大象传媒

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Great coverage yesterday - better than "the other side"! Nice to see viewing figures healthy as well. A few gripes though... on the website side of things:

- any chance the Interactive Forum could be put onto the 大象传媒 F1 website? I know you can't put it on iPlayer as you guys don't put Red Button stuff, but it'd be nice if you could put it on the website along with the 3rd practice session.

- also could you put the full press conferences on there? For qualifying, you couldn't screen press conference as you were out of time... in future could you upload the TV Press Conferences onto the site (I note you did do it with the race which is good)

- navigation is a problem. We need links down the left hand side for "past news stories", "blogs" and "videos" otherwise we'll be left hunting around for past comment. At the moment the website just looks a little bit disorganised, which I understand I guess with a lot of content in the past few days.

Good luck for the next few races. :)

I thought the coverage was great. It's a little wierd to have to choose between brundle and davidson as both are good. If I had to choose, I'd have one commentary from brundle, croft and davidson.

One other thing I will say - PUT THE FORUM ON IPLAYER - it was by far the best part of the coverage, and it deserves being able to be replayed after the race.

Oh yeah, I did love that bit before the title sequence. I'd have it before every race....

Crikey, sorry about the formatting of my post. I edited it in Word and it's all gone a bit pear-shaped when I pasted it in. Hope you can still read it ok!

Hi Roger, fantastic coverage as we were expecting and got from 大象传媒 Sport.

On the whole, I'd give it a 9.8 out of 10.

Only a few minor points:
1) Is it possible to have the extra feeds for all sessions on the Red Button, or is this a cost issue?
2) A lot of the content was never actually included in the Red Button / Online schedule. For example, we didn't know until Friday that Friday practice was being looped all day on the Red Button. Could you please get them to update the list fully just so that we don't miss anything.
3) Incidentally, will Friday practice be looped for all races as it's not possible to record interactive with Sky+.
4) The extra feeds on Sky are brilliant, but the consensus appears to be the Freeview mosaic screen wasn't as good. Can we not just have the full onboard channel on Freeview?
5) Jonathan Legard was an inspired choice. There were a few times on Saturday when Martin and Jonathan were talking over each other and the Team Radio, but by Sunday they had already picked up on these mistakes and were a lot better. Whoever decided to drop James Allen should have his/her wages doubled.
6) I quite like the CGI intro and everything about the whole show was just first class quality. Why was 'The Chain' not used over the credits at the end though?

Apart from that nit-picking, thank you so much for this fantastic coverage. If it carries on like that for the next 5 years, you certainly won't be getting any comments like the barrage of complaints the other side got.

I see my comment got moderated. I can only assume it's either because of the awful formatting making it get picked up as spam, or because before this blog appeared I'd previously posted it at the end of an old thread.

If the latter's the case, I implore the moderators to leave this version and delete the old one, so that Roger can read my feedback about the Beeb's coverage. So let's try again:

Free practice:

Fantastic to finally have this on the TV rather than just on a poor-quality website, and to have Saturday morning鈥檚 session is a bonus. The informal nature of Five Live鈥檚 commentary works well, a few extra guests wouldn鈥檛 go amiss though. Would it be possible, when bandwidth allows, to make an onboard feed available either through the red button or online? Oh and one tiny criticism: after the session could you please keep the stream open for a few minutes to broadcast the FOM highlights loop?

Title Sequence:

Obviously no complaints about bringing back The Chain, but the CGI car chase is just cheesy, it doesn鈥檛 really fit with the high-tech nature of the sport and the excellent 鈥渟cience bit鈥� which preceeded the main credits. It would be much better to have some actual footage of cars, the highly popular fan version which has been circulating on YouTube is far better.

Pre-qualifying/race show:

You seem to have hit the right balance between in-depth features for hardcore fans and introductory items for new or casual viewers. Plus you鈥檝e not fallen into ITV鈥檚 trap of effectively repeating Saturday鈥檚 show before the race. My only real gripe is that you could have made more of the published car weights and had Martin or somebody analysing what this might mean for race strategy.

