Archive: ITV
I will discuss the events of the Hungarian Grand Prix soon. But today I decided to take a photograph of the way I watch F1. It has been a while since I have photographed it. The last time was probably early last year, soon after coverage switched to the BBC.
With recent changes to the coverage, the desk has become even more congested. Click through to the Flickr page for annotations of what everything is.
As you can see, I have two video screens. One is the BBC One television coverage, which usually carries the FOM world feed. On my netbook I have the onboard channel. I highly recommend having the onboard channel on a second screen. It is interesting to watch during any dull phases of the race. Often it’s useful to watch it in the corner of your eye — the onboard feed often catches incidents before the world feed does, and often covers parts of the race that are never seen on the world feed.
I also have Twitter open. That has become increasingly hectic as I have followed more and more people. It is just impossible to keep on top of the comments, and I sometimes find that it distracts me from the race itself. Having said that, feel free to follow me — @vee8!
At the bottom middle of the main monitor is the live timing from Formula1.com — a hugely useful companion to the race that I have used for many years now. I would feel absolutely lost watching a race without it.
At the bottom right is the new driver tracker, which the BBC have begun to offer to viewers as a separate video feed. This is great for seeing where drivers are on the circuit, for visualising the gaps, seeing when traffic is coming up, and working out where drivers will feed back into the field after a pitstop.
Then there is my iPhone. I used to use this for the Softpauer driver tracker app, although it is a bit redundant since the BBC have started offering FOM’s own version during the races! The app cost £20 at the beginning of the season. £20 down the pan perhaps. I might find another use for the iPhone — the Softpauer app has other views you can use, then there is Bernie’s own one, although this largely replicates the functionality of the live timing you get from Formula1.com.
As you can see, I also stock up on food and drink to consume during the race. Due to the timings, I’m afraid to say I skip lunch altogether. So I eat lots of snacks during the race instead. Then there is stuff to drink. Usually I have coffee, but today I had tea. There is apple juice there too, and a backup stock of water should I need it.
This is way beyond what I did when ITV covered the races. Back then you got 50 or so minutes of pre-race nonsense which was, let us be fair, nothing like as good as what the BBC bring us (despite the BBC apparently having a much lower budget). Post-race coverage was usually banal and brief. And I haven’t even mentioned all those advert breaks!
I think the widely held view is that the BBC provide the best terrestrial television coverage for Formula 1 in the world, and I certainly agree that they do a largely excellent job. Certainly in the amount of airtime they give F1, they truly spoil us.
There is typically 50 minutes of pre-race buildup. Then the race lasts around 90-100 minutes, or perhaps up to two hours. Then with the BBC One post-race show and the F1 Forum, the BBC typically bring us a staggering two hours of post-race reaction — that is longer than the race itself!
As you can see from my desk, though, this brings its own dilemmas. When can I find time to eat my lunch? And when can I go for a personal pitstop? With about five hours of almost non-stop coverage, multiple video feeds, timing screens and internet commentary from all directions, watching grands prix today truly is a marathon event every other Sunday.
I’ve been thinking about getting involved in podcasting for a while now. So when I saw a favourite blogger of mine asking for contributors to a new podcast he was setting up, I thought it was the ideal opportunity to dip my toe in the water.
The podcast is the idea of James O’Malley, a fine chap with a jolly good blog. His thinking is to have a number of contributors chipping in to a weekly podcast which will be around 15–20 minutes long. The podcast will be along the lefty / liberal / atheist / skeptical / rationalist lines. Read James O’Malley’s explanation for more.
What was missing was a name for the podcast. A bit difficult to come up with a name for something that only exists in your brain. But with the vague template in mind, I set to work, along with the other contributors, to think of a suitable name.
Suddenly, it came to me. After I had been lying in bed literally unable to sleep for hours, it suddenly came to me: The Pod Delusion. Yes, I know. I’m a genius. Not quite a living legend like James O’Malley though. Nonetheless, the fact that I came up with the excellent name means that The Pod Delusion is definitely my podcast. The fact that I put no effort whatsoever into creating it, producing it or commissioning pieces for it is frankly neither here nor there.
