RobMcCaffery

Now now, you really have to apologise to the car salesmen and rip-off merchants.... There is "something of the night" about them ;-)

One of the more depressing aspects of speedway's "experts" is the inability of too many to understand subtlety. Too often they deal in extremes. The past was either perfect or today totally wrong and so on. There was bad racing in the past just as there is good racing now and there always has to be a bias towards the first out of the gate wining due to the size and surfaces of the tracks. So we're not talking about a move from perfection to the complete opposite. What I have seen over 46 years is a decline in racing with the bias titling further towards poor racing. I saw bad meetings in the 70s just as I see good matches now. It's the split that has changed. I particularly object to 'experts' telling me that I am incapable of having an accurate memory. I remember in the mid 70s standing on the terraces with my friends debating how the introduction of four valves was affecting the racing. I also remember becoming depressed in the eighties at the sight of talented riders opening the throttle, going for the outside pass but finding the track too poorly prepared to give them the grip to allow them to succeed. I am not some simpering idiot clinging to false dreams of an idyllic youth. I am someone with an academic background in history with a lifelong passion for learning more on the subject, not just speedway but in many, many other areas. Generally historical progress is positive but there are losses as well as gains.Yes some people cling to fond memories of their youth and only remember the sunny days. I am NOT one of those. Life is far more complex than that. I also have the ability to reason, and remember. The evidence is clear in speedway. Compare the gates in the 70s with those of today. It's not a question of TV coverage but that the product, overall, is no longer an attraction to the general public. Playing the 'rose tinted glasses' card does damn all to help speedway. It's got a problem and needs to wake up to it. The solutions though are totally in its own hands. Improve the product, get the racing right, get the rules right, regain credibility and loyalty and for god's sake stop shooting the messenger!

Deleted.

Funny how only speedway has lost supporters due to television coverage. It's quite an achievement when you think about it, if it were true. Maybe it would be better if TV walked away and spent its efforts on a more intelligent and grateful sport.

Exposure on TV can help to remind the public that speedway exists and hopefully make them want to go and watch it live. Whether these are new or lapsed fans is immaterial, as long as they attend. Equally whether a viewer is a regular attendee at matches or just watches on TV is immaterial. They contribute to the viewing figures that keep the sport being televised. You could apply the above equally to sponsors. TV coverage to me is a superb bonus that allows me to watch matches that I could not otherwise attend and also maintains and feeds my love of the sport. I suspect I'm not alone. Are speedway supporters really only capable of watching one match a week? Only speedway with its limited, negative thinking, which does so very much to stifle it and destroys the opportunities I mentioned above, could blow it so consistently year in year out. All sports need TV, which is why they clamour for coverage. Well, all but one, it seems.

I don't buy steak so that's pretty cheap. But I don't have steak.... It's your choice but you're missing out on a lot of speedway to add to what you watch live. Each to their own.

Great to see he's finally got a proper job. It would explain the fear in his eyes on Sunday - I thought it was just seeing me again after twenty years...

All that is changing is that you will pay for BT Sport as part of your deal with Sky, rather than have to pay BT separately. BT was available via the Sky box and still will be. It's just the way you pay that changes.

Does anyone remember the sales slogan (strapline) for the film "he Sting" was "The con is on". Just a random thought............honestly! I wonder if it's worth going to a show home there, ask to look round then complain that there's a motor sport stadium on the doorstep and see whether you get told "Don't worry, it won't be around much longer".

Thanks once again for the data and an informed update. You may be amused to know that the budget for Screen Sport coverage in 1984-6 covered three cameramen (one of whom was the producer), one director, one vision mixer, occasionally a 'gofer'and one commentator, very occasionally backed-up by a pit interviewer or co-commentator. That budget? £1000 an hour....... A highlights show or something on the lines of my old news review - with suitably upgraded content and presenter (1984-6 budget about £100 a show excluding studio time) would have been a superb addition to the coverage, but not replacement as some here have been arguing for. The fact that certain promoters saw it as a threat and still seem to view any coverage similarly now and the inept failure to find a sponsor must be connected, don't you think?

