[TV] BBC Four - Motor Racing at the BBC: That Petrol Emotion.

[cg7aa]

"Archive series celebrating the glory days of British motor racing, buffing up some of the BBC's most memorable coverage from the sport's earliest days."

Episode 1/5 - Monday 18th March, 2000hrs GMT - The 50s saw Stirling Moss and Mike Hawthorn take on the great Argentinian driver, Fangio.

[VIVA GT]

Originally Posted by cg7aa

"Archive series celebrating the glory days of British motor racing, buffing up some of the BBC's most memorable coverage from the sport's earliest days."

Episode 1/5 - Monday 18th March, 2000hrs GMT - The 50s saw Stirling Moss and Mike Hawthorn take on the great Argentinian driver, Fangio.

Thanks for the heads up on this, I'll have to set the recorder or watch later in BBC I Player as Mrs Viva will be stuck into Coronation street at this time!

[chunder]

There does seem to be a motorsport fan in the Beeb somewhere who obviously has the ear of the commisioning editor!

We had the Clark, Stewart Hill shows, then the hero thing with Moss Mcrae, and now this!

Lets hope it continues, it obviously gets good viewing from live and Iplayer and I know I have watched some of these shows more than once

In particular the one about Group B and the one highlighting the dangerous period of F1, which I found both revealing and fascinating.

I also have found some fabulous period stuff from the 70's and 80's on youtube, one great show from Equinox about Ford development of their V6 turbo engine, well Cosworths! How the inline 4 was a disaster etc etc, real behind the scenes awesomeness.

[cg7aa]

Originally Posted by chunder

There does seem to be a motorsport fan in the Beeb somewhere who obviously has the ear of the commisioning editor!

We had the Clark, Stewart Hill shows, then the hero thing with Moss Mcrae, and now this!

Lets hope it continues, it obviously gets good viewing from live and Iplayer and I know I have watched some of these shows more than once

In particular the one about Group B and the one highlighting the dangerous period of F1, which I found both revealing and fascinating.

I also have found some fabulous period stuff from the 70's and 80's on youtube, one great show from Equinox about Ford development of their V6 turbo engine, well Cosworths! How the inline 4 was a disaster etc etc, real behind the scenes awesomeness.

I reckon there should be a late night segment where they just show motorsport archive footage, the hardcore fans will record and watch and those who are not interested need not feel it's wasting time as they'll probably be in bed. Maybe have one or two motor sport historians introduce it to give some context and then just let it run, if there's original commentary by Raymond Baxter, great! If not, let the sounds play with captions maybe.

I'll get me coat.

[Al Weyman]

Did anyone see the repeat of the Dagenam prog following the film about the lady strikers, catch it i-Player if you didnt as well worth a watch. Also the other one with Paul McGann was good with Paul testing a vintage Lotus F1 car. I think that was on one of the other channels.

[jsmee]

I missed this tonight as I was working... And it's not on iPlayer due to copyright limits! Bloomin ridiculous! Anyone know anywhere to watch it online elsewhere?

[VIVA GT]

I seem to recall it being repeated a couple of times through the week, but at god-awful times of the night/early morning. Have a scan through the schedules and hopefully you have a way of recording it.

[nicanary]

I just watched it having recorded it on Sky+. Pretty ordinary, another opportunity missed. Quite a few mistakes by production assistants who didn't care/have the knowledge.

It's difficult I know for a TV company to get it right - if they make it too technically correct it will appeal only to a small section of the public. If they "dumb it down" it will annoy the purists, and by placing it on BBC4 I don't suppose many casual viewers would tune in anyway.

Nothing new here.

[Gary Critcher]

a real missed opportunity, once again, IMHO.
Over 10 years ago I approached the BBC with an idea of a 90 minute DVD of motor racing film from their archive ...'Treasures From the BBC'.
Remember that I used to work for the BBC and have produced programmes / DVD's.
Through my contacts I spoke to the guy who was the head of '2Entertain' (I think it was then), the BBC's official programme releasing company. He was a guy I knew when I worked there. I explained what I wanted to do; would produce the whole thing myself, get someone like Murray Walker to do the links, interrogate the BBC computer system properly (rather than a 'researcher' do it for me) and thereby pull some un-seen gems from the archive and put it out.
His reply? It was too much like hard work for them.
Even though I offered to do EVERYTHING for it! Oh well.............

[chunder]

I also tried to do something like this many years ago after watching the Marshall clip from Crystal Palace, there must be so much footage and archive the Beeba re sitting on, and to be honest only the F1 stuff would be hard to use because of Bernies stranglehold on rights.

Things like rallycross, scrambling, rallying and pretty everything else would be fairly simple to get out there.

Shame that so much of it is siting there unused, but these people are notorous hoarders and rarely let anyone in to get stuff unless they pay or are important!

[Gary Critcher]

Believe it or not, the BBC charges something like £2,000 per minute to lease their footage for a sell thru DVD. I was going to approach them again with this idea last year, but after hearing horror stories from the three different people about their dealings with the BBC........I just gave up and quietly forgot the idea!

[cg7aa]

Originally Posted by nicanary

...

