ITV’s first race was way back in 1997, the Australian Grand Prix. “Do not adjust your sets,” said anchor Jim Rosenthal. “This is Formula 1 on ITV.” My recollection is hazy. I was just 10 at the time. I had begun watching Formula 1 in 1995 or 1996, right at the tail end of the BBC’s F1 coverage.

Up until that point, Formula 1 was only ever shown on the BBC and in a lot of ways it was unthinkable for the sport to move over to commercial television. The first BBC Grand Prix was broadcast in 1976 — on a circuit that, albeit radically altered, is still used by F1 today: Fuji.

Their last grand prix was also in Japan, at Suzuka in 1996. For the occasion, they put together a package that really highlighted just how much of the history of Formula 1 — both good and bad — the BBC had brought to British homes over the years.

At the time, the downside of Formula 1 moving to ITV was obvious: the constant commercial breaks. This was a sad reality of Formula 1 coverage on ITV, and there was no use in complaining about it. For as long as F1 was on ITV, it was going to be interrupted by adverts.

That doesn’t make the pill any less bitter though. It has been estimated by Keith Collantine that over the course of its 206 grands prix, ITV took enough commercial breaks to miss 31 races’ worth of action — almost two entire seasons. The number of important events that ITV missed are almost too countless to mention. Lewis Hamilton’s gearbox failure in Brazil 2007, Michael Schumacher’s engine blowing in Suzuka 2006 and the infamous incident when ITV interrupted an intense battle between Fernando Alonso and Michael Schumacher in the final few laps at Imola 2005 are just a few examples from recent years.

Once, ITV even opted not to show the United States Grand Prix live on ITV1, shifting it to the digital-only ITV2. This was in the pre-Freeview era, at a time when digital television viewers were very much in a minority. The decision to leave F1 fans in the lurch like this was a real slap in the face. Thankfully, ITV never repeated this stunt with any other race, although a good few qualifying sessions have been shown on digital-only channels over the years.

The adverts were not the only issue people had with ITV’s coverage. The obsession with Lewis Hamilton was almost suffocating. Their previous fixation with Jenson Button was more muted, but more ridiculous since Button was not even a fraction as good as Hamilton.

Other elements of the ‘pre-race show’ were also criticised for their light nature. Cooking with Heikki Kovalainen, anyone? Then there were the countless tedious reports about “glamorous” events.

The commentary has been another focal point for criticism. James Allen is a good writer (I’m a big fan of his book about Michael Schumacher, The Edge of Greatness). He was also good as a pitlane reporter. However, his commentary grated with many, including me.

There is no doubt that it is a tough job, and some of the sheer vitriol that was written about James Allen by some people was not justified. But I never understood why ITV did not give another commentator (such a Ben Edwards) a chance given that the unpopularity of James Allen was so widespread.

Then there is Ted Kravitz, who is an excellent journalist. But too often he got over-excited in the heat of the moment and sometimes regressed into stating the obvious. He was never too far from saying something like, “They’re putting on some new tyres. And, is that?… YES, some fuel is going in as well.” It is fair to say that when Murray Walker retired, the quality of ITV’s coverage took a step backward.

ITV’s coverage was not all bad though. There is no doubt that Formula 1 coverage in the UK has come on leaps and bounds since ITV gained the rights in 1997. It is worth remembering that the BBC did not even show qualifying often until its last few years of coverage. In this respect, ITV has fewer blots on its copybook, although I don’t doubt that the BBC would have moved in a similar direction. After all, broadcasting in general has changed a lot over the past twelve years.

In its final moments, I felt that ITV were pretty open about the shortfalls of their coverage. Steve Rider wrapped up the highlights of the Brazilian Grand Prix saying, “no more awkward commercial breaks”. I can only imagine the embarrassment that the producers must have felt whenever something important happened during a commercial break.

James Allen has also responded to his critics, saying:

I was always pretty confident that when Murray decided to retire I would get the gig, but never anything less than utterly self-critical and seeking to improve with every race and every year, which I think I’ve done.

It’s a very difficult and high-pressure job, because with 20 cars there are 20 different points of focus…

Of course there are many people at home in their armchairs who think they could do it better and one of the challenges for me was that I replaced Murray just as the internet opened up to allow everyone to have their say in chat rooms and forums.

But I know from market research and viewer feedback that the pros massively outnumber the vocal minority of cons.

Despite the criticisms though, I think overall ITV and North One can be proud of what they have done over the past twelve seasons. Tomorrow I will look at some of my memories from ITV’s coverage over the years.

