I'm watching the replay on 7 right now. I'm comparing the 7 coverage now to when 7 had it before '97, taking into account that 7/VESA have an out by saying it's live on 7mate. This is in Victoria by the way. Both coverages were a late-night delayed telecast, because of the footy.
IIRC, back then, 7 would show the dash, a support race (typically fford), heat 1 (full), another support race (not fford), heat 2 (full), presentation and then, maybe, a colour piece at the end.
This was a 2 hour program.
Now, its just one edited heat, no support races and a program scheduled to be
less than 1 hour long! Which do you think is the better option?
Back then, 7 had the rights to the ATCC for free, the package comes with Bathurst. Nowadays, how much do they pay for the rights?
So, to those of us who like to stick it to Cochrane and the whole V8SC community for the way they go about their business. Should we be thankful for the "increased" publicity that they've bought to Australian motorsport (whatever it is) and Australian entertainment industries, or should we be thankful that digital technology has developed so that the media industry allows us to have more than 5 free-to-air, 3 commercial, tv channels, that give VESA an out?