How TV broadcasters handled the Bianchi crash
- This topic has 16 replies, 16 voices, and was last updated 9 years, 6 months ago by
.
- Posts
In the UK BBC showed their midday repeat of the Japanese Grand Prix as usual, but included an introduction explaining about Bianchi’s crash.
Sky however chose not to run any repeats of the race:
Out of respect to driver Jules Bianchi, who is seriously ill in hospital, scheduled replays of the Japanese Grand Prix will not be shown.
— Sky Help Team (@SkyHelpTeam) October 5, 2014
It would be interesting to hear from F1 fans in other countries how your local broadcasters responded to it. Did they also avoid showing repeats out of respect? Do you think they handled it appropriately?
FOX Sports Latin America did show a replay of the race, understandably, as the race actually took place at 3 AM here, so many people missed it.
They are all over twitter giving information about Jules’ condition, but that’s as much as I can say.
I think scheduled replays should still be broadcasted. Why ban them? people want to know first hand and draw conclusions of their own. The FOM feed didn’t show anything about the incident itself either…
Austrian TV broadcasting station ORF did not cancel their replay of the race; they continued their broadcast until about half an hour after the red flags were issued, then moved on to Big Bang Theory.
I only checked if the race was repeated mid-race after reading Sky had taken it down, and it was repeated here in Hungary on M1 (I watch the races without the Hungarian commentary anyway with pure sounds, I rather put on Sky from a stream for comms). I don’t know if there was anything said about how the accident turned out before or after the repeat, but actually there’s another replay going on right now (on M2), I’ll wait until the end now to see.
As for highlights, Austrian television had their two commentators talking about the accident first and then a cut version of the race after sutils accident (just the normal race footage). they talked about the driver safety, since alex wurz is the chairman of the gpda since two days (and he’s a commentator). the rest of the race they didn’t even show, just that last bit, but i’m not sure wether it was supposed to be highlights of the race or an unscheduled information for the f1 viewers. it lasted 15 minutes i think.
Business as usual on Finnish television. The pay-per-view channel MTV Max of course carried the race and it’s replay as usual, and the free-to-air highlights were shown on Sub as scheduled in the evening.
And MTV (not Music Television) showed some poor taste by showing Ratzenberger’s and Senna’s crashes on their evening sport news as part of a brief segment about F1 crashes/safety.
Finnish MTV3 showed repeats as usual, no special introductions or anything, but still handled the whole situation pretty well in their news. No rumours, no tabloid press, but sticking to the facts like we DON’T know if Jules is breathing on his own.
On the air Toni Vilander criticized the race control for not putting out a safety car right after Adrian Sutil went off. And this happened before anyone had any knowledge of Jules crash. Later Mika Salo was interviewed giving stewards view of the accident, which was different to Tonis.
But that was just MTV3. As usual tabloid went grazy stating every rumour as a fact.
As far as I know Sky Germany showed the replay. Don’t know if they shortened the broadcast though. RTL (free to air) did not schedule a rerun in the first place.
The sky commentators here first thought it could have been a Marshall or somebody around the crane that got hit. I found their handling of the incident to be calm and objective at the time.
I agree that not showing a rerun is not helping anybody. They didn’t show anything that might have been disrespectful to Jules and you can’t just pretend it didn’t happen. Hope he gets well…
Australian TV showed a replay around midnight here and Jules crash made news reports throughout the night. They handled it well apparently. I watched Sky F1 this GP and they handled it very well too. Possibly Sky didn’t show a replay because they knew the BBC would?
To follow up my previous comment, there was nothing added at the end of the original broadcast (which they showed unaltered), I’d be surprised if there was something at the beginning either. But at the end of the original broadcast they already said they will put updates on their Facebook account, online page, official app etc.
I’m here in the states without access to cable or satellite to watch races or replays. I usually watch online and try to look for Sky because Brundle is my current favorite commentator for F1 and the Sky reporting is usually pretty decent.