That’s still kind of the same with Freeview today. But Freeview is becoming a victim of its own success. There are dozens of channels on Freeview. But once you take away the shopping and quiz channels, many of the remaining channels spend much of their time broadcasting shopping and quiz programmes, or advertising their own subscription services.

Having a Freeview channel is like gold dust for a broadcaster now. But this means that if a company only has one channel on Freeview it has to make the most of what it’s got. Now, instead of each channel catering for its own niche, channels are scurrying around chasing the average viewer. So instead of having loads more choice than we did in the old days, we now have slightly more choice.

It’s a bit like local radio stations. There are millions of them, but as far as I can tell they are almost all exactly the same. Listeners don’t get choice here. They get the same bland middle-of-the-road pop music with over-excited presenters yelping over the top. I mean, how many radio stations have a slogan along the lines of “Classic hits and today’s best music, only on 97.3 Scrotum FM”? All of them?

Freeview still has a lot of quality channels. But most of the choice comes from the BBC, Channel 4 or (at a stretch) ITV. Even then, you sense that this is only because each of these broadcasters have multiple Freeview slots to fill.

Disney has one channel on Freeview: ABC1. Its diet of cheaply imported, inoffensive daytime-friendly American comedy has barely changed in years. Yawn.

BSkyB has three channels: Sky News, Sky Sports News and Sky Travel. That was, until they decided to replace Sky Travel with a general entertainment channel especially created for Freeview, Sky Three. So what about the fans of travel programmes? They’ll have to make do with gameshows that were originally shown on Sky One five years ago and cheaply imported American comedies. Boring. (Apart from Futurama, of course!)

Even Channel Five couldn’t manage to come up with interesting Freeview channels. Overnight it brings us The Great Big British Quiz, one of the worst quiz channels there is! Past the watershed, Five US is filled with wall to wall repeats of CSI. During the day we are treated to cheaply imported (imported from the past, that is) episodes of Happy Days and comedy backwater Joey. Pass me the pillow.

Five Life is so inconsequential, I won’t even go into it. All it ever seems to show is The Ellen DeGeneres Show (a cheaply imported American chat show). I shat my duvet out of boredom.

The latest culprit to contribute to the increasingly tumbleweed-infested airwaves is Viacom, whose sole Freeview channel is TMF. It used to be called The Music Factory. Just one problem. You’ll never find any music on it. This was understandable when it showed MTV programmes such as Newlyweds or Dirty Sanchez. For one thing, it brought MTV programmes into terrestrial homes which I guess you should be grateful for. And there was still a (tenuous) link to music.

But now TMF has brought into its schedule “classic comedies” such as Cheers, Ally McBeal and The Wonder Years. WTF!!! TMF is now even unrecognisable to what it was last week, never mind a few years ago! What do these programmes have to do with music?

Even the higher quality Freeview channels, such as ITV2, More4 or E4 show more than their fair share of American comedy and drama. Sky took off their travel channel to show more American programmes. MTV have changed their music channel beyond recognition to show more American programmes. Now Channel Five have an entire channel dedicated to it. So where has the variety gone? We may have more choice, but we no longer have variety.

But there is a silver lining! Ftn has been on Freeview almost since the very start, but it was easily the most uneventful channel on the lineup. This was despite all the potential. It could draw from the pool of Flextech channels, which surely have a few quality programmes to rub together. But whoever was responsible obviously didn’t care. Ftn was like a piece of shit on your shoe that you hate so much that you won’t even bother to wash it off, so instead you scrape your shoe all over the pavement as you walk along and hope that it just goes away. Yes, Ftn was exactly like that.

Until now, that is. On New Year’s Day, Ftn’s schedule was shaken up to include more quality programmes. The phone-in quiz shows and Thomas Cook TV segments have gone, and they’ve been replaced with repeats of The Crystal Maze, The Krypton Factor and Bullseye!

Wow! Those were three of my favourite programmes when I was young! The fact that these programmes are now almost twenty years old messes with my mind. What’s even more amazing is just how much of The Crystal Maze I can actually remember, despite it being made way back in 1990.

I know what you’re thinking. These are just cheap repeats like all the other stuff. Well yeah, but at least it’s not Dawson’s Creek. Now, start the fans please!

Because I tend to stay up late and, frankly, I am a loser with not enough sex, I sometimes flick past these programmes, as terrible as they are. I’m starting to wonder if they are not elaborate projects devised by twisted comedy genii.

Last night’s edition of Playdate had a classic participant last night. She was 29 years old and her profile boasted that she has an 18 year old child! That exclamation mark isn’t mine — her profile actually said, “She has an 18 year old child!” as if it was bloody brilliant. But if, like me, you have done your maths you will have worked out that she was eleven years old when she gave birth. Attractive! How do I get in touch?!

