Warning! Long post alert!

This has been a good week for me in terms of learning about how the other side lives. Several events inspired this post, but it would be fair to state that this is the comment I was originally going to put in BlogF1's entry on improving coverage. However, I decided that a comment that threatened to be longer than the original post is not perhaps the best of ideas.

The Internet has become a hot topic in the F1 world, what with a YouTube video playing a key role at the Japanese GP, Ron Dennis bemoaning the internet phenomenon and me discovering some interesting different ways to watch F1. The latter meant I had three perspectives on the Brazillian GP (or parts of it, at any rate).

I saw Speed TV's coverage of Brazil qualifying this year (long story involving an internet connection and some possibly-illegal behaviour), since ITV wouldn't broadcast live. While some aspects were really irritating (the whole thing was delayed 15 minutes to make way for NASCAR truck qualifying, and they missed loads of Q1 and Q3 due to ads), I envied the Americans their sane and balanced commentary line-up. David Hobbs seems very fair-minded, and although Peter Windsor has some biases, he seems to keep them much more restrained than James Allen.

In addition, I accidentally stumbled on some Spanish commentary some time later. It was on YouTube, and had I known it was a commentary involving copyrighted material, I would have given it a miss. (Well, I am a librarian trained in copyright issues, and if I don't obey the law on this, who will?) The copyright, however, is a separate issue and merits its own post - here's one F1Fanatic made earlier.

I have no idea how the Spaniards put up with their coverage, because the commentators seem to have the habit of talking over one another whenever anything exciting happens. While this may convey the excitement of F1 well, I cannot say that it increased my understanding of what the commentators thought very much. If anyone receiving the Spanish version of F1 races is reading this, please could they enlighten me?

ITV (who I watched for their usual coverage) do have serious bias problems, and is clearly aimed at part-time fans. This increases ratings at the expense of commitment - and you need commitment to stick with F1 any length of time. Thankfully, we have Martin Brundle, but I have taken to watching the music channels for the first half-hour of ITV's hour-long build-up to avoid the outbreaks of Lewisteria the other people on ITV have got. I also stop watching the races as soon as the podium ceremony is done, unless a driver I support other than Hamilton has made it to the podium, for the same reason. Consequentially, I haven't watched any post-race press conferences this year.

There are other problems with the way the media are interacting with the sport and each other.

Most races are currently directed by Bernie's organisation. I sometimes suspect they hired all the Austrian GP camera directors, because the same problems of bias and looking at fresh air are evident in the shots as they were in the coverage of the Austrian rounds before FOM got greedy. If only they'd asked one of the better countries to take over the camera work, we'd have a much better result.

The internet coverage is abysmal. I can't get formula1.com to work on my computer most of the time, so I can't comment on the live timing. What I can say is that on the rare occasion I have been able to get onto the site, the usability for people like me has been virtually non-existent. The FIA's site is not much of an improvement, and is in fact less usable and reliable than in its previous iteration.

While Ollie at BlogF1 may feel inferior on this sort of matter, he shouldn't - his blog is highly accessible and would score well on any internet usability test. Truth is, so are most other F1 blogs, and the majority of forums and other sites on the topic. If all us amateurs can get it right, why can't the FOM and FIA with all their technical firepower backing them up reach the same levels of usability and functionality? The worrying thing is that the FOM and FIA don't even care - their apparent apathy on matters not directly concerning power and money spreads even there, even though their power and money would be increased with usable sites.

The solution for the internet is three-fold:

1) Let people put clips on YouTube and similar free non-downloadable sites, so long as they were short (I believe YouTube's limit is 10 minutes a clip, and I think this is sensible to allow step 2) to work).

2) Have a central place where full races can be watched on a pay-per-race system (perhaps £3-5 per race). These basic races would have just the FOM-recorded video and sound, and would go from the 5-minute mark before races to the end of the race, plus podium and full post-race press conference. For an extra fee (£1, perhaps), the user could access the commentary from the professional provider of their choice, including all pre- and post-race content (this would be identical to whatever that channel broadcast, except without ads and with any content the broadcaster would like that would only work on the Net). The £1 supplement would go entirely to the broadcaster whose content was being viewed. This would set up competition between the broadcasters (all stations like extra money!), would reduce bias considerably (to get more viewers) and garner extra money for FOM (the FOM loves extra money!)

3) The third-party internet world needs to be embraced. Since the protaganists have, for the most part, proved completely unable to understand or cater for the requirements of the obsessive internet-based F1 fan. The likes of itv-f1.com would benefit from acknowledging these sites, perhaps by adding links to more detailed sources at the end of their news items (ITV itself is generally slow on the uptake as well as low on detail). Also, the good sites should be elevated in status, to the point where they are considered the equal of any traditional credentialed source.

The FIA's idea of posting regulations to the internet is good, but it is rather lazy in its uploading of said rules (new 2008 and 2009 Technical Regulations were announced yesterday and still haven't been posted!). Plain-language explanations would not only benefit us - given the problems various teams have had in the last couple of years, it would surely improve the running of the sport as well. But that's another story.