.
As for the HD thing all cameras don’t have to be in HD, I just hope they upgrade them for the next event, people expect 1080 HD in 2010,
I hope when the rights come up it goes back to TEN, at least they can show it in HD on ONE.
I thought it was ok. This way you don,t miss any of the action.
Yeah I got extent message from someone in one of the teams just before 5pm with the result which kinda rook away the tension of the last 10 laps. I’m used to getting premature results to qualifying and race results during the season but not on the big day at Bathurst. Seven and V8 Supercars will continue to do it while it helps in maximising return on their broadcast coverage.
P.S. and this from a network which is showing a whole bunch of 4:3 shows on their HD channel. Laziness is more like it…
“not all cameras were HD” – well, one wouldn’t expect the stick-cams, etc. to be HD, but how often are those shots used? Less than 1% of the time. I’m not a NAScar fan, but I found myself missing NAScar while watching the grainy shots yesterday, especially when it comes to in-car cameras, which is the most spectacular in NAScar. There’s no excuse for not using HD cameras track-side and in-car, of course the mini cams aren’t going to be HD…
“our desire that viewers not miss a single moment of the race” – well leave out the parts that aren’t racing then! For example, all the technical waffle can be left out. People are either mechanically-minded and already know what they’re talking about, or they’re not and don’t… and if they don’t know it’s probably because they don’t care!
Let’s hope Bathurst comes to One one day.