Judging by her behaviour on the programme, her courting skills probably haven’t improved since she was 11. Her legs were permanently wide open. One of the other participants noted, “I think I’ve seen her crotch more often than I’ve seen mine.” The presenter had to literally force her legs shut!

Part of the Playdate format is that the participants will often have a bit of a chat with the presenter so that you get to know a bit about them. Unfortunately, there wasn’t an awful lot to know about the open-legged participant.

“What do you like doing?”, asked the presenter.
“I dunno… I like havin’ sex,” she replied, suggestively sucking her third Chuppa Chup.
“Okay, so what kind of guy are you looking for?”, the presenter pressed.
“Dunno… Actually, I like the look of Lee over there.” She pointed at one of the other participants, who was probably shitting about half his weight with fear. This relationship was never going to be helped by the fact that Lee is “looking for a man tonight.” (Was that the truth or just quick thinking?)
But that didn’t deter our pre-teen pregnancy champion. “Come over ’ere an’ play with mah fanny.”

That’s not the way to charm a man. It’s no wonder she is resorting to going on television to advertise her undoubtedly flappy flange. That chat-up line probably hasn’t worked with anybody above the age of about 15. Unsurprisingly, her microphone was turned off after that incident. Remarkably, she wasn’t hauled off air completely.

That wasn’t embarrassing enough though, so I switched over to Party People. The format is more straightforward: weirdos send their texts in as council estate munters witter on while trying to show a bit of shoulder. It’s a world where the producers and right-hand men of the programme are all called Partyboy. A typical text is: “Partyboy tickle her feet for AT LEAST TEN SECONDS.”

Not tonight. That simply isn’t weird enough. One text read: “Do either of you ladies need a poo?” He should have visited this blog instead.

Another text said, “My boyfriend wants to watch me go to the toilet but I’m worried that I’ll fart. What should I do?” To which the presenter said, “You can tell that text is from a bloke can’t you?”

Somehow, ITV manage to find up to a dozen people who are shameless enough to sit in a studio with laptops connecting them up to anybody who wants to phone or text them up. For £1 per go, naturally.

As you would expect on a dating show, the participants probably haven’t scored in an age and are fairly desperate. I guess you would have to be prepared to appear on national television basically saying, “I can’t get a partner any other way than by advertising this very fact on television.”

Most of them are your typical socially awkward types. Some of them are just all-out dickwads though. One ‘DJ’ who appeared on the programme seemed to genuinely think he was Goldie. He had more chains than he had teeth. He actually used ‘Bo!’ as a greeting without a hint of irony.

These people obviously never get any callers. They often cite “technical problems”. Yeah right. Something tells me the socially awkward one who’s hiding behind his hair has no problems working his computer at home.

And then sitting centre stage is the attractive young woman who has received twenty calls in the past hour. Some of the callers have gone “a bit too far” apparently. Yuk! ITV, do you see what you have done?!

This might not be at the level of Party People or the various other babestation channels which basically consist of dirty men asking for extreme closeups of the girls’ feet. But at least those channels don’t pretend otherwise. ITV Playdate acts as though it’s a classy programme, but it is not.

Now phucker has alerted us to the contents of the ITV Playdate website. And this is where the last remaining vestiges of good taste are thrown out of the top floor window, kicked around, stamped on, shat on and something elsed on that I really don’t want to say!

Presenter Brendan Courtney is aged “22 (and a bit … and the bit is my own business)”. That’s a joke already. The bit looks as though it’s at least twenty. But just wait until you see what he lists as his favourite scent.

Favourite scent: Old Spice, Bukkake.

What the fuck?! Bukkake?!? Does he even know what it is? Which wise guy at ITV thought that it would be okay to put this on the website? Aaargh!

I used to get quite excited whenever a new channel was added to Freeview’s lineup. But I’ve come to realise that most of the channels are utter crap. Also, most of the new channels have been squeezed in by reducing the picture quality. These days most Freeview channels just look like a load of pixelated, blocky shit — a step above YouTube.

Luckily, Channel Five has found the space for their new channels by buying part of Top Up TV and nicking all of their space. (Top Up TV is repositioning itself as a PVR service. The PVR will cost £180, then £9.99 per month. Any takers? No?) So at least Five’s new channels won’t look as though you’re watching them through a sieve.

But they sound as though they are going to be full of a load of insipid trash.

Five US features a mix of American drama, films, documentaries, sport and comedy…

Just like the original Channel Five then.