During the actual race I thought Sky handled it fairly well and tried to be as respectful as possible while still doing their job. They suspected something was up at that corner pretty quickly after it happened and instantly shifted their reporting toward respectfully getting whatever information they could. Brundle was obviously affected by this incident and had even earlier spoke about his frighteningly similar accident that occurred in 1994. I appreciated the fact that they all maintained a level of professionalism while reporting on a tragic situation as it unfolded.
I realize that this may not be exactly what you were asking, but I felt it needed to be said.
Locally I have yet to hear any reports about Bianchi, the Japanese Grand Prix or anything F1 at all. Thanks good ness for the internet where I have been able to follow whatever reports are available. And thanks for your site, @keithcollantine for providing updates and for the commenters adding their news, thoughts and prayers.
In France Formula 1 is broadcasted by pay TV channel Canal+. The race commentators are Julien Fébreau and Jacques Villeneuve.
Just before the accident they were saying that the conditions were worsening but looked clearly OK to drive, based on the lap times.
When images of the Sutil accident were shown and the mobile crane arrived at the site, Villeneuve said it would be reasonable for the safety car to come out now. He immediately noted that someone going off at the same place wouldn’t be unlikely, and then they could very easily crash into the suspended Sauber or the crane, with a very dangerous hit to the helmet.
In the subsequent few laps as no images of Bianchi were shown, they were severely confused as to what exactly was happening. It took them an extremely long time to understand that the frenchman’s car had stopped at the same place as Sutil’s—and that he had not intentionally stopped the car as they first seemed to believe. They long wondered if Sutil or a marshall was injured.
They expressed concern all along. It then became clear that Sutil was OK and that Bianchi must then be seriously hurt (they had Vergne confirm his accident at the end of the race).
The commentary was then extremely subdued, everyone sounding quite shocked and very concerned. They barely talked about the race result and championship race.
Immediately after the end of the race Canal+ showed FIA press officer Matteo Bonciani telling them in French that Bianchi was unconscious.
Consultant Franck Montagny (friend of Bianchi’s) questioned the FIA’s craning procedure.Unlike SkySportsF1, Canal+ is not a dedicated F1 channel, so they had to as usual end the broadcast 20 minutes after the end of the race, in a dramatic and eerie atmosphere.
As far as I know they still plan to broadcast the replays of the race tonight and tomorrow night.
On Sunday evening they had Thomas Sénécal and Alain Prost (who also knows Bianchi well) as guests on their regular hour-long post-race talk show. Prost sounded very saddened, but was his usual analytical self.
He believed the FIA was wrong for not bringing out the safety car immediately after the Sutil accident, and putting a crane in precisely the spot where anyone going off at Dunlop would hit the barrier.
He also suggested that the ongoing confusion and stress during the Saturday to Sunday, especially for race control, with everyone wondering if the race was to be held or not and at what time, meant that maybe at the end of that long day the race directors were not as sharp as they usually should be in their decisions.Prost pointed out that nowadays most severe accidents have factors external to the race itself (Felipe Massa, María de Villota), it’s not just a driver crashing into a barrier. He also said that this was the first such race accident in a long time, especially for the current generation of drivers.
With that said Prost and every other journalist on French TV were really in the mindset of trying to find the proceedings and causes of the accident, and trying prevent this of ever happening again.
It didn’t feel like they were trying to reprimand anyone for the sake of it.They notably questioned the very unpredictable standards of safety car interventions in the past few years (stranded Sauber left in the middle of the track in Germany, SUV on the track in Korea).
They also showed a short film summarising Bianchi’s career so far.
Both Prost and Montagny talked about their relationship with Bianchi, and the speed & promise he’s shown.Overall the atmosphere on French television was one of concern and sadness for a fellow countryman who is considered one of the most promising drivers of France.
I noticed that while showing clips of the events of the day, they awkwardly used parts of the Senna soundtrack as background music. Not sure how to feel about that…
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.