Commentators / contributors:

Legard did very well for his first televised F1 race. He鈥檚 got a wonderfully calm and authoritative voice and doesn鈥檛 get carried away in hyperbole. There were a few moments where he and Martin talked over each other, and occasionally there didn鈥檛 seem to be all that much rapport between them, but I鈥檓 sure that will come with time.

Brundle was his usual competent self, but having listened also to the Five Live commentary I can鈥檛 help but think you鈥檝e missed a trick by not enlisting Anthony Davidson: he鈥檚 got far more recent F1 experience and seems unafraid to say exactly what he thinks.

Jake Humphrey far exceeded expectations. He was laid-back without being too casual, and did a pretty decent job of keeping Coulthard and Jordan in check 鈥� most of the time. DC was excellent, but EJ threatened to dominate proceedings several times. There鈥檚 a fine line between having the gift of the gab and full-blown verbal diarrhea, and he crossed that line several times. He brings valuable insight to the team, but somebody needs to tell him to reign it in a bit.

Ted Kravitz and Lee McKenzie were, in my opinion, massively under-used. Kravitz in particular adds a great story-telling dimension to the race as well as a huge technical understanding. McKenzie was perhaps unlucky that there weren鈥檛 many retirements, giving her little opportunity to talk to drivers, but perhaps she could have been seeking out opinion and insight from team technicians. She also seemed a little over-awed at times, in her post-qualifying interview with Hamilton for example she didn鈥檛 seem to realise he鈥檇 scraped through into Q2.

Interactive services:

This for me was the biggest let-down, having been excited for months about the facility. Aside from it not being available during practice or qualifying, there was so much wasted space that if one were relying on just one TV, as I suspect most viewers were, the service was all but useless.

I understand the reasons why the 大象传媒 has to keep everything in the main broadcast in the 4:3 safe zone, but surely anybody watching an interactive service is by default using a digital receiver of some description, all of which can be put in 4:3L mode for those viewers not yet using a widescreen TV.

It鈥檚 my suspicion that the interactive service will be mainly used by hardcore fans, most of whom are likely to have a 鈥減roper鈥� 16:9 setup, so it makes sense to keep the world feed 4:3 safe but use the entire picture area on the interactive services.

Fortunately for me, I was using a 16:9 screen for the 大象传媒 ONE feed together with a 4:3 for the onboard channel. For a while, the mosaic failed and we were left with a raw onboard feed, and for me that was the best bit.

That said, the ability to choose commentary streams was welcome, and the C大象传媒 team in particular should be congratulated on their innovative and, shall we say 鈥渜uirky鈥� style!

Scheduling:

Impossible to fault: all three practice sessions live, and a decent amount of pre- and post-race analysis. The interactive forum is a masterstroke: casual viewers won鈥檛 care about all the interviews and analysis after the event, but for us real fans the extra hour of coverage is highly appreciated.

Overall:

If it sounds like I鈥檝e been overly harsh then I make no apologies. My expectations of 大象传媒 Sports coverage are so high that maybe I鈥檓 expecting perfection, but thus far the team have been responsive to constructive criticism and have provided pretty much everything that has been requested.

You鈥檝e already exceeded anything which ITV managed in the last 12 years, and that鈥檚 to the credit of everybody involved in the broadcast. If you can address the few minor gripes which remain outstanding then you鈥檒l have produced some of the highest quality sports broadcasting in the world today.

Hi roger

Just to say thought the coverage was really good. I chickened out on the early morning but the rerun was great. The opening credits with that music are superb. Well done and hopefully the Beeb have a good season of F1. Impressive viewing figures!!

Roger,

Generally excellent coverage..

A few quick points.

1.) Change the mosaic to full-screen onboard.
2.) Consider taking the same feed as Premiere and some other broadcasters with graphics outside of the 4:3 safe area, it makes the screen so much less cluttered especially during practice/qualifying. I understand there are those without widescreen tv's or who don't like having a 'letterboxed' picture so how about his..on 大象传媒 One have the standard feed and on the red button the alternate one.
3.) Don't cut away from live action for interviews (e.g. Lewis during Q2) why not do picture in picture.
4.) Keep the pressure on Bernie/FOM to go HD or perhaps offer to do what Fuji TV do for their home GP and give us the British GP in HD.
5.) Always show the full press conference...it seemed the scheduling meant the post-qualifying reaction was very rushed...why not extend on the red button like the excellent post race forum

Well done to all concerned. Best coverage we've had, maybe even better than F1D+ back in '02. Recovering from the strange hours over the long weekend but it was worth it- congrats.