An excellent day out. I was far too busy enjoying meeting people to worrying about costs and the rights and wrongs of zoos and lesser animal collections. Life's too short to deny yourself a good day out over irrelevancies. I stayed out of the wildlife area - I was there for speedway.

Yes, but not on the scale of Sky and they have cut back on the 2019 contract, reducing payments and cutting down from 42 matches to 32. It is common knowledge that until recently BT's financial resources have dwarfed those of Sky, although the Disney deal will shift the balance. BT could afford to pay over the odds. Sky couldn't and speedway was dumped.

Yes they do have highlights IN ADDITION to live coverage. I specifically stated that few sports ONLY have highlights packages. I'm rather familiar with Match of The Day...... It would help if people read what I say rather than assume.

On the other hand how much lower would they have gone if not propped up by TV coverage? You can never know. The money earnt by the sport should have enabled it to invest in itself and thus attract new customers. There were few sports that utterly wasted the opportunity and money but somehow ours managed to. No, the move for years now in sports TV has been away from highlights to live, full-match coverage. Why should be go in the other direction just because we can't run matches efficiently? There is a real world out there and it seems it's not just the BSPA who are unaware. Study the sports TV schedules and see for yourselves how few sports have highlights shows only instead of full coverage. There's not many, and for a very good reason - people want live, full matches, as proved by Sky for nearly thirty years now.

Thanks again Steve. It was scheduled for late on Sunday specifically so it didn't clash with any live speedway meetings. In those days the only Sunday evening track we had to consider was Boston who were normally finished by 9 pm, having a 6.45 start. As you can see we did everything we could not to be a problem. Yes Oxford was one of the areas covered. In those early days we were carried mainly on Rediffusion's 4-channel service which sadly only had patchy coverage over the country. The expected multi-channel cable systems of today were authorised in the 80s but mostly not built until the next decade, by which time Sky was dominant, Screensport had morphed into a European network, and I was long gone.

Thanks for remembering. It was a very long time ago. That show came about after we'd set up the deal to show a prerecorded match once a week. I offered to contribute speedway news to the station's news department (mainly ex-Piccadilly Radio journos who at least knew of Belle Vue) to be read by one of the presenters as part of their new bulletins. I phoned in the first set to the programme controller, Chris Fear (ex-Westward TV and a speedway man) whose response was to invite me up to the studios the following Saturday to present the news myself, initially with him interviewing me then after a couple of weeks 'solo'. Resources were minimal - we couldn't even afford a shoestring. What we did have was the recording of the match to be shown the following night so we took a heat from that as a preview. The whole speedway project was initially run by K.M.Video on their own who recorded several matches for video each week, normally at places like Hackney, Wimbledon and Reading. At each meeting we would record interviews to insert into the weekly news review. We weren't allowed to show any action. So we would only be able to show the one race and the few video companies also making speedway tapes at the time simply weren't producing material technically good enough to broadcast. Indeed KM's equipment wasn't up to the job and after the first match at Hackney an outside firm, Video Anglia was brought in to provide better, vision-mixed cameras working from an admittedly tiny 'scanner' truck (a Renault Trafic where I did the commentary from the front passenger seat). I usually managed to find a guest to help me through the Saturday half hour, starting with Chris Morton. So the format was one race, a couple of interviews, possibly a guest, a comprehensive listing of fixtures for the night and week ahead. The rest was me, working from notes perched on my knee, with slide inserts to relieve the viewer's agony ;-) No, we couldn't run to autocue. No, none exist as far as I can ascertain. We ran weekly through the main season and monthly through the winter so there were over thirty shows a year. We tried. The only feedback we got from the BSPA was "Canterbury are complaining that you're hitting their crowd". Our programme was over by 6 every Saturday... Depressingly it comes as no surprise that some BSPA members are still stupid enough to believe that TV isn't a help. After 30+ years you would hope they'd learned. People wonder why I get frustrated with certain people in speedway? .

BT aren't the ones with the problem re the Premier League deal - that's firmly Sky's problem. The lesson has been learnt and the next deal will be less on both sides. BT's resources dwarf Sky's so I wouldn't be worried about their finances. They are leaving Sky to make the desperate deals and are clearly looking to ensure that future deals in all sports are financially justifiable. It looks like they've tested the BSPA this year with their initial offer. It is frightening that members of the BSPA still can't see the value of a TV deal. Most other minority sports would be biting BT's hand off. But then there is the real world, the sporting world and then British Speedway's......

