Full Throttle

One of the NFL’s games that will forever live in infamy is the “Heidi” game of Nov. 17, 1968. In that game the Oakland Raiders scored 14 points in 65 seconds in a remakable comeback to win 43-32 over the Joe Namath led New York Jets.

The stirring ending was missed by those viewers of the NBC broadcast in the Eastern and Central time zones. Instead the network went to commercial then began airing a made-for-TV premiere movie, “Heidi.”

37 years later ITV, a British broadcasting company, has reprised that egregious error. For the first time in ages, possibly years, Formula One actually provided an entertaining show in Sunday’s San Marino GP in Imola Italy. Many in Britain never saw most of it!

British F1 fans cursed their TV screens as Imola’s thrilling late-race battle reached a climax.

As Michael Schumacher harried race leader Fernando Alonso with three laps to run, broadcaster ITV switched to a 3-minute ad-break. The action returned on the final tour. After the race, the network was bombarded with complaints.

”I was absolutely disgusted,’‘ one viewer told ‘The Sun’ newspaper. ”I think ITV should give F1 back to the BBC.”

Executive producer of the F1 broadcast, Neil Duncanson, apologised but defended the ad-break as a contractual obligation.

”The advertisers pay top dollar,” he said.

Reports said ITV had delayed going to a scheduled commercial break when Jenson Button briefly led, and again when the Schumacher-Alonso duel began. When the latter did not resolve, though, eventually ITV was ‘forced’ to leave the action, a source told Autosport.

”I can only assume the producer is a football fan,” English F1 legend Sir Stirling Moss told The Guardian.

What a load of crap. Advertisers may pay the big bucks but that is predicated on having viewers. Piss off enough of them and there will be none to shill over priced junk to.

UPDATE: Via Yahoo UK.

However, Mark Whittell, a spokesman for ITV Sport, continued to defend their coverage. arguing that they were ‘obliged to include five commercial breaks during a race and that they did not want to take the final break while Jenson Button was in the lead’. However, as the Guardian pointed out, Button lost the lead on the 47th lap of the 62-lap race.

Again, another load of crap. Why isn’t it policy to never show the last of five commercial breaks within the last 10-15 laps? A little math shows the network had approx 20 minutes to show the last 3 minute advertisement yet they chose the most iinopportune time possible. Then try to hide behind a contractual obligation.

Capital “B,” capital “S.”

UPDATE II: PitPass offers an excellent “Talking Point” on this issue. If nothing else the lead photo is worth the visit!

Cross posted @ SportsBlog