Superb. My only concern so far is the lack of a Ted column on the website. His 'notebooks' were the highlight of ITV's website. Please please ask him to continue them!! And we need to see more of Lee and Ted in the pre-race build-up. They are a great team.
Everything about the coverage was awesome though. JH, DC and EJ were a superb team. Thanks for continuing the Brundle gridwalk and I enjoyed Legard's commentary.
9.5/10 :)

Massive well done to the 大象传媒, i really enjoyed all 3 days of coverage:

- I thought the way Friday's sessions were covered was excellent, a nice balance of topical discussion and describing what was going off on track.

A nice addition was the constant replaying of those sessions via the red button, that will be very important come the European season when the majority of us will be working....being able to come home and watch them in full during the evening will be brilliant....keep that in place!!

Nice to see Practice 3 finally shown!!! ITV seemed to think it didnt exist last year!!


- The Qualifying show was excellent, it just needs a little polishing up which will come with time.....maybe the programme length could do with extending just 5 or 10 minutes more to capture a few more driver interviews and/or the press conference...i appreciate this weekend you took the oportunity to interview Richard Branson instead.

One small suggestion...when replaying the qualifying session on the red button loop, please include Practice 3 if possible as you showed both Friday sessions on the loop the previous day...doing the same for Saturday would be a nice addition

- The Race coverage was superb, Brundle and Legard gelled alot better, one big improvement over the Qualifying was keeping quiet whilst the team radio graphic came on...they talked over it alot during the qualifying programme but on race day they were far better....its important they stop talking during those moments so we can clearly here whats been said

The finest bit of coverage however was the post race forum....that was a huge improvement over what we had before...no need to rush interviews before going off air...we had plenty of time to review everything and interview everyone...loved that feature...if it could be put online and/or the red button along with race highlights that would be perfect.

One last thing (and its been mentioned alot) instead of using 2 screens (on Sky) for Onboard + Main / Main + Onboard.....please just use one and make it full onboard!!!!! Tbh i didnt use this feature because i was frightened of missing something!!! but i will at some point and full onboard would be soemthing to use on some of the quieter races.....if it could be made availale for Practice and Qualifying that would be even better when i'd use it much more when missing something isnt as important.

Overall fantastic and i cant wait for Friday morning!!

It's remarkable that 大象传媒 Sport achieved so much, you not only completely eclipsed ITV's standard but you've rocketed up to F1 Digital+ levels. Only Sky Italia and Premiere (Italian and German pay per view broadcasters) can come close to the service you demonstrated on Sunday.

Your entire F1 team and department deserves massive praise for setting a new benchmark in F1 broadcasting.

There are though, as others have noted, kinks to work out:

1. Interactive Services:
Most are demanding a full screen onboard service on Satellite and I would agree with that.

If you insist on continuing with the picture in picture version please enlarge your offering beyond the 4:3 version which was transmit.

2. Interactive Forum:
Getting this up on the website would be fantastic, its something many fans may want to review after the race but simply lack the time to watch when it is broadcast.

3. Legard
Jonathan made a solid, if unspectacular, debut as the lead TV commentator. I would urge the 大象传媒 to encourage him to do some more rehearsals during Malaysian Free Practice. He needs to prepare better for quieter moments of qualifying and the race.

4. Interviews
Please never cut away during Qualifying or the Race for interviews. Nothing infuriates F1 fans more than having this happen. If you would like to have interviews on the screen please develop a picture in picture system as used by broadcasters on the continent.

But these are minor problems/concerns. The entire 大象传媒 team clearly worked extremely hard to achieve an astonishingly high standard, well done to you all.

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Can you please get Brundle and Legard to tighten up on their notes.

