F1 broadcast another of their 'Classics' last night, which was the 1999 European Grand Prix - which ironically, Sky did as the first of their Watchalong's a couple of weeks ago. Mainly because it was won by Johnny Herbert, who happens to be on the pay roll of Sky Sports F1.
It was the full race, and can confirm that after a short 5 sec in/out break silence, Murray and Martin did indeed carry on commentary, so that long gap in commentary during UK breaks in another classic F1 race uploaded a couple of weeks ago, was obviously how it was recorded by ITV/MACh1 productions at the time for that particular race.
I really hope they run a race and show the FOM Digital PPV F1 coverage, rather than the world feed during this run of 'down time' fillers. You saw the grid pre-race swarming with the grey racesuited FOM tv cameramen, so would be nice to see some of that footage once in a while. Syncing it up with the world feed English commentary might be a problem though.
The one season we had it in the UK, it was a fairly dull season so I don't expect F1 to unspool any of those races out of the archive anytime soon.
Some of the commentary sounded edited on the F1 broadcast last night, with the car noise suddenly appearing on the soundtrack far louder than it would have been. Unless of course somebody's tried to cover up "we'll be right back" on the commentary? But I don't think that was the done way of doing it on ITV.
One of the interesting occasions on commentary I'm waiting to see turn up if at all was when ITV went to a break, committed to it and then the feed cut to some strange man wandering around on the track waving "the world is ending" placards, before being physically dragged off the track by a marshall. It went out on ITV for a second or two but it was too late to pull out of the break, so they had to insert it on the return. can't remember when that happened though.
Oh and there was an other interesting oddity I spotted on a recent YouTube F1 upload - in the Sky F1 era, they were discussing in commentary something that happened in the race earlier and it looks like Sky inserted their own Replay over the footage, but that hasn't made it to the F1 archive - and you had a slightly odd situation where Martin and David were saying "look at this replay we've got, you can see <whatever it was and whatever was going on>", but there was no replay and it was still the world feed. So maybe F1 only gets the audio, not the pictures and whatever a broadcaster inserts themselves doesn't make it. I'll see if I can find a link later.
Oh and there was an other interesting oddity I spotted on a recent YouTube F1 upload - in the Sky F1 era, they were discussing in commentary something that happened in the race earlier and it looks like Sky inserted their own Replay over the footage, but that hasn't made it to the F1 archive - and you had a slightly odd situation where Martin and David were saying "look at this replay we've got, you can see <whatever it was and whatever was going on>", but there was no replay and it was still the world feed. So maybe F1 only gets the audio, not the pictures and whatever a broadcaster inserts themselves doesn't make it. I'll see if I can find a link later.
Are broadcasters allowed to so this now? I thought from the FIA intro to the chequered flag they had to take the World Feed pictures "as is".
Ahh. The track invader. Silverstone 2003.
ITV was in charge of the world feed for that race, so (unlike some of our European broadcaster friends), would have 'looked away' from anything nasty that would have happened. Spoiler Alert - thankfully, it didn't.
But going to the break was the best and worst thing that could have happened, as whilst it got ITV out of a potential uncomfortable live injury situation, and giving them a short time to consider to UK viewers how much (or little) to show of that idiot when back from the break - it also made it look like the race was on a slight delay and they hit the break to hide what was happening.
Break cues are interesting, as vary rarely did Murray actually cue a break for UK audiences - knowing full well, that unless co-ordinated with ITV, some broadcasters taking the commentary wouldn't be on a break.
So, the thing to listen out for where a break was taken is something like "Lap 24, David Couthard leads, with Irvine in the Ferrari Second, and Damon Hill, Third (pause) then commentary continues.
Coming back from a UK break is far eaiser to notice, as Walker and Brundle pretty much stop talking for around 3-5 seconds before picking up with "36 laps here at the (country) grand prix and it's.."
If you listen to the Sky F1 commentary today, David Croft still continues to get into breaks for broadcasters taking Sky English commentary (i.e ESPN Amercia) to this day in this way. A fine Walker legacy, upheld.
The only time a break was referenced that I can remember during the ITV days, was by Brundle who said something like "So, with (insert drivers name) still in the lead - we will be back after these retail opportunities"
I guess a word was had in the production debrief afterwards, as he never said anything like that again, instead following Murray with the lap number and top 3 rundown.
Are broadcasters allowed to so this now? I thought from the FIA intro to the chequered flag they had to take the World Feed pictures "as is".
Yes. But it is time restricted.
Bernie relaxed the rules shortly after the embarrasing US Grand Prix at Indionapolis when one of the two tyre manufactures pulled their cars with there tyres out of the race, leading to only 6 starters. ITV pretty much ignorned the world feed rules, cutting to in vision interviews with teams, drivers and crowd, sometimes boxed in the corner of the screen, sometimes full screen.
They can take replays - or alternative angles of indicents or driver interviews from the pen if their rights allow it. But, I think the world feed must be on screen in the larger of the two picture in picture boxes for most of the duration of the local cutaway.
If you listen to the Sky F1 commentary today, David Croft still continues to get into breaks for broadcasters taking Sky English commentary (i.e ESPN Amercia) to this day in this way. A fine Walker legacy, upheld.
Although ESPN in the US (almost always ESPN2) don't take any commercial breaks during the race - there are on screen sponsorship messages, but commentary continues uninterrupted. The first race they had under their current rights deal - the 2018 Australian Grand Prix - was littered with commercials that meant key parts of the race were missed.I was in the US on holiday when that happened- the pre-race coverage started 10 minutes late because ESPN had the raw world feed pictures rather than Sky's pre race show and the race coverage was messy as they cut in and out of Sky's commentary. After that happened there were enough complaints that they found a way to not interrupt race coverage from then on.
That seems to include the Canadian, US and Mexican Grand Prix that are live on ABC. (The Monaco GP gets a repeat showing on ABC.)
Also of note - ESPN don't pay a rights fee, part of the reason being the rights are non exclusive with the races streamed on F1's OTT service. It was - repeatedly - the introduction of that which caused NBC to walk away from the sport. (Probably another reason ESPN were forced to go commercial free.) Given that US viewers now get Sky's coverage (including some of the pre and post race) and it's without interruption on ESPN or they can chose to take the streaming service instead, they've benefited from that change.
There was one particular moment in the European GP rerun where it was obvious ITV were on a break - Badoer's retirement.
Listen to Murray comment on it as it happens, a few moments of silence follow, and then as Badoer is seen walking back to the pits, Murray is suddenly in trousers-on-fire mode recapping what just happened to him!
PSG have now been confirmed as this year's domestic Ligue 1 Season Champions in France.
French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe announced earlier this week that no sporting events will take place until at least September. The league has confirmed that PSG have been awarded a ninth title after the division was decided on a points-per-game system. Marseille have finished second with Stade Rennais third while Lille are fourth and Nice are in fifth place.
The virtual Madrid Tennis competition was 'hit and miss' - sorry, some fun reactions from the Pros but it as clearly set up in a tremendous hurry, with the problems of latency in connections from all corners of the planet not resolved.
The format was clever with three 'tournaments' contested, one for the ATP mens players, another for the WTA women and a third which enabled both ATP, WTA and Spanish Celebs to join in, in a celebrity challenge.
The main broadcast feed was in Spanish naturally, but superimposed on this was an English language overlay which opted into the main feed for matches and interviews. This English feed was let down by the lack of pronunciation skills shown by the four Gamers chosen to act as anchors, at least some effort at practicing player's names wouldn't have gone amiss. By far the most effective of the four being Brandon Smith, who had presented one of the FIFA tournaments in the past few days too.