The WRC announces new TV deals

There was some sort of event about the WRC today in Paris, the drivers posed for a picture and Jean Todt made a speech where he admitted there is something wrong with the sport today – which is a good start for getting it improved. In the short term, there’s some news about the TV coverage, coming from their website:

These include five-year deals with MTV3 in Finland and Network 10 and One HD in Australia. Multi-year agreements have also been reached in countries including Italy (RAI), Scandinavia (Viasat), Portugal (Sport TV), France (Orange and Motors TV), the USA (Discovery), China (national and regional broadcasters) and the Middle East (Abu Dhabi TV).

A selection of further new deals for 2010 have been secured in France (TF1 and France Television), Greece (SKAI), South America (Fox Sports), New Zealand (Sky TV), the UK (Dave and S4C) plus global news syndication via Reuters and SNTV. A number of additional agreements will be announced early this year.

Other initiatives planned for 2010 include LIVE coverage from a number of events (starting in Rally Sweden), as well as more aerial coverage from the stages. In 2011, new on-board camera technology and state-of-the-art High Definition TV coverage will be introduced.

A new WRC video game and a re-vamped wrc.com later in the year will provide fans with more opportunities to interact than ever before.

I will not comment on the international TV deals, but over here in Portugal I am not sure moving to SportTV is a good decision. It is a paychannel and most people do not have it – it already broadcasts Formula 1 and what happened to Formula 1 since moving there is that a big share of the fanbase stopped watching it. Unfortunately Eurosport lost the TV rights, and now I am curious as whether we will have MotorsTV and SportTV simultaneously broadcasting the WRC, or if the MotorsTV coverage will be blocked – as they do with other international channels that broadcast events that the SportTV has the rights of. Please notice only one of the two major cable companies have MotorsTV here, and therefore not as many people have access to it as to Eurosport.

Now, about the live coverage, that’s great news. I hope they have taken notice of what the IRC did with Monte Carlo and will do something similar, as it’s perfect. I am also delighted at the news of HD being planned, 2011 means that it apparently will come at the same time as it will for Formula 1, which is yet another proof of how F1 is behind in this area – getting HD cameras out there in the middle of the woods is much more difficult than getting them in a multi-million euros purpose-built circuit! I am skeptical about the videogame, but there’s little information about it yet.

Now, for a laugh, Ford have announced Jari-Matti Latvala will do the Rally of Sweden with the chassis used in the Rally of Portugal last year – which Latvala utterly destroyed with a massive crash that made him roll at least 12 times down the hill. You have got to be kidding me, I thought the car went straight to the garbage bin. This is the video of the shunt, which I suppose everyone has seen by now:

But here’s the full onboard stage too, whose last few seconds are fucking creepy. Jari-Matti and his co-driver cheated death by a miracle there:

And now they’re re-using that pile of scraps. That’s insane!

The spectacle of danger

Right, let’s kick off things with the blog. How about scaring yourself shitless with some rallying vids?

First, I present you a near-death experience onboard with Ari Vatanen. Dear god, indeed:

And here’s some footage of the absolutely mental era of the 1980s Group B cars and the fans of the time – those folks were just a bit too passionate. Guess where the craziest images come from, the jump of the Arganil stage here in Portugal of course:

Both vids were shamelessly stolen from the mid of FlatOverCrest’s very interesting and very long rant about the current state of rallying, in the Autosport forum. It’s worth a