A Pox on Channel Seven, Kerry Stokes & Tony Cochrane

It’s patently clear, after being forced by the Seven Network’s obviously more important obligation to aerial ping-pong to watch a badly delayed, abbreviated and bastardised telecast of Race 12 in this years V8 Supercar Championship, that Seven and it’s owner only ever wanted the premier motor sport championship as a money-making venture.

We motorsport fans should consider ourselves lucky, I suppose, that we get to see qualifying, let along the race itself, on a day when a mediocre round of handball happens to be on. Never mind that today the championship changed lead, or that DJR managed a double win weekend. Never mind that the organisers of Winton Motor Raceway only get one chance each year to get exposure for their facility. Let’s all simply be happy that the few dozen fans of Richmond & Hawthorn managed to see their respective lugnuts run around.

A pox on the Seven Network, it’s executives and it’s owner! The Seven Network might have won the 2010 Logie Award for best sporting coverage, but that award was for one day of the year and one event. If there’s an award for the worst sporting event coverage, it has to be Network Seven for the season’s coverage of the V8 Supercar Championship. A pox on the chairman of V8 Supercars Australia Pty Ltd, Tony Cochrane. Delayed events, truncated events, time-shifted events and a sport run specifically to conform to a television network’s other sporting commitments is not deserving of any award for excellence. It’s deserving of a re-think by V8 Supercars Australia Pty Ltd in regard to the perception of the fans of the sport – the people who pay to see the action – about just which television network deserves the hosting rights. Not which television network wants to piss the most into Tony Cochrane’s pockets