In the last portion of the race they kept mentioning how the Ferraris were on hard tyres and might threaten Button but seemed to completely forget that Kubica was also on that strategy. Even when they commented about him being off-sequence with Button & Vettel they didn't mention the tyres.

Also the consistant mentioning of some cars who might have enough fuel to finish when everyone who was paying attention knew that they still HAD to come in to get the soft tyres is embarrassing.

These are simple things that 99% of the audience would have noticed yet two professionals with a team of statasticians behind them and official FIA screens seemingly could not.

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The 大象传媒 have created a good F1 Web page so Im sure that helps support the whole package...It was a shrewd decision by the BEEB to buy back F1 with the rise of Hamilton, as history and stats prove when ones country has a successful participant viewing figures go up (we see this at the Olympics with the lesser sports).

I must say though, Buttons rise does sadly prove though that it is largely about the car, as all of those drivers starting on the grid are skilled, put any of them in the best car and they will prevail. This should not discredit the wider team effort by the mechanics etc who put the car together!

The biggest downside was the number of glaring errors that left me, and probably others, wanting to correct the commentary team throughout the race. Two particular examples I can think of:

1. Brundle totally missed that Kubica was not on 'super-soft' tyres at the end of the race, and thus didn't play up the potential for a challenge on the lead.

2. When Raikkonen went into the wall on a replay, about a full minute was spent discussing whether he'd recover and what happened after, when right before we'd seen him pit for a third time and neither batted an eyelid. It should have been easy to put two and two together there.

The Five Live commentary wasn't perfect in this regard, either - Holly Samos seemed to legitimate think Clay Regazzoni might have been winning "11 years ago". All-in-all, therefore, I think the main thing that stands out for me is that the number of pretty obvious errors was too high.

I thought the 大象传媒 did a great job all weekend. I thought the Pre Qualifying/Race show's were excellent, seemed a lot more intresting to watch than the one's from ITV the past couple of years.

I also have to say that after a shakey start in the 1st minuite's of qualifying Brundle & Legard seem to work well together & can only get better over time. Having never heard Jonathan Legard before initial impressions were good.

The only critisism I have of the coverage was the OnBoard channel. I didn't especially think much of the 4:3 safe layout, I think it would be better to have the Onboard Full-Screen but keep a small picture of the main feed in a small box in one of the top corners & also keep the leaderboard scroller at the bottom of the screen.

Also I think the OnBoard channel would get more use should it be avaliable for Practice & it would also be more intresting as its in Practice where FOM often use there more intresting camera angle's a bit more.

Those reletively small critisism's are really the only one's I have, the main coverage was excellent :)

Great coverage! I particularly love all the interactive options & that you used them all on the full re-run! I don't think its aimed for me the the C大象传媒 commentary is very useful too!

You havent put a foot wrong! - apart from the swearing!

I only watched the race so can't comment on pre-race or post-race stuff.

I disagree with a previous commentor. I'd much prefer to still have James Allen as commentator, who was vastly underrated and unfairly criticised. He always kept pace with what was on screen, whereas Jonathan Legard reads out times while missing cars spinnning off. It often sounded like the brilliant Martin Brundle was the actual commentator with Legard as his assistant. I'm sure I'll get used to him eventually though.

In terms of others, I thought Jake Humphrey did a fine job. Its a job you can't really excel in but like a goalkeeper, when you make a mistake you're done for. He seems good.

David Coulthard was surprisingly brilliant for me. Already an accomplished sports pundit after just one broadcast. Eddie Jordan does complain a bit too much but is far better than Mark Blundell.

But the real star of the show for me was Ted Kravitz. It showed that he had come from ITV because he clearly knew exactly what he was doing and cleared what had happened when Legard was missing the action.

Overall well done 大象传媒. I guess I enjoyed it more because the race itself was one of the best for ages. Likewise, I guess that if the racing becomes predictable again I'll find the whole gig boring again. Good stuff so far though.

For someone used to watching thousands of TV commercial's peppered with a few laps of racing action (US TV) I would say....WOW...I was very happy watching the main feed on my hotel TV and the on-boards via my laptop.