Anyway, I am quite excited about The Pod Delusion. With the stellar line-up of contributors, it seems like it’s going to be ace. If everything goes to plan and this week’s pilot goes down well, you can expect a new episode every Friday. My plan is to publish all transcripts of my contributions, or an accompanying article, on this website as and when each podcast is published.
Here is the first episode of The Pod Delusion. I have just listened to it myself. Since it’s the first ever attempt, it is a tad ramshackular, but that will get better over time. All-in-all, I think it’s a fine listen.
Hopefully sometime soon it will be available over iTunes too. You can follow @poddelusion on Twitter.
My first little piece for The Pod Delusion is about product placement. When I first set about doing it, my intention was to try and make it serious. I had actually been planning to write here about the product placement hoo-ha, but then decided I could kill two birds with one stone by making it my Pod Delusion contribution too.
Unfortunately, I got a little bit carried away with the fact that I was working in an exciting new audio medium. I inserted a few audio jokes which won’t work in writing. From then on, the whole thing became just a collection of bad jokes about product placement, strung together by the flimsiest of wafer-thin serious points.
So, bearing that in mind, here is my contribution to this week’s Pod Delusion.
It was announced last week by Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw that product placement will soon be allowed on commercial channels. I suppose there was an inevitability in this. After all, commercial broadcasters finding it harder to sustain themselves through traditional advertising in a multichannel world. Plus, we are living in an era where so many people use PVRs to fast-forward through the adverts anyway.
There has to be some way to fund commercial television. After all, what would we do without ITV? Okay, that’s a bad example. But what would we do without Channel Five? Well okay, but you get my point.
Many worry about the effects that product placement will have on the viewing experience. With product placement, there will be a question mark over the purity of the programmes we watch. Will our programmes be peppered with subliminal advertising that attempt to brainwash us into changing the brand of soap powder that we use?
I’m not so sure that will be such an issue. After all, we are well used to product placements in major films. Television programmes from other countries are filled with product placements already. I am sure that most people are savvy enough to tell what’s going on.
For instance, it can be disconcerting to watch an episode on Neighbours when one of the characters decides to open the fridge. Inexplicably, the fridge is filled from wall to wall with nothing but cans of Sprite! That is obviously a nonsensical scenario. It would have been far more realistic if the fridge was filled from wall to wall with cans of tasty Dr Pepper — “what’s the worst that can happen?”
The odd thing about imported programmes is that due to the stricter laws in the UK, our broadcasters have to blur such product placements out. But this only brings attention to the fact that there is an alien blob floating around on the screen.
Focusing on the blobs on American Idol, for instance, you can clearly see that the judges have large cups on their desk. These cups are predominantly red but with a distinctive white swirl that can only be associated with Coke. Mmm… fresh, ice cold Coke.
The new product placement rules do not affect the BBC. But it would be interesting to consider what it might be like if one day the rules were relaxed for the BBC too. After all, is there anything more ridiculous than the slightly awkward attempts to avoid using brand names during makes on Blue Peter? Referring to “sticky back plastic” may be quaint and traditional, but it is also distracting and sets off a klaxon in your brain that sounds something like: “SELLOTAPE! SELLOTAPE!”
I once saw a Blue Peter make where you had to use a “crisp tube”. What on earth is a crisp tube? Crisps come in packets don’t they? What they were talking about was a pack of Pringles. Given that Pringles are the only make of crisps to be sold in that style of tub, you can more or less guarantee that sales of Pringles went through the roof anyway — all because of the BBC’s massive abuse of power.
Well I think I have said all there is to say about product placement. I think what I will do now is take off my Specsavers glasses and shut down my Asus Eee PC. Then I think I will listen to my Apple iPod, while eating a fresh sandwich from Subway.
Or perhaps I will just go for a piss in my Armitage Shanks toilet.
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