ABC television has been covering the Indy 500 for as long as I can remember and today's broadcast is the worst I have ever seen.
Most blatant was that the directors missed the restarts of the race after a yellow flag. the directors and announcers seemed shocked when the race restarted and we missed some exciting racing, especially into turn one where we only had an aerial view of the restarts.
The next blatant offense was the coverage of the last 10 laps. Marco Andretti spun and hit the wall and instead of talking about strategy and fuel mileage issues, ABC decided that would the be best time to run about 6 commercials back to back and they just came back to commercial just as the race restarted with 5 or 6 laps to go.
Then Ashley's Judd, wife of winner, Dario Franchetti, made a total ass of herself as she practially proclaimed Dario a saint and a god in the post race interview. She talked about 4 minutes, which was about 6 minutes too long.
ABC also neglected to say that Dario was highly booed from the fans at the end of the race, which should have been mentioned.
It was also sad to see that ABC did not mention anything about Memorial Day and the meaning of Memorial Day, except for a few minutes before the race started and nothing mentioned by Dario or Judd at the end of the race.
Also, ABC, within 15 minutes could not get a comment from Takuma Sato, the driver that crashed with Dario on the final lap or with Sato crew chief or owner. Just pathetic.
At times, the announcers didn't know what the director was going to do and so the announcers where talking about something else that was on the screen.
Usually, ABC does a good job, but this year, just horrendous.
At the Prairie Café...
5 hours ago
I couldn't believe how bad it was this year. The director needs to be fired! They pretty much blew every re-start. In-car camera on a restart? Really? Sato crashes badly on the last lap and they don't even mention it again until the very end of the broadcast. No replay analysis, no talking about it. Hardly any interviews with the drivers . . . on and on . . . worst pit coverage since ???? Everone comes in and they hardly show it! The guys in the booth are fine. They know what they are talking about. This wasn't their fault. Did I mention THE WORST EVER?
ReplyDeleteI agree with some of what you say. But you're incorrect on some other stuff. On board cams for the restarts and missing passes for the lead was horrible. Missing the late restart was out of their hands because it was a local commercial break. Ashley is a joke, but not because of the TV guys, she's just awful, period. I couldn't believe it when she proclaimed Dario "a legend." And it was Ashley getting booed, not Dario. Sato was in the care center until they got him, so can't do anything about that. I thought it was pretty cool that they got so much radio chatter from Marco sounding like the crybaby the Andretti's tend to be. And how is it ABC's fault that Dario didn't mention Memorial Day?
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