Quote:
Originally Posted by Acid09
Quality TV coverage? The ALMS? When? 2008?
There have been countless of angry articles about the bad quality of last year's ALMS broadcasts, nothing about their stuff has been thigh quality ever since they got booted by SPEED.
The Eurosport broadcasts are Emmy-worthy in comparison.
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Surely this post is meant to be a joke. The ALMS will have about half of their races live on a premier sports network. The Mid-Ohio ABC race may be a joined in progress deal, but I think the others are live in full. The others get next day highlights. Obviously highlights of the enduros won't satisfy the handful of diehards, but I think 1.5-2 hour highlights on a good network works for most casual fans. Expecting someone with only a mild interest to watch something for 6 hours straight on a weekend day/evening isn't going to net great results I don't think. Showing 2 hours of the most relevant action works better. Live look-ins like Eurosport has for some/most of the races is a very disjointed way of following a race unless you watch the rest through other means (which probably only diehards do).
The biggest problems the ALMS has is that A) the international live Internet stream is seemingly unreliable and B) some US viewers (like myself) can't see the ESPN3 stream because their ISPs don't subscribe to ESPN3. As for A, the ACO's web streams aren't exactly reliable either. At least the ALMS archives the streams so they can be seen later on in full or one can watch the racing action on Motors or one of the other international channels that carries the races. As for B, well, there's no excuses for that. That is a problem that needs to be taken care of.
As for the production of the races, the ALMS wins that competition against the ILMC/ELMS hands down. The ALMS actually shows racing action in all the classes. The ACO shows, well, Ullrich's forehead. Some of the sponsored segments on the ALMS broadcasts can get trite and annoying, especially when Fehan is talking, but that's the price that is paid when partners buy the airtime.