Sidepodcast

• Length: 4:24 
• Size: 4.1 MB 
• File: people10.mp3 
• Transcript: people10.pdf 
• Torrent: people10.torrent 

Welcome to F1 People, a mini series of short shows chronicling the lives of important people in the world of Formula 1. Today we’re going to look at Murray Walker, not a traditional F1 People subject, but an important one nonetheless.

Graeme Murray Walker was born on the 10th October 1923 in Birmingham, England. His father raced motorcycles professionally before the war, and was pretty good at it. Murray’s father also became a commentator for the BBC, working with them for 31 years. Walker decided to follow in his father’s footsteps, trying out the motorcycling route but realising he was never going to be as good as he wanted to be. At a particular race in 1949, his father was preparing to do the commentary, but had to step down at the last minute. Walker stepped in, and was overheard by a BBC producer in the crowd. He was invited for a commentating audition ahead of a Goodwood meeting, and got the job instantly.

Walker also took over his father’s role as motorcycle commentating when he died in 1962.
Whilst commentating on the race weekends here and there, Walker made ends meet by starting a career in marketing. His creative flair saw him promoted through an advertising agency, and this double life suited him. He worked on occasional F1 commentaries until the late 1970s, and in 1978 he was given the job full time.

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Formula 1 fans in the UK received a second helping of good news this month when it was announced today that F1 television coverage is returning to it’s natural home, the BBC. Last week Formula One Management finally caved in to pressure and allowed races to be broadcast online, and next year they will also be shown uninterrupted and commercial free.

This is excellent news for any Formula 1 fans living in the UK, and as pointed out by Lou in a comment earlier:

We are gonna get to watch the WHOLE race!

For many years ITV has been the subject of criticism from fans for it’s poor coverage and incessant advertisement breaks, ruining the flow of the action during what are often the most important points of the race.

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Oh yes, it’s true. I mentioned in the comments earlier this week that there was a peculiar ITV advertisement doing the rounds.

It looked like this:

And read:

Live coverage of Friday’s Practice, this Thursday at 11pm GMT

I clicked the message, but to my disappointment the page didn’t go anywhere. It also didn’t explain whether the content would be online, on television or some kind of mobile service.

Today, ITV announced that they have in fact secured the rights to stream Friday practice on the web. They also have rights to something they’re calling “simulcasts” of qualifying and the race. I can’t for the life of me figure if there’s a difference between live streaming and simulcasting, presumably they mean shown at the same time as on television?

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According to the marketing website Brand Republic, ITV are having to drop the price of their proposed 2008 Formula 1 sponsorship package due to insufficient interest.

The company recently lost 2007 sponsors Honda, after it was claimed the asking price would increase from £2.5m up to £4m for the coming season. It now looks as though this years price will be roughly similar to last years, despite the increased interest the channel received due to some bloke from Stevenage.

Recently, ITV’s head of sport Mark Sharman, stated that:

What sport does, and Formula One in particular, is deliver an ABC1 male audience, and that’s priceless for us.

One might suggest that there is a price, and that £4m is a bit too steep.

Last year the Brazilian Grand Prix, which witnessed the climax of the driver’s championship, managed to net an average of 7.3m viewers, compared to just 4.9m the previous year. So there may well be a valid argument for a price increase, but it would appear that so far, ITV haven’t found anyone willing to cough up as much as they’d like.

You can read the full story on Brand Republic, although be warned that it’s a subscription site and you’ll have to log in to view the whole article.

• File: Episode48.m4a
• Length: 18:09
• Size: 16.6 MB
• Transcript: Episode48.pdf

This episode brings you up to date with the most recent launches, plus discussion of some of the more controversial rule change suggestions, all with an irritating helping of sampling fun.

Intro

The new keyboard, what it does and why he loves it.

Good Week / Bad Week

This week has been good for the environment, and for Hamilton’s long term future, whilst his and ITV’s bank balance look set to suffer from a bad week.

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At the tail end of last year, on the 30th December to be precise, a Formula 1 related video documentary aired in the UK on ITV4. You may not have heard of it, I imagine most people didn’t know it was on because ITV didn’t bother to promote it.

I didn’t see any advertisements for the program, and no mention was made on their F1 website, so you can be excused if you missed it. We only heard about it because a friend of ours texted to suggest we tune in. The documentary was entitled “Life Behind Lewis”.

As it happened, we were busy at the time the program aired, so we threw the details into the PVR and went about our business. This week we managed to catch up and it turns out we got it completely wrong. The show had nothing to do with Lewis Hamilton, and made no reference to his dad at all. It was in fact a documentary about Anthony Davidson. The ‘Behind Lewis’ premise being something to do with following the McLaren driver from some distance.

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Speed TV sometimes gets a bit of grief for their Formula 1 coverage in the US. Not as much grief as ITV get over here, but enough to lead me to believe they could be doing a better job than they are.

The one thing Speed TV do have over their counterparts this side of the Atlantic, is they actually understand this online world. They’re not afraid of it. For example, just this week they posted a great interview with ex-Formula 1 driver Scott Speed, discussing his future racing in ARCA:

The video has been posted on the Brightcove network, which means not only do folks in the UK get to see it, we also get to share it here. Compare this to ITV’s rather pathetic attempt at video which currently lists 3 very small (and somewhat dated) clips and no options to use them.

Speed TV may not offer the greatest Formula 1 coverage in the world, but I think they have a far better chance of coping with the future than ITV. What we really need is F1 television coverage to move to Channel 4.

• Length: 08:43 
• Size: 97.9 MB 
• File: video9.m4v 
• Transcript: video9.pdf 
• Torrent: video9.torrent 
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As the British Grand Prix is Sidepodcast’s home race, we’ve pulled out all the stops to bring you the best F1 preview video to date.

First up, we’ve got exclusive footage from the recent test at Silverstone, where 9 of the 11 teams turned up to spend 3 days blasting around the English countryside. We also take a behind-the-scenes look at how mainstream television works with Formula 1 teams to bring fans closer to the action, when ex-drivers-turned-commentators Martin Brundle and Mark Blundell take to the Northamptonshire track in a pair of Williams F1 cars.

Additionally we have our usual fast lap around the circuit, this time Christine takes you around classic corners such as Copse and Becketts, names steeped in Grand Prix history - they don’t build ‘em like the used too. Finally we look back at last weeks French GP and check how the two championships are stacking up as we reach the halfway point of the 2007 season.

It’s an action packed show!

Music played:

Noodlebox, Like You
Kelvin Declined, 42

Music comes from music.podshow.com, with special thanks going to Allianz SE, ITV PLC, Locog and RTV GmbH, for the use of their video footage.