Lovely Stuff
Jp

Fantastic coverage - well done 大象传媒. Here are a few suggestions to improve the coverage:
1) During the race build-up please do an analysis of the fuel loads i.e. Team mate qualy performance based on fuel load, pit stop predictions(lap for each driver & number of pit stops).
2) Get Eddie Jordon to calm down and listen to the other commentators and not go on about 'Jordon' all ther time.
3) Get DC to give us some insight into what the teams/drivers are doing during each practice sessions and how they decide on their race strategy.

After much excitment over the last week, i was up early eagerly watching how the Beeb would cover things. Heres my views...


1: The free practise sessions on the red button are SUPERB and both commentators are good giving some good information out and answering emails from viewers. 9.5/10

2: Qualifying. When i heard Jake Humphrey had got the job, i was a little dissapointed but he came good and didn't disapoint. The intro as some have mentioned uses CGI but this doesn't me at all as its just the intro - its the substance that matters and i found the features etc pretty darn good.
Onto the commentators... Brundle was solid as ever but Legard was somewhat erratic and the constant talking over each didn't help. it was there first outing together so i won't be too harsh. 7.5/10

The Race. As with qualifying, the build up was good and was glad to see Brundles pit walk again.
Once the race started Brundle & Legard seemed to work together much better although theres still room for improvement on Legards side. As stated earlier, 1st race together so its to be expected. 9/10

The Forum. This extra coverage on the red button was FANTASTIC and warmly welcomed. In ITVs coverage, never have we had such an in depth/extended and hats off to the Beeb for including this. Please please do not shorten or get rid of this. In fact another 15 mins extra would be perfect. The informal, 'chuck a TV on a table while we all sit on garden chairs' was brilliant and brought the atmosphere out - much better than a studio with men in suits.
EJ was a little annoying however when trying to talk over everyone. His views are fine even tho many don't agree but he just needs to hold fire more and allow others to say there bit. 9.5/10

Race replay on red button. With the additional commentry options, i watched the whole race again only this time with commentry from 5 live.
Both commentators are great and match Brundle/Legard. Bad points was breaks for the news. Please keep this audio option as i'm sure many will watch/listen to this also. 9.5/10

Overall, well done on the 1st broadcast and keep it up. Looking forward to next weekend... and i'm looking forward even more when this high tech, expensive and glamourous sport finally gets with the times and is broadcast in HD :)

I was very happy with the bbc doing this kind of major coverage thoughout the weekend.
Though I would prefer a full screen ONBOARD channel with the MAIN-ONBOARD being a 50-50 channel so people do still have the option to watch both.
During the race the onboard channel was switched on and off all the time and it started rather late. You couldnt see the cars being taken of their jacks or them going to the grid before the race. Also the commentary sound on the ob channel didnt have the onboard sounds below it. It would be nice to have that.

Points of improvement:
Natural Sound option for all sessions
Onboard full screen & all sessions
Onboard sound combined with 大象传媒1 commentary
More interviews instead of the EJ and DC talking
No repeats of pre qual features in pre race.

Overall i really enjoyed you're coverage this weekend. I was impressed with the team (although i think Ledgard needs time and EJ needs to calm down and talk a little less, and the lack of ads was very welcome.

Could i just make a couple of suggestions/requests:

Red Button practice replays are good for those unable to watch live - but could you post the actual start/finish times (e.g. Practice 1 replay 1440-1620, Practice 2 replay 1620-1800) otherwise you don't know when to begin watching the coverage withouth joining mid-way through (and then having to guesstimate the time to come back to watch from the beginning).

Instead of the Main+onboard feed - could we just have one split screen, and the option of a full screen onboard feed. I would hope you would consider making this availible for qualifying (and practice if possible - even if it is just availible online) - as most people would use the service a lot more during these sessions where you are less likely to miss something important (and in qualifying when the drivers are pushing the car to its limits).

I thought the 大象传媒's coverage of the F1 this weekend was excellent and really enjoyed it.

I think the opening titles are really good and the music choice, keeping the chain is just brilliant.

I thought the whole team did really well. Enjoyed the mix in the presentation team, I thought Eddie Jordan was a great choice when the team was announced and he was.

