I think the Allen-hate was just a silly bandwagon. Sure, he said some silly things from time to time, but so does everyone. I think he struck a nice balance between not being too much of a boffin for casual viewers, whilst still delivering an interesting and informative commentary for the more dedicated follower.

IMHO James Allen was a terrible commentator. Just the way he said 'GOOOOOO' in that limp public schoolboy way was enough to make me feel ill. He is a very good journalist and writer and I am very happy he has found his niche once again.

Legard seems to be a bit of a BBC twit so far but give him time. They should have gone with Ben Edwards or Croft (but of course you can have Croft on the red button).

BBC has been superb so far, absolutely superb.

I know some people here don't like EJ but frankly I think it's great the way he speaks his mind and is not afraid to disagree with DC.

Now as for DC, this guy is a waste of space. DC is seriously just some kind of limp-wristed weirdo. Nothing he has to say is interesting at all. I've noticed he has this fake smile thing going the whole time they are with the trio. I don't think he's suited to it.

He'd be much better off partnering Brundle in the commentary box instead of Jonathan Luddard.

Nah, DC is amazing. just for his fashion sense - loving the pink shirt and white trousers combo as well as the magic sunglasses protecting his brain. There is also the really high chance of him twatting EJ in the near future. He's laid back, but I think give him a couple of races and he'll be well in his role. He might come out with some damn good one liners (e.g. knock seven shades of shit etc)

As was discussed before he refused to give up BTCC etc so would not commit fully so was not considered.

For those who said most liked Allen, I don't know anyone who did, even part time followers who I know hated his commentary.

Murray is a legend. James was humble coz he knew deep down that he was crap.
Leggard will be a great commentator too, give the man a chance.

So close to another day without seeing a post from DT then you had to quote him ;)

JA will be back in the commentary box with MB for 2010. The Beeb cannot persist with Legard for much longer, although let's give him until the end of 2009 out of sympathy. As someone once said, Legard seems like an overenthusiastic weatherman who has stumbled into the commentary box.

Ok, I didn't like James Allen before, but I've sort of grown to like him in a sense of not wanting too much change Plus he's the expected voice etc.

However, one thing I won't hear is that Allen is humble. I refer people to Nurburgring 2005.

"I TOLD YOU HE SHOULD HAVE PITTED!!!!!"

You should see the rest shite that he's wrote, how do you block it out?

The ignore list is a wonderful thing.

I thought the hate campaign against James Allen was horrible. And now I can see Legard getting the same treatment. Fanboys should never have been let out of the cot sucking their thumbs.

That is the problem - he speaks his mind, and it's just full of alphabet soup.

And everyone knows the internets don't lie. I've got an internet girlfriend: she's in Canada.

Thousands of people responded to petitions to sack James Allen, almost no one responded to a petition to reinstate him. Judging by opinions on F1 bulletin boards the vast majority of F1 fans found Allen highly annoying, that level of distaste is likely to be reflected in the wider audience of regular F1 viewers. Allen probably managed to annoy even casual viewers, but we'll never know either way. All the evidence points to the majority of F1 fans finding him annoying, but stick to your weak sarcasm if you prefer.

My feelings exactly.

Or else it means that only fanboys give a damn: you seem to be proving Ross correct when he notes that BBs don't scale. But feel free to live in secure in the warm embrace of the internet: the more you post your opinion the more it must be right, according to google.

What a constructive argument. :yawn:

Thanks: I try to write to my audience.

As I said it translated out of the internet too, everyone I know hated Allens commentary, and a lot of them are only part time F1 followers. Whereas outside of the internet and the various moaning posts on here all I've heard is praise for the BBC coverage.

So no one can make the sweeping statements either way with authority.

Allen was never as bad as he was painted because he had to deal with the plebs who wouldn't know a pit box from a cricket box. He had a different role to Murray at the Beeb where he didn't need to sell for ratings.

That could be painful

or at least embarassing

Or very roomy.

Speak for yourself.

modesty

This oft-repeated thing of people saying nobody takes any notice whatsoever of the internet is in my eyes nonsense.

I can cite three examples of relatively high-profile figures responding to BB's and in one case to this BB.

