Thursday Feature: Rizzo's Rant

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Spring Spud: Channel Seven's Coverage

“For the jockeys this is their first time on a horse” – Bruce McAvaney, Melbourne Cup day 2009.

Sure it was a slip of the tongue, and sure we all knew what Bruce meant, but channel seven’s coverage of the spring carnival has hardly been “delicious”.

With so much money at stake for TV rights, you would think that Seven would put together a half decent broadcast on the biggest week of the racing calendar.

Instead, we had to put up with B grade celebrities, shocking TV in channel promotions and hardly any horses.

This may seem like another rant on the same thing, the disintegration of horse racing, and it might be so, but it must be highlighted.

Sitting on the couch watching channel Seven was a painful task, and one I will not do again unless I have another option.

Where should my criticism begin?

We may as well start off with the B grade celebrities (being kind, more like D grade). Countless crosses to people we don’t know was becoming very frustrating. Then they talk about the fashion, and then give a tip (generally a favourite) before crossing back.

Sure people are into that stuff and it is generally the once a year punters watching, but please a whole day of this really gets annoying.

The second gripe with their coverage is with the cross promotions. Using footage with stupid voiceovers is not funny and very annoying.

I’m not really sure of the mentality of the people who actually find this funny, but the look on Simon Marshall’s face after they show them sums it up.

They ruined the tennis with these ads and now it seems it has infiltrated the spring carnival.

One of the final straws was the lack of actual horse coverage. Its the spring carnival. There are horses. Yet why is the only time we saw them about a minute before the race?

Is it too hard for their “experts” to do a bit of a rundown of the field? Could they even tell us what the market moves are without talking about the favourites?

TVN give the best possible coverage, I’m sure we are not asking for that pre or even post race, but a nice even preview would be great.

The final straw though was the Melbourne Cup preview. Would it be hard to go out on a limb and talk up the hopes of some of the other horses? All we heard all day was Alcopop and Viewed.

I’m sure there was someone SOMEWHERE on course that thought another horse could win.

They were also scared to write off the chances of some of the worst horses. How many times during the carnival did we hear:

“It is going to be hard, but you can’t write it off.”

Well, actually yes you can! A spud horse is a spud horse, even if it is the Melbourne Cup. The only thing is that the people in the industry need to have the guts to write it off!

I realise that Seven will never give the same coverage as TVN, but is just a little bit more on the horses possible? I’m sure the ratings won’t drop because they show the mounting yard.

And to think this was TVN’s first year ON TRACK. Can we have some common sense please?

Lets hope we have a speeeccciiaallll spring.

I’m Rizzo and that’s my rant.