I was wondering if Motors TV are showing the WRC this year 2012 , i know it's shown in the schedule's but after all the shanninagins over the past few days it's hard to know what's going on at the minute especially now with Eurosport in as the broadcaster .

Somehow Motors TV doesn't want answer to this question. Also not on twitter.

Cheers , i suspose all will be revealed in a few days time.

Yes, we will be showing WRC...

_________________
Frédéric VIGER
Head of Programming
MOTORS TV

Cheers , thanks for getting back on this.

Thanks Fred!!!

I'll give more news as soon as possible...
Shows to be 26' highlights now.

_________________
Frédéric VIGER
Head of Programming
MOTORS TV

Was expecting this as Eurosport is only producing a 26min show at the moment.

It seems it's impossible to update the schedule with the correct WRC times. Only on the title page you can see the correct times. Seriously are you guys sooo overloaded with work that nobody can take 10 minutes to update the schedule? How should a normal viewer know what's going on?

As expected much better coverage from the Eurosport team.

Finally WRC cars from the outside for more than 20 seconds in the complete show. Oboards where you can see something. Helicopter shoots that blow your mind.
Honestly I am not unhappy that North One is dead. Sad for the people there but for the quality a big improvement. And this in just about 2 weeks preparation time.

Only minus point still the horrible picture quality from Motors TV. In times of HD TV we still get a 3 mbit/s feed for Motors TV. Looks like an old VHS.

Commentary was really good too by the way.

I actually thought the complete opposite.

The helicopter shots were nice but the in-car shots were boring.
One of the things i have always loved about wrc coverage is the in-car shots, watching the drivers throwing the cars about & having a nice varierty of in-car angles. the in-car cameras eurosport use take away a lot of the sensation of speed, you can't see the drivers input on the controls & there was only 1 angle. plus there was no lengthy in-car shots used so getting an idea of what the stages were like was impossible.

commentary was terrible, whoever it was stumbled several times & had to correct himself & often sounded a bit confused to the action.

if thats how eurosport are going to handle the coverage then sorry i will not be watching!


bigger downside is that i understand eurosport will not be posting in-car videos (or any other videos) on the wrc youtube channel, huge shame as i used to love watching those long in-car videos -
http://www.youtube.com/user/wrc/videos?view=u

I can agree with the commentary. Not perfect but not that bad.

But to complain about the onbard is crazy. The last years we got dirty cams for minutes or blurry like hell and for me the worst the long long shots on the driver. I know how a steering wheel looks like when you turn it.

I found that with the Eurosport camera you can see the speed much better. And the camera is in a place where you can actualy see the road ahead and not only the inside of the car which is mostly black and booring.

But it also shows how much input a driver is putting into the wheel which shows how hard he's pushing, gives an idea of grip levels etc....

The shots we got were not bad, You can see the road ahead, However it gives very little indication of how much driver input is been put in which makes it hard to see how hard he's pushing & how much the car is moving around, Also you can't see stuff like if the cars oversteering/understeering as they are not as easy to pick up from the shots we got.


Like in the post above, used to always love the varierty of shots used in WRC, You got a great sence of speed from the low down front bumper-cam, How close the cars were getting to the trackside stuff from the cameras placed in mirrors/doors/wings, Got to see how hard the driver/co-driver were concentrating from the shots looking back at them from the dashboard, Got to see how hard the drivers feet were working from the angle looking at the pedals, We also briefly saw a helmet camera last year which was fantastic.


I know from reading around the web in recent years that the lack of In-Car angles on Eurosports IRC coverage has been a big complaint from fans with many wanting to see IRC use some of the shots WRC had.


Also understanding that the actual WRC teams were not happy with last nights coverage or the way Eurosport's people have been the past week when dealing with teams. Eurosport have a deal to show Monte-Carlo but there is nothing in place for the rest of the season & many within WRC are apparently pushing to bring ISC (Who has handled all wrc Tv production since 1996) back to provide the TV production.

Also been told there hesitant to accept the Eurosport deal because they want terrestrial coverage & they were in talks with ITV4 before North One hit there difficulties.

I sadly only remeber bad comments about the coverage from last years. Most comments found the coverage really booring. Even at the end of 2011 I was not sure which care is from whcih driver. Very simple reason. We never saw the cars. Only the driver and some dirt on the camera near the ground and and in the mirror. The positions would be good but they don't work in rally where you have dirt all the time.

I don't get it. Eurosport had 1 week to prepare. What did they expect? How can they produce something perfect in 1 week. And the thing with ITV4 sounded great for UK. But what about the 100 other countries that don't get coverage then. Nearly nobody from the TV stations is really interested in WRC coverage.

Same thing happened with NHL. Most of Europe is mad now because there are less games than before in all countries except 3-4 countries in the north. The same thing would happen with ITV4. UK would be very happy and all the rest would be mad because they get nothing. And that's really what the manufacturers want? Didn't they see what Eurosport did with the IRC. Monte completely Live and the manufacturers were more than happy. This NEVER happened with WRC with the amazing promoter and TV channels before (not related to Motors TV).

Nothing against Motors TV. They did the best they can.

The manufacturers are never happy but what alternative to Eurosport do they really have? I would say NONE.

IRC did have good live coverage, However its TV viewing figures were very poor, The WRC figures on EuroSport (When they had coverage before) was higher as were the viewing figures for Dave's WRC coverage in the UK a few years back.

ISC did start bringing in equipment capable of Live coverage last year, The power stages were broadcast live & pretty much every stage on the French WRC rally was live on wrc.com (About 16 hours in total) & there live coverage of that event was way better than Eurosport's IRC coverage.

They had more live coverage planned for this season, They had 3-4 hours of live coverage planned for Monte-Carlo plus more from other rally's through the year.


When discussing the WRC coverage on MotorsTV the past few years it should be pointed out that the primary WRC highlights package was on ESPN (In the UK), The MotorsTV coverage was only ever supposed to be primarily In-Car coverage, Thats why it was longer (An Hour) & was mostly filled with lengthy in-car shots. Because it was only a secondary package for in-car coverage, MotorsTV had to use there own commentator (Simon Hill) & he was voicing everything live which is why commentary was sometimes a bit shakey.

If you go back & read the initial articles about MotorsTV getting WRC it says they wanted it to be more focussed around In-Car footage:
http://www.thecheckeredflag.co.uk/2009/11/wrc-switches-to-motors-tv-for-2010/


The Primary 30Min international highlight package was on ESPN, It featured less in-car & more footage from the Heli-Cam & trackside cameras & featured commentary from Julian Porter who worked for ISC, Was at every rally & read from a script he helped prepare while the highlights package was been put together.


In terms of comparing to the the coverage on Motors last year, Yes what we have this weekend is probably more in-depth, However in terms of the primary highlights package from prior years which aired on ESPN (Among other broadcasters), What we have this weekend is nowhere near as good, Its a massive step backwards.