October
MarchA matter of time
Interesting letter from Lyle Benjamin (21/2), and whilst I note, Lyle, you are almost an Aussie now, having arrived here from the US more than five years ago, I welcome you to our great country.
Lyle is concerned about the lack of mounting-yard coverage and horses’ preliminaries, particularly on Sky 1, and to a lessor extent on TVN. I believe you will find, Lyle, that the problem relates to available time.
I have no experience of home viewing in America, but when I did go to the various tracks there, I noticed that there seemed to be little interest by punters in any race meeting other than that which we were attending.
As you would realise, Lyle, in Australia there is considerable interest and wagering on tracks all around the country on the same day.
Sky’s mandate from the TAB is to cover every meeting on which the TAB is operating.
This has grown to such an extent we now have Sky 2 taking up the slack on the less popular meetings.
I personally believe Sky does a wonderful job of squeezing in the actual running of all these races given the number of races involved and their close timing proximity, at times barely five minutes between races.
I agree the coverage from Hong Kong and Singapore is excellent. But you must realise that neither jurisdiction holds more than one meeting at the same time.
So extensive coverage of parade ring, preliminaries and after-race presentations are essential if for no other reason than to fill in the time between races.
From my visits to Hong Kong over the years, I must say there is a possible exception when there are races at Macau (just a short ferry ride away) simultaneously with Happy Valley or Sha Tin, but they are of a lower class and do not attract a great deal of interest from Hong Kong punters.
With the recent announcement of the termination of transmission from TVN, I fear Lyle’s woes are destined to become worse before they get better, but I have confidence that a solution will eventually be found to replace the void being left by TVN.
Just so long as the glaring mistakes made by TVN, often complained about but always ignored, are not replicated. But that’s another story.
Brighton (Qld)