…while highlights from Five Life include the highly-acclaimed drama series Love My Way and the award-winning The Ellen Degeneres Show.

“Highlights” like some programme that nobody’s ever heard of, and a chat show hosted by somebody that everybody thought was left behind by the 1990s.

Let’s face it: these channels are going to be filled with programmes that aren’t even good enough to be shown on Channel Five. And is there anybody who thinks that Channel Five has enough material to fill even one channel?

People said the same when ITV launched ITV3, which the last time I looked was the third-biggest multichannel channel (behind Sky One and ITV2). That doesn’t make its content any good though. ITV3 is filled with twenty year old dramas that look as though they were filmed in an actual theatre, and probably should have stayed in the theatre aswell.

Meanwhile, ITV2 has become the home of uninspired spin-offs called things like The X-Factor X-treme DX Reloaded Uber Edition the Third On ITV2 (I think that’s also the name of Gilette’s new razor). Either that or it’s showing some wet Holywood chick flick or teen movie.

ITV4 is the worst of them all, especially when you consider that ITV essentially removed Men & Motors to make space for it. Like Men & Motors, ITV4 is meant to be aimed at blokes. But whereas Men & Motors had the well-known brand, fanbase and reasonable programming, ITV4 doesn’t.

Can anybody actually think of any progammes that ITV4 shows? The only one I can think of is David Letterman, which already had a perfectly good home on ITV2. Indeed, since they moved Letterman to ITV4 you would think that they would show it at a decent slot, but it still occupies the same irregular post-midnight slot. You could only hope of catching it if you came back late from the pub and happened to be flicking past ITV4.

ITV isn’t the only company polluting Freeview. Channel 4 has also done a disappointing job. E4 is okay, but it promises a lot more than it ever delivers. It should be showing more experimental British programmes. But most of the time it shows cheap American imports that are superficially good looking but are ultimately as appealing as stapling your bumcheeks together. The one thing going for the channel is E4 Music, which actually shows a decent variety of music. It certainly does a much better job than The Hits or TMF.

The jury is out on Film4. I have watched a few films that I wouldn’t have seen anywhere else, but the number of repeats already is worrying. I don’t think it’s quite delivering.

Then there is More4, another channel that seemed promising but you never seem to watch it. Again, does anybody know what this channel shows? There is The Daily Show, if you can remember to watch it. But is there anything else? Whenever I flick past it, it seems to be showing repeats of Noel Edmonds’ Imaginary Telephone Conversations.

The channel launched in a blaze of publicity with A Very Social Secretary, but has produced nothing notable since then. More4 is obviously hungry for more of that kind of publicity — it’s only gone and shot George Bush. Please.

Then there is the BBC. In fairness, the BBC’s digital channels have produced much more quality programmes than its commercial rivals have. But still something seems to be lacking. BBC Three in particular seems to have completely lost its way.

In fairness, a lot of BBC Three’s troubles seem to stem from the ridiculous rules and quotas that the Department of Culture, Media and Sport imposed on the channel. It famously told the BBC that BBC Three must show news in order to distinguish itself from commercial rivals, then later criticised the news programme because nobody watched it!

A couple of years ago, on the crest of the Little Britain wave, BBC Three seemed like a quite a good channel actually. Don’t forget that BBC Three was also the home of The Mighty Boosh and Monkey Dust, two fine programmes.

But since then it has produced reams of steaming poo like Tittybangbang (officially the world’s least funny comedy) and Grownups (a flimsy script coupled with dreadfully wooden acting, this makes Two Pints look like a bloody masterpiece). Even Rob Brydon seemed to be shat up with the misfiring Anually Retentive.

Since ditching the 7 O’Clock News, BBC Three seems to have filled its current affairs quota with documentaries by complete dullards wittering on about their tiny penii. And people think bloggers are self-indulgent! And let’s not forget those awful programmes about parenting. If I want to see lots of toddlers with potty mouths I’ll go to the supermarket.

The whole tone of the channel is unbearable aswell. Why are those continuity announcers trying to be my mate? It is contrived, unfunny and annoying.

BBC Four is pretty good at what it does. And let’s face it, most of BBC Three’s best programmes would probably fit easily on BBC Four. Vaguely decent comedy shows like Screen Wipe or Don’t Watch That Watch This do fine on BBC Four, so why not? Sometimes it feels as if the Beeb uses the word ‘youth’ as a proxy for ‘shit’. So they should do with that shit what everybody else does with it. BBC Three should probably just be thrown in the toilet, and the BBC could concentrate on just the one digital channel.