1) Following James Allen's departure alongside ITV's departure both he and Martin Brundle have referenced internet BB's, albeit to say that not everybody thinks the way of people posting on those BB's. That they took notice of what was said on BB's is enough evidence that people out there are reading them and they are taking notice of what is said on them.

2) Bradley Lord is an occasional poster and started posting before his Autosport column started very recently, so his posting was never previously related to doing work for Autosport. While I would in no way assume any comments left on here have greatly influenced the editorial of F1 Racing anyone who participated in the F1 Racing thread knows he posted a lot and listened a lot to people's comments.

3) Mark Hughes came in for a fair bit of criticism over some of his articles in Autosport and subsequently responded to the relevant posters via a third party.

Okay so I don't imagine Max and Bernie log on to Atlas every morning over their Crunchy Nut Cornflakes and coffee, but I do imagine a lot of people in motorsport world do read the main BB's (which would be this one and........?) and are paying attention to what people say within them.

We might not change the world through comments we post or petitions we sign, but for the thousands of people who post on BB's and as in the case of these petitions that keep coming up tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of e-signatures on a petition do still belong to actual real-life people who have an opinion and I fail to see why there would be any valid reason to ignore a groundswell of opinion.

The petition against the medals system was a huge success in terms of people who signed it. Ultimately it didn't have to even be sent to the FIA, but if it had gone to them they would have ignored it at their peril. There's never been an F1 petition that has had so much support before. It was proof positive that if we unify we can make people pay attention. Kind of like FOTA.......except with a much bigger membership.

Thats the problem though, they assume the internet is a microcosm of larger society rather than being the 21st century equivalent of angry letters and phone calls from odd customers.

uhuh

Exactly. The silent majority were either happy or had no feelings about James Allen's commentaries. That is what ITV's market research showed up. If it had been clear that the Allen-hate was more widespread than on forums, they would have terminated his contract instead of keep extending it.

with regard to Legard, i enjoy his style. im not sure it completely jells with martin yet but it is only round 2.

I think Legard has a proper BBC voice. You hear it and it feels like your watching something important. Its kind of bland, and matter fact, but i like it and it sounds proper!

The other stuff such as, practice coverage, onboard, interactive forum, have been awesome!

Thats my opinion anyway.

If it was clear that JA was great, then the BBC would have hired him.
As they did with Brundle.
As ITV did with with Murray.

It wasn't clear, because he wasn't that good.

Please point out where I said in any of my posts that it was clear that Allen was great?

You didn't, explicity - but others have implied he was so much better than Legard that he should fall into that category.

Correct. It is also my understand that, while doing their plans for F1 coverage, the BBC were looking on several internet forum threads such as this one and the Digital Spy thread, with several high up people in the BBC Sport department looking. For those that don't believe me, check out this blog from Roger Mosey, which clearly mentions the Digital Spy thread.

As a corporation, getting feedback from viewers for the BBC is an absolutely vital thing to do and one of the ways they "get feedback" is by looking on internet forum board by reading the sensible comments, I suspect comments that are along with the lines of "I want Legard out, blah..." are ignored, the situation with Jonathan Legard is that he is BBC F1 commentator this year for the entire year. Like it or you don't. Comments such as general criticism of a broadcast with ways to improve are accepted, ranting however is not accepted. Saying we want Person A out doesn't change a thing.

Get used to it, people never stopped bleating about James Allen. In the end the complaints were more annoying than his commentary.

OK, well not me.

I think he was good, decent enough, definitely better than Legard. And most of those petitions were signed by the same spammers over and over again anyway.

It seemed that as soon as Allen knew for certain that he wouldn't have a job the next season he seemed to be better for the rest of the season (although he still had the habit of repeating the same point over and over and over......) for some reason. This I think gave some a false memory of him that was only judged on those last few months rather than the years before, the screaming died down and people forgot about it a little.

You on the other hand criticise presenters for not knowing their driveshaft boots. I can see why you think the internet's unrepresentative.

If you don't know the subject, don't commentate on it.

She didn't Holly passed it back to Anthony so that he could give a better explanation than anyone else could. Her job is to interview people and report on goings on in the pitlane not to have an intricate knowledge of the cars that those in the commentary box will have.

But this is going back over old ground.

Apologies if this has already been posted but the BBC are showing a F1 Magazine sytle Program on the their BBC news channel. It will be on at 18:30 on the Friday of a GP weekend with a repeat at 22:30.