Nothing new here.

I'm afraid so, a bit disappointing, it's the sort of program you can have playing in the background and catch the odd glimpse without missing too much. Still great to hear Raymond Baxter though.

[cg7aa]

Originally Posted by Gary Critcher

Believe it or not, the BBC charges something like £2,000 per minute to lease their footage for a sell thru DVD...

I guess with the sort of payoffs they give to senior managers, that sort of rate is to be expected. My apologies for going wildly off topic here but I read something in Private Eye the other day that had me reeling. You can't make it up, how can a publicly funded institution be allowed to get away with this sort of thing?


£295k - Salary BBC will pay ex-minister James Purnell to work as executive despite no evidence of competition for his services.

£375k - Payoff BBC executive Roly Keating received not to work for it anymore, despite having another high-profile job to go to

£670k - Payoff BBC executive Caroline Thomson received because she wasn't good enough to be director-general

and on it goes...

[cg7aa]

Originally Posted by cg7aa

I'm afraid so, a bit disappointing, it's the sort of program you can have playing in the background and catch the odd glimpse without missing too much. Still great to hear Raymond Baxter though.

Forgot to ask this, did anyone else think the voice-over at the start sounded like a reproduction rather than an original?

[nicanary]

Originally Posted by cg7aa

Forgot to ask this, did anyone else think the voice-over at the start sounded like a reproduction rather than an original?

Yes. Probably Harry Enfield.

I posted earlier "nothing new here", and I meant the style of the production and its attempt to appeal at a more general audience. But I was also disappointed that the content was largely GP and WSC footage - we've all seen it so many times before. The Beeb used to show all many of motoring sports on Grandstand - club racing, autotests, rallycross, even weird and wonderful stuff like autopoint and the Army inter-regimental cross-country driving trials.

Surely some of this must still be in the archives? I used to lap it up as a kid - mind you there were only two channels back then, so anything seemed exciting. I really was hoping that this series would be a reflection of those times, looking at how all forms of motor sport were presented to the public. Instead we just got a smorgasbord of clips that have been viewed before in compilation Dvds.

[The Fat Clerk]

Instead we just got a smorgasbord of clips that have been viewed before in compilation Dvds.[/QUOTE]


What do you expect from the BBC?

[VIVA GT]

Originally Posted by The Fat Clerk

Instead we just got a smorgasbord of clips that have been viewed before in compilation Dvds.

What do you expect from the BBC?

Something better!
As others have already said, the BBC Archives must contain some solid gold motorsport stuff that I can remember being glued to the TV watching on Grandstand almost every Saturday afternoon when I was a lad.
It's an old cliche that they don't make nostalgia like they used to but I'm sure that many other grey haired old gits like me would love to see the old rallycross, autosprints, autotests and army vehicle trials that we saw in black & white all those years ago.
In theory, we own the BBC by virtue of our license fee, shouldn't that give as some sort of say in what they show?
Plus, I'm sure that potentially there would be an earner for the corporation here selling these classic programmes on elsewhere (including on DVD).

[Gary Critcher]

' Instead we just got a smorgasbord of clips that have been viewed before in compilation Dvds.'
Exactly my point when I suggested the DVD's ; use a FEW well-known clips but the vast majority would have been rarely seen footage. As I said, another opportunity wasted. And don't get me started on the Jackie Stewart/James Martin/Stirling Moss/Patrick Stewart programmes.................

[nicanary]

It's just occurred to me (I'm from Norfolk - it takes time) that the BBC have probably destroyed the stuff we're talking about - all the obscure trials and sprints etc.. They can't keep everything for ever, and they possibly thought nobody would be interested.

[Paradise City]

Originally Posted by nicanary

It's just occurred to me (I'm from Norfolk - it takes time) that the BBC have probably destroyed the stuff we're talking about - all the obscure trials and sprints etc.. They can't keep everything for ever, and they possibly thought nobody would be interested.

IIRC, they can actually keep the stuff if they wanted but they did have a policy of erasing footage at that includes plenty of lost drama, comedies and of course good sport.

[VIVA GT]

Originally Posted by Paradise City

IIRC, they can actually keep the stuff if they wanted but they did have a policy of erasing footage at that includes plenty of lost drama, comedies and of course good sport.

Which could of course be all the same thing!

[Gary Critcher]

I used to work at the BBC Film + Videotape Library and I know how much stuff they did, literally, throw away!

[Mike Bell]

Originally Posted by nicanary

It's just occurred to me (I'm from Norfolk - it takes time) that the BBC have probably destroyed the stuff we're talking about - all the obscure trials and sprints etc.

Hey, I resemble that first remark! I fell asleep about half way through the 8pm showing of Motor Racing at the BBC, but managed to keep awake during the best of Kenny Everett prog that followed. Guess that sums it up......

Even if the beeb had all the archive stuff mentioned it would need help from outside to make something of it. Sounds like they are not interested in doing that. Shame.

[Gary Critcher]

'Even if the beeb had all the archive stuff mentioned it would need help from outside to make something of it.'
Exactly. My number is.......................competitive rates too!