A debate on TV coverage descends into moronic ageism. Speedway gets what it deserves, to be honest.

Quite right. While I respect anyone who has the courage to get on and race a speedway bike the power in the sport has moved to those riders who in the main seem to have totally forgotten the rights and needs of the paying public. Sadly that malaise goes further than the riders. Every instruction to a rider to drop points to fiddle the average, every time a dispute between rider and promotion is played out in public at meetings, every time a rider goes missing for a more lucrative pay day elsewhere, every meeting that's rushed through to heat ten with no racing possible, the constant team changes wrecking loyalty between fans and riders, every time a rider chooses an early night rather than socialising with the fans, every little thing that tells the fans they are the least important people at the meeting, they all serve to damage the sport and we are seeing the bitter harvest of it all now. It is an essential truth when selling a product or service that the needs of the customer come first. Speedway's forgotten that and the bill is now being presented for that stupidity.

If it's true that there will only be the same number of matches televised then I am disappointed. Now, just one small point, why do we have to divide speedway supporters into those who attend (presumably goodies) and 'armchair supporters' (presumably baddies). Isn't it possible to do both? I certainly intend to to this year now I have the chance. Am I alone? I fully endorse the comments about the quality of coverage. Having spent a few years trying to broadcast speedway on a very minimal budget I'm aware of how resourceful you have to be to compensate. You could see the rough edges in 2017 but I'm sure in less expert hands it would have been even starker. Now flagrag's involvement in the modern day industry will hopefully confirm, the whole area of sports TV is entering a very interesting period. Sky overbid for Premiership football and clearly BT are seeing that their occasional matches perhaps also carry too heavy a price. The key difference coming up is that traditional, channel-based and schedule-based TV is under direct attack from legal streaming services like Netflix and Amazon. So far BEIN Sport (Al Jazeera) and Canal+ (known to speedway fans as C-More in Sweden and NSport+ in Poland) have had minimal involvement here but that could well change. Sky will also soon be under the control of Disney rather than Murdoch. The whole industry is in flux again. It could be a very apt time for a sport to show that it is a value-for-money supplement to a network's sports offering. It could be very important that we have another excellent year of speedway on TV. I do so hope we do.

Oh dear SCB, are you still trying to defend your moronic and offensive ageism by sneering and ridicule? For the benefit of those that haven't seen this person's constant attacks on older supporters and blaming them for the ills of speedway elsewhere the worst example was "Why pander to them, they'll be dead soon?" Treat him with the contempt he deserves. It's pathetic that someone who passes himself off as vaguely intelligent can make such ignorant and offensive posts and when rightly criticised tries to ridicule those who dare to do so. Truly pathetic. Stick to regurgitating the rule book. Anyway, welcome back to the second tier, Lakeside, you have been missed and I hope you have a superb year. Those of you old enough to be despised by the likes of SCB will at least take some reassurance that they are unlikely to have to put up with the individual concerned this year since he is far too self-important to attend Championship level speedway. Despite my involvement at Rye House over the years I still have a soft spot for Arena-Essex, especially since I recorded the commentary on the first-ever meeting there in 1984. Oops, that shows how old I am. I should be ashamed of myself, not having died yet. ;-)

Only when dealing with people like you. You were trying to seem clever by the scheduler remark. It didn't work. There are those who use the forums to discuss and celebrate speedway. Then there are those purely flexing their egos like you. Sadly my patience is long exhausted by the likes of you.

Shame on them for daring to put it on their channel then, eh? I trust you have complained to them for their attempted oppression of the poor TV viewer.

Talking Pictures is available free of charge on Freeview channel 81, although whether you can receive it depends on which transmitter your TV is tuned into. The main ones carry it so the majority of people do but the small local relays don't. Almost all TVs have Freeview built-in, although not all are connected to an aerial to allow it to be used.

First two transmission dates are: 19th Feb 18.00 25th Feb 14:00