It will also be available on the Red Button and Website.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/motorsport...one/7967184.stm

Wholeheartedly disagree. Do you honestly think it would have been better if Holly just dummed the info down and said "problems at the rear of the car", or "a minor issue". I'd WAY sooner have specifics. I don't know all the parts of an F1 car, so if she keeps doing this, there'll be parts I haven't a clue about, and then the commentators can explain, or I can Wikipedia it.

"4th gear destroying itself", or words to that effect is also way more informative than "gearbox problems".

Not knowing what a part of a car is ISN'T dumbing down, it's ignorance at best. Dumbing down is when information is lost or abstracted.

In level of want:

Informed Pitlane Reporter giving 100% specifics where available, explaining what it means, then handing back to commentators.

Uninformed Pitlane Reporter giving 100% specifics where available, then handing it back, allowing commentators to explain what it means.

Uninformed Pitlane Reporter being vague and generic to superficially not sound uninformed. "Yes, they've had to pull the car back in to the garage due to gearbox problems unfortunately." What KIND of problems?! Is the strain of KERS shredding gear teeth? Is it a lubrication issue? Is it overheating?? Is it a selector problem??

A lot of James Allen diatribe on here. Personally I thought he was an excellent commentator and was sorry to see him go.

But that's all the by the by. Move on.




The issue now is Jonathan Legard. And how the hell we can get rid of him for 2010.

He's dire. He can't commentate, he interrupts Martin, he doesn't notice things, he has no concept of F1 racing.

Let's look at Malaysian qualifying. His commentary can be broken down into three parts - say who is on the screen at the time, what their location is, and their position.

So we got "And here comes Button. He's coming around the final corner. He's crossing the line and he's first!"

And that was it. Over and over again he'd say "driver x is coming around coming around the final corner and he's 1st/2nd/3rd" like a bleedin horse race.

During the race we got a similar thing. He can only talk about who's on screen, where they are and their position. When he ventured into another subject e.g. how KERS works he got stuck and stumbled. Martin had to step in and rescue him.

Martin used to speak about 40% of the time but now it's jumped to at least 60% because Legard doesn't say anything about the race as a whole, or give us any background. He has to keep stepping in otherwise we get silence, but then something in Legard's mind sparks up and he can think of a way to fill the quiet. Except the moment's gone and Martin is still talking so he interrupts him.

I forgot one other thing - the weather. That's the only other part of his repertoire. In Australia we were told about the sun over and over, and in Malaysia is was the rain. YES I KNOW THERE COULD BE RAIN ON THE WAY. YOU'VE TOLD US 23 TIMES.

No chemistry with Martin, no panache, no insight, no background, no excitement. Just a boring bloke who commentates on what he sees at that particular moment.

Never mind all this 'give him a chance, let him settle in' rubbish. He's had 5+ hours already. If it took me more than 5 hours to decide if I liked somebody or not, I'd have a very hard job making friends.

I'm sure he's a nice guy who can commentate well if given the right sport (like football, horse racing or athletics), but my heart sank when I read he "always had a soft spot for F1" on his blog intro in the winter. He should be F1 through and through, not have a passing interest.

He's a generic, stiff upper lip, old school BBC commentator, with a staid voice and who is commentating on F1 just because he had a go at it once upon a time on radio. An F1 commentator should live and breathe F1, not give up after the last stint because he 'didn't like all the travelling'.

I really really hope Anthony Davison gets a full time drive in 2010 so they can put Croft and Brundle together on TV, and ship Legard back to radio.

There is a "no commentary" option - try it . If you have live timing running at the same time you don't need someone to tell you what you can see for yourself.

I want to be entertained. Silence isn't entertaining!

Then use the red button and listen to Croft/Davidson - the BBC's masterstroke was to provide 2 (3? I've not checked CBBC) commentary streams. Personally I think Legard is excellent.

Ah because Martin didn't mention rain over and over again.....


And James Allen NEVER went on and on about the same thing did h.......


Use the 5live commentary if you want Crofty FFS

As for wanting him on TV how about doing some research? He's atrocious on TV, as seen with his GP2 coverage.

Is that CBBC as in 'children's' BBC?