Is live TV killing the BTCC?
Who is Nigel Clark?
Nigel Clark is the latest recruit to the TouringCarTimes team, but already has a long history in motorsport. A trackside regular at everything from club to international meetings, he has been reporting on and photographing the BTCC for well over a decade.
The current success of the BTCC owes a huge amount to TV coverage. Although the programmes in the earlier 90s were criticised for their erratic scheduling, the slickly edited highlights package introduced the series to a new generation of fans and led to the boom years that followed. Since then the coverage has increased from packaged highlights, to same-day highlight, and finally to live coverage. Whilst this has undoubtedly been good news for the armchair viewer, the series is increasingly being structured around the demands of TV coverage, which has not always been in the best interests of the real fans that make the effort to be trackside.
Anyone who has been to a Grand Prix or other major international meeting will be familiar with the large gaps between on-track activities. These are left in the race day timetable to ensure that whatever happens the main event absolutely must start on time. Thankfully so far the BTCC has been relatively free of such anomalies, but there have been occasions when support races have been cut short or last minute periods of ‘dead’ time added to suit the TV schedule. There have even been allegations that the pressures of TV scheduling have affected safety – some observers suggesting that races were allowed to continue under circumstances that would normally require a red flag and a re-start. Of course race officials strenuously deny any such allegations.
Race day timetabling issues aside, there is a bigger problem – that of setting the season’s calendar. First and foremost is the need to avoid any Formula One weekend. It’s not just a question of ITV having the broadcast rights to both BTCC and F1; for any series, going head-to-head with a Grand Prix would be commercial suicide. Then there are other sports as well as F1 to consider – last season ITV’s commitment to the Rugby World Cup meant that no broadcast slots were available and the BTCC was left with a 6-week gap between the last 2 meetings. This year it’s the turn of football with most of June blocked off for Euro 2008. On the bright side at least this time we won’t have to worry about England crashing out in another penalty shoot-out!
With every major series chasing a finite number of dates some clashes are inevitable, but this year things seem particularly bad. Whilst it’s perhaps understandable that the BTCC and DTM would not pay too much attention to each other’s schedule – after all most fans wouldn’t be concerned over a clash between Oulton Park and Nurburgring – surely when both are racing in the same country some co—operation is required. On the weekend that the DTM makes it’s now annual visit to Brands Hatch the BTCC will be a little over 100 miles down the road at Silverstone, a situation that can only serve to dilute the gate at both meetings.
If that seems bad then the situation with the WTCC is even worse – there are clashes with no less than 5 of the European WTCC rounds, unbelievably including the British round. As with the DTM, when the WTCC visits Brands Hatch the BTCC will be racing elsewhere. At least circuit owners MSV have tried to salvage something and have managed to switch the BTCC round from Snetterton to Oulton Park, reasoning that the increased distance between the two events will lessen the effect on spectator numbers. Even so, the idea of running two such similar major meetings on the same weekend is madness.
It’s not just the fans that are affected; it’s teams and drivers as well. In recent years drivers such as Jason Plato and Colin Turkington have managed to combine a full BTCC season with occasional WTCC races, whilst WTCC drivers James Thompson, Alain Menu and Tom Coronel have all made guest appearances in the BTCC. GR Asia successful combined programs in both series last year missing just 3 BTCC rounds, and along with WSR had been expected to do the same in 2008. That now looks logistically impossible. The problem extends to support races as well – several SEAT Cupra drivers had been looking to combine both British series and the newly announced WTCC-supporting Euro Cup, but with so many clashes that is simple not possible.
Doubtless TOCA and the FIA will point fingers at each other and claim it’s not their problem, yet the fact remains that some co-operation will be beneficial to both series. A short-term solution would be for the WTCC to postpone their Brands Hatch meeting by two weeks – August 9/10th is free of both F1 and BTCC meetings and would still allow a 3-week break before the next race in Germany. However any hopes of an outbreak of common sense now seem to have disappeared with the recent news that the FIA have changed the date of the Portuguese round and in the process created a sixth BTCC date clash.
With the TV requirements unlikely to change in the foreseeable future, maybe a partial solution would be for the BTCC to return to running meeting on a Bank Holiday Monday. Potentially that opens up a further four weekends without having to worry about a clashing Grand Prix – F1 on Sunday, BTCC on Monday. Then again maybe the solution is to ditch the live TV coverage completely!
