VegasJen

i was very excited to hear that NASCRAP channel, um, i mean speed channel, would be carrying 21 hours of coverage of le mans. since i don't have satalite, i found a local sports bar that had speed as part of their program. because i had to work most of saturday and by the time i got cleaned up, i didn't get down to watch anything until about 8:30 saturday night. i brought the g/f with me, she's not a huge race fan but she does enjoy racing. by that time it was getting to be about dawn in le mans and we were both stunned and disappointed with how little race coverage there was. for the next 2.5 hours, until 'radio le mans' took over coverage, it seemed like all they did was have interviews and watch people come into the pits and go out of the pits. not to mention painfully long shots of crew members sleeping. there was virtually no coverage of any actual racing until radio le mans took over. let's not even talk about the ~4 minutes of commercials that seemed to come in 4 minute intervals!
did anyone else notice this?
we were both so disappointed, she just wanted to go home by 10:30. i ended up taking her home and i came back and watched several more hours of racing.
after radio le mans took over, the coverage was exactly what i expected. at this point i feel obligated to praise the rest of the coverage i saw.
i bring this up because we spent alot of time talking about how bad the coverage was when she was there, and it was bad, i wanted to write a letter to their sponsors telling them how bad the coverage was. and then as soon as i get back from taking her home, the coverage was actually great. now i'm conflicted. i do know that i'm not buying any satalite program just to get speed channel.

vader86

same way last year, its that damned french network feed thats the problem

VegasJen

ah, so that's it. it was enough to pizz me off. but knowing that, i will modify my disgust of their coverage. unfortunate, because the g/f was really disappointed with the coverage and isn't as interested in watching racing if it's not crashcar, since it's so boring.

Z11409

And the Euro countrys get a hour more coverage.ALL air time is sold by the French to other networks.

gonzalezfj

I think Speed Vision should back-charge the damned French for their ****-poor feed.


Frank

vader86

You can bitch to Speed like I have about their inability to wrestle away the raw feed from the French to produce themselves.

I'd even let the French put up their graphics and their icon on the screen if Speed got to produce it for the american audience.

GTB/ZR-1

I was trying to stay with it overnight, but this '4&4' was killing me, so I gave up abt 2 am.

Thankfully, the majority of the 'daylight' coverage was good & commercials weren't 100% partners of broadcast time...

ZR1 MK

The French coverage is poor. Nothing new, although particularly poor this year. We know most of the French are USA hating crap heads. Hell, they took down the American flag last year. Probably why the flags go much coverage this year. The American in particular. Maybe they felt bad?

vader86

Actually I think the french feed was a bit better this year, last year it was Pescarolo..Pescarolo..Pescarolo..Pescaro lo...Pescarolo.

They actually put the camera on a different car this year, though it was still bad.

Did you know that GT2 cars were on the racetrack? You wouldnt until the very end when Panoz was challenging.

ZR1 MK

Thats a problem in all multi class racing.
It was so enjoyable to watch (live and the TV coverage days later) the Grand Am racing at Lime Rock where the GT class didnt have to deal wih the P class.

vader86

It is a problem I've told Speed about several times. I just want to know how all the GT2 cars are doing, they dont have to focus on them, just let me see them.

I watched that Grand Am race, it was nice to see just the GT2 cars.

xsiveone

The Radio Le Mans coverage was much better than last year. Last year it was like someone in the control booth left the mic in front of a boombox tuned into Radio Le Mans when the Speed announcers took a break.