Curiously, ITV1 will be showing more of the qualifying session than the race. The late-night qualifying re-run is due to last for 1 hour and 45 minutes. The race highlights show will only last an hour! What kind of idiots are responsible for these decisions?

I am quite sure that they have shown every race live on ITV1 for about five years now. They were flamed about half a decade ago for not broadcasting the United States Grand Prix. So this marks a bit of a departure. Maybe ITV think that enough people have Freeview now for them to get away with it. I’m lucky because I have Freeview, and probably about two thirds of the population has access to ITV2. But that still leaves one third of the viewers high and dry.

It is more common for ITV to avoid broadcasting qualifying sessions, particularly for races in the Americas where sessions take place during prime time. The last time ITV didn’t show qualifying live — last year’s Canadian Grand Prix, as it happens — Jenson Button took pole position! The British hope’s big moment was not shown live on ITV. But even then they still showed the race live on ITV1.

Having had their fingers burnt, ITV decided to improve their coverage. At the last minute they decided to show qualifying for the US Grand Prix. Over the past year or so, ITV seem to have been eager to treat F1 better, even in the light of Indygate. But it looks like they’ve got bored of this season (which I guess is understandable!). Let’s just hope that Jenson takes the bloody chequered flag now though, because then ITV really will have some explaining to do.

ITV’s relationship with Formula 1 fans has been patchy to say the least. The fact that they have to show adverts during the action was never going to be popular. Their antics at last year’s San Marino Grand Prix, where they decided to cut away from one of the most exciting climaxes to a race in years in favour of a commercial break, sent every F1 fan in the country into an apoplectic rage. I can’t think of another sporting event where adverts are shown during the action.

But then again, I struggle to think of any sports where play lasts non-stop for 90–120 minutes. It isn’t reasonable to expect ITV to stop showing adverts — they have to fund the F1 coverage somehow. But they have an hour-long ‘race build up’ programme which contains only two commercial breaks! Could they not do what they do in football and bunch all the ad breaks in before and after the race?

Update: It seems as though ITV1 will be broadcasting the race. It seems as though the confusion was down to the fact that they hadn’t decided which World Cup match they were going to show.

The offices of Big Game TV have been raided. Apparently it is alleged that at certain times callers had no chance of getting through. I am shocked.

I am surprised, though, that Big Game TV is the first one to be investigated. On-screen it doesn’t seem like one of the scammiest channels — just one of the most boring.

Most might not bat an eyelid if a small Sky channel is investigated, but what could be interesting about this is that ITV have their fingers in the Big Game TV pie. When ITV first started experimenting with participation TV on ITV3 and ITV2 it was simulcasting Big Game TV. Now Big Game TV makes The Daily Quiz, which is broadcast on Men & Motors and ITV Play.

Quiz channels, or ‘participation TV’ as the broadcasters prefer to call it, are a little bit of a hobby horse of this blog. The channels like to set impossible puzzles and they never explain the solutions. Essentially this turns the whole process into a lottery, as callers end up guessing a random number. Callers pay 60p or £1 per entry, and every so often somebody wins £50 or something.

ITV Play’s participation TV programming is said to make £2m per month. Goodness knows how much the others must be making then, because ITV’s programmes usually seem the most respectable of all of them (although I have noticed while flicking through that The Mint is beginning to set those ridiculous ‘add the numbers’ games).

Here is an interesting discussion about Grab a Grand, a programme on Sky digital which recently set up a channel, SmileTV, on Freeview. According to the DS forummers, Grab a Grand staff members are blatantly phoning up their own channel with wrong answers. And there is Who needs shopping channels? on this blog, which had some interesting comments before it got swamped by idiots who wanted to sling mud around…

If anything happens as a result of the raid, you can bet that quiz channels will find a way round it. When AuctionWorld was closed a couple of years ago for displaying grossly inflated ‘guide prices’, the other shopping channels merely replaced their ‘guide prices’ with ‘start prices’.

Update: Finally, I can bring you a link. But it’s of a radio programme! Come on internet, you’re meant to be the future! (Via TV Forum.)

Update (20/05/2006): The Daily Quiz has been replaced by This Morning Puzzle Book on ITV Play today (This Morning at 6pm!).

Also, according to Sascha on this thread, The Mint makes £100,000 per night!

Update (21/05/2006): Sascha at TV Forum again:

The overnight quiz game on The Hits, Smash Hits etc. music channels, is actually broadcast from a scruffy building in Budapest, Hungary. It’s beamed into the UK via a very dubious company which also makes pornographic videos for the eastern European market.

If that’s true it is very strange. I always thought that those programmes looked particularly weird…