You picked the best two from ITV and I think Ted Kravitz in particular was a great choice. Looking forward to the next race. Well done to all involved.

Really enjoyed the coverage this weekend and have to say the 大象传媒 team pulled out a top show considering the level of anticipation there has been in the media and on the discussion forums.

Archive footage great (more Senna, Prost, Mansell please), Jake was very natural and all the commentators did a good job, I like Eddie Jordan too who speaks his mind. The forum at the end was excellent.

Two minor things - the red-button in car screen needs some more work - particularly for non 16:9 viewers) although I appreciate there are difficulties with this. I would also be keen to see some more discussion/analysis in the race pre show of the car weights and how this will impact on team fuel strategy.

Hey Roger. I've got to say that the coverage was a massive step, almost futuristic. All was great but for only one thing... WE NEED FULL SCREEN ONBOARD. The mosaic screen was good but I'd imagine anyone that wanted to watch the onboard feed and the world feed would have two screens. If this was only the first race I can't wait to see the 大象传媒 get into full stride

Hello Roger,

I really enjoyed the coverage. I think that Jake continues to impress. He has been versatile in the range of sports he has presented in his 大象传媒 Sport career so far and this weekend just shows that in my mind he is an inspired choice to be the F1 anchor. Not only that but his blogs on the F1 section of the website are great. The F1 coverage is a really good all-round package, especially using the 5Live sports extra on the practice sessions.

Thanks for a great start.

Hi Roger,

I had extremely high hopes for the 大象传媒's coverage before this weekend...

You exceeded those with a capital E! It was faaaantastic!

I have no complaints about the team. Jonathan was very good in his first commentary. Jake was great. All the team were. I have no complaints about Red Button or terrestrial coverage. Brilliant!

The Interactive Forum was brilliant as well. Whoever thought of that deserves a pat on the back.

You will always be striving to improve. I have a couple of suggestions:

1 - Intro - Get rid of the incredibly annoying sound effects over The Chain.

2 鈥� 鈥極ut鈥檙o - As someone said earlier, having The Chain closing the coverage will round it off nicely.

3 - Competition - A viewer鈥檚 competition would be good. I have an idea. How about three lucky viewers winning the chance to commentate on a Grand Prix from a cupboard somewhere. Each one separate and each an additional alternative commentary on the Red Button? What do you think?

4 - Lee McKenzie - I think she would be better in the pit lane with Ted. She could do interviews there. She is a very good reporter, but we didn't hear much from her.


Not criticism鈥檚 as such but just a few points of possible improvement.

Congratulations Roger and the 大象传媒.

I liked it.
The Chain was a big thumbs up, of course with a good title sequence...having real cips would drown out the Chain.
Humpreys was on top form, he showed his Olympic class and Legard really showed he knows about F1, Saturday did see him think he was on the Radio but Sunday he changed it to TV which is great considering that he hasnt done the sport for a while.
Brundle and Kravitz were good choices from ITV.
However Kravitz and McKenzie I felt were very underused, Lee wasnt even heard on Saturday during Qualifying which was a bit strange, why wasnt she used...Im sure on ITV, Louise questioned those who went out and asked why and that what was missing on the 大象传媒.
DC was a great pundit...however I felt uneasy with Jordan and his ramblings...even Brundle during the forum was messing around his microphone when Jordan rambled on...why not Tony Jardine or even Mark Blundell returning!
Still, good viewing figures, wait for a European race and the viewing figures will treble.
Still, thanks Roger for the F1, it was the best thing that the 大象传媒 has done in years for Sports.

Great to have F1 back on the 大象传媒 but just a couple of comments to make.

Firstly, whilst the music and circuit noise are necessary for atmosphere, it would be good to have them as background to the commentary and not visa versa.

Secondly, non of the other F1 fans I have talked to were very impressed with Eddie Jordan banging on about Rubens Barichello and Bernie Ecclestone. I had always rather respected him but last weekend has changed my opinion.

