ITV respond to complaint

As most of you know, ITV have been showing the BTCC qualifying sessions online for the last two seasons now, and since this introduction there have been a few problems experienced by a number of the fans who have not been able to attend the meetings but still want to watch the action live.

Some fans have told me that they have often complained to ITV over the qualifying coverage, but have failed to get a response from them when they have sent a complaint. After the qualifying session from Rockingham this season, when the coverage was cut short by ten minutes, I too felt the need to complain to the broadcasters about how disappointed I was by their poor coverage. I sent an email to ITV not long after the session expressing my disappointment and suggested that they created a live slot on ITV4 for the coverage to be shown live on TV, therefore allowing more viewers to watch the qualifying problem free - much like the F1 fans can do.

On 16th September I received an email from ITV notifying me that my comments about the session had been forwarded to management. At this point, I wasn't expecting anything else to happen and that my complaint would simply be ignored. How wrong I could be. About an hour later, I got another email, this time directly from ITV's BTCC series editor Simon Parry, who asked if he could contact me at home to explain the situation relating to the qualifying.

The day after, true to his promise, I did receive a phone call from Simon Parry. First off, he apologised for what had happened and admitted himself that the coverage that was shown during the Rockingham meeting was very poor. He then went on to explain that the coverage was cut ten minutes short due to a situation involving their online provider, which was beyond ITV's control. I can understand that, as it was just as frustrating for ITV as it was for the fans that the coverage was cut short, as it was them who was getting to stick off the fans, when it was down to their provider who had let down the many fans at home who wanted to watch the qualifying.

Fortunately, he also told me that for next season ITV will be using a new provider for their online coverage who is more reliable, so hopefully they shouldn't experience the same problems they have done over the last 2 seasons. In terms of doing a live session on ITV4 for each round, Simon basically explained that it was down to budget, and that it would cost them another £250,000 each year - money which they would simply not be able to make back due to the BTCC only attracting around 30,000 viewers per round.

On the whole, I feel satisfied that ITV took my complaint seriously, and it was also good to know that they doing all they can to provide the best quality coverage possible for the BTCC viewers