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Update: Though my interest in Formula One decreased over the last years of RTL transmissions, the year of 2001 was the first year in which I did not regret that I missed races. After about 15 years of a more or less intense passion for motor sports in general and formula one in special, I decided that you can spend your time on better things than on boring commentators, boring races and boring drivers that don't deserve the term "racer". Currently I don't see a car racing series that can draw my attention to it as Formula One did in the late eighties and the early 90ies. Motorbike grand prixs are an option, sometimes. As a resume after all these years, I have to say: I don't regret the time I invested, but it is time to focus on other things, to break the commercialism and give your attention to passionate people that do things out of passion and not only to maximize the profit. Regard this page as closed after these final words. Greetings!! So let's see what we've got:
What do they do??? Well, it's 1997 and I have to rewrite this paragraph: Eurosport could no longer afford to satisfy the financial demands of Mr. Ecclestone and RTL did their best to get rid of a better Formula One coverage alternative. So Ben Edwards is on a different mission: He commentates the American Cart Series (former Indy Car Series). John Watson is, as far as I know, envolved with BBC. Again a big thank you for your great coverage of the Formula One circus within the last years!! This development leaves us with two German TV stations covering the Formula One: RTL with their trio Jochen Maass, Heiko Wasser and Kai Ebel. Except for Mr. Maass, these "journalists" should better go to the comedian corner of RTL's programme than keeping information on our beloved Formula One from flowing to the fans in front of the monitors. Telling the audience that the Imola race track was named after the brothers "Enzo e Dino Ferrari" is only one of many unpardonable mistakes. The question I ask myself is: Why can RTL on the one hand afford to pay multimillions for the exclusive rights for the pictures, but on the other hand they are not able to find some persons capable of commentating?!?!?! Unforgotten is Willi Knupp who started the misery years ago... The other TV station covering Formula One is DF1. Mr. Kirch paid another immense amount of money for the rights to transmit and consequently wants this money back: You have to pay 30 Deutsch Marks for his "sports package" per month! During the season, I would go to my financial limits and pay that amount, but as far as I know, you have to sign a 12-month-contract. The next major point is: You need a decrypting appliance. The price for the so-called "dbox" is about 1.000 DM. Well, this leaves us with our three RTL friends... As Mr. Ecclestone downgraded the Friday action from a qualifying session to a timed session, it is enough for RTL to broadcast the Saturday 1 o'clock session. Of coarse with two commercial intermissions and of coarse these "geben wir kurz zurück nach Köln"s can be as long as they want, as noone can switch over to Eurosport. Same thing with the race except that on Sunday there are of coarse more than two intermissions. Because of these intermissions, RTL has to come up with the highlights of the race afterwards, where you can see what you have missed during these offline times. During the highlights you miss the press conference, which was also a funny thing in the past years especially when Mika Hakkinen or one of the other "men" took part.
I know we live in a capitalist world and every enterprise seeks for maximum profit. They can not care for longtime consequences. I have been watching Formula One races for over a decade now and I would like to watch it for another ten years. But if they go on using Formula One just to find excuses to bomb the viewers with advertisement without any real interests for the sport they are covering, I doubt I will keep up my passion. And I am sure I am not the only one.
Here comes the first link ever included in my website: The link to the homepage of
Some other links:
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