Hi. Fantastic job guys and girls. Not much to complain about at all.
However, I wanted to discuss iPlayer, and why all the content not on there?
I have heard in two different places about interactive stuff not being on iPlayer. Why not? I work on Fridays, and this weekend, I will be at Brands Hatch for the BTCC, so I will not get to see most of the interactive programmes. I prefer iPlayer to direct streaming, as I prefer to download my programmes in advance of viewing. Makes for a nice clean viewing experience.
So please, can 大象传媒 Sport start putting the Interactive Content generally on iPlayer, starting with everything F1? That Interactive Forum was arguably the best part of the weekend.
Finally, please keep up the quality. We really appreciate it!

I expect you are not so pleased with yourself today.

Great result though - another nail in the F1 coffin

Roger, unfortunately no one in your moderation team replied to my e-mail regarding why my post (post 14 above).

Anyhow, my post restated below:

Roger, team: overall, well done. It was a good effort and for the first time in 12 years you did handle it well.

Obviously there is room for improvement:
- Legard: frankly, he wasn't the man thatyou have chosen. I know I'm not alone in that thinking and I know (from the comments above) many like him. What's worrying, is that I would rather have had the frankly poor James Allen commentating that Legard - he talked over Brundle, he came across without much knowledge at time and he just didn't let the action speak for itself. I firmly believe that David Croft was suited to this role and Legard should be on 5Live.

- Opening Sequence: a tad poor unfortunately - it just didn't seem to hang together. Almost have to admit that the ITV opening sequence was slightly better.

- Jake: he needs to be more forceful. In the forum he looked like a kid trying to get the grown ups to stop and listen to him. He's clearly a talented presenter, but he needs to grow into this role quickly as at the moment he just doesn't have the gravitas to host F1.

- Ted Kravitz: use him more and properly.

- Lee McKenzie: Like Ted, didn't hear or see enough from her to make judgement.

Overall, kudos deserved on a good performance; as they say, you can't form judgement on one performance, nor a trend on two performances. It's after three that you can take a view.

Can you publish a schedule for repeat showings of the race on Sunday on the Red Button? e.g. announce that repeats will start at 3.30, 6 and 8.30 on Sunday.

That way we can catch the whole race without tuning in on the last lap by accident and finding out the result.

Liked the extended post-race discussion a lot - I hope you can bring in a few more random drivers, race engineers and team bosses for a good grilling!

I think the coverage at the weekend was a marked improvement from the coverage that has been offered by ITV over the past few year.

It made the race far more watchable to not have advertisment breaks every fifteen minutes.

The website is also very good much improved.

Jordan D in #38

You talk about not being able to form a judgement based on one performance, yet continue to unduly criticise the majority of the 大象传媒's F1 team.

Jonathan Legard was a breath of fresh air compared to James Allen.

@goldMarkL1 in #41: To be fair, I only critised two members of the 大象传媒 team. I said I wanted to see more of two members and the other three didn't warrant any type of comment! And in fact one of the comments was positive! So hardly "criticse the majority"!

Still, lets see how Legard does in Malaysia.

Away from F1 and on to Moto GP for a moment.

Is it true the first race of the Moto GP calendar will not be shown live on the 大象传媒 for those of us who "only" have 大象传媒1 and 大象传媒2?

Looking at the Radio Times I find a preview program on 大象传媒 at 1.00pm and then highlights 24 hours later. Is this all I have to look forward to?

F1 coverage was OK, but to do away with Moto GP would be a great loss, and to show some but no all races is worse.

Further to my earlier post in #6, another slight niggle is Jake Humphrey talking over the end of 'The Chain' at the start of each programme but this is how the opening titles have been created, I guess. For me, the best bit of the music is the part just after the 大象传媒 Sport logo comes on at the end.

See here at 02:15 for an example /iplayer/episode/b00j6bs9/Formula_1_2009_The_Australian_Grand_Prix/

The website is doing my head in. I can't find any information on FP3, particularly the replay.

Someone did read our comments....I saw Lee was doing the Louise Goodman role...which was missing in Australia.
Also mr Mosey...next Saturday is Easter Saturday...there is sport...the Masters Golf...however there isnt any sport on Saturday Afternoon...so why isnt that a valid reason for Grandstand's return so we can catch up with the Golf?

It's dissapointing that there was no forum. Even more annoyed that we haven't been told of that. It was the best part of the coverage last week and it's just been dropped.

Hi! Can I ask you question? Why was there not the interactive forum after the Malaysian Grand Prix on red button?

Roger - what happened to the F1 Forum. It was listed on your website this morning and then didn't happen. Jake didn't even make mention of it. Be good to get an idea of what happened.

Can we not see the F1 replay on the red button with a choice of commentry like we did for the Oz reply?

Would be nice to hear 5 live's take on things.

The forum after the race was also missed today :(

I am too disappionted about the F1 Forum not being on!
Where was it..I was looing forward to seeing what the drivers were seeing...I hope you havent dropped it...it was good.
All we got was useless replays!
Where was the Forum??

To be honest I thought J ledgard has been excellent, an excellent counterpoint to Martin Brundle's 'Medallion man' approach (see open necked white cheesecloth shirts with heavy tan and chuncky silver necklace in hot countries !). DC and Eddie, if they manage not to kill eachother before race three, are fantastic. I thought it was really interesting to have a team boss and drivers point of views on every incident, even though i don't always agree with their insights, you can't argue with their experience.

Well nobody is better at covering live rain than the 大象传媒. Plenty of practice at Wimbledon over the years.

As a non-motorsports fan though F1 are not doing anything to hook the casual viewer in. It was a complete shambles yesterday with them appearing to alter the rules to get the outcome they wanted - and even still the results of the first two could be overturned next week.

One man having so much power is never a good idea in sport - and regardless of history, it's time Bernie Eccleston realised that as much as he's been involved in the making of F1, he could very well be the death of it too. His (much criticised) planned winner takes all system would surely make having a podium finale rather pointless, as well as encourage some wreckless racing which will simply put lives at risk.

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What wondeful coverage, what a supberb blog and such a great topic. Long may it continue.

Another Formula One Fiasco, what a waste of the licence FEE.

maxmerit in #61, I'd be perfectly willing to pay 10 times the licence fee for the quality of F1 coverage we're receiving from the 大象传媒.

If you don't like F1, there are plenty of other sports the 大象传媒 cover very well and whichever you are a fan of, just because I may not like that sport, I'm not saying they are a waste of the licence fee.

Is the coverage as good as it was on ITV? No. The main commentator needs to become a little smoother. But this week was better than last week, so you should get there.

Well done for bringing across Martin Brundle? The guy who goes down to the track. Very very good.

Could I suggest a couple of thing? Firstly do something about the lap count down. Why does it go down? It becomes very confusing (as it did on ITV) when the lap count goes down at the top of the screen and the commentator are talking about being on lap 24. The number dont match. Just go upwards!!!!!

Finally, I skyplused Indycar last night and I would ask you to look at the cameras they have on the top of the cars. Brilliant. Now if you could get this in, you beat ITV hands down. The closeness of the passing moves, the crahses, it was great.

Thanks

for the record, the racing coverage and on screen graphics during the race are outside of the 大象传媒's control, and the indycar's cameras are a bit wierd, I don't think the teams will be too happy about having a camera that high up screwing their CoG. Besides, the onboard cameras aren't even 16:9 yet.

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it was nice to hear the praise that the marshals got at the MONACO GRAN PRIX as a race marshal myself i understand what they do but Mr Joe public does not so can we have some more insight as to what they do and how they train to do the job even if it is only 5 minuets in the program i think it would help the marshals clubs recrute more marshals . as you know we are running short of trained marshalls and also a link to the British Marshalls web site would be a good idea

Hey Roger,
The opening credits and combined music was excellent. Great coverage! I hope the will have Beev have the best season at Formula 1. All in all it was spot on!!! Ray Allen -

Despite having followed F1 for more years than I care to remember I watched yesterday's race with the sound off - I've tried to put up with Martin Brundle's new partner's pathetic commentary but its just too much, the alternative is to stop watching altogether. Unfortunately it also means missing out on Brundle's informed comments, he's been there and done it.
Please, can we have a commentator that can do the sport justice, yes even I know that when the road is higher further away than it is nearer to you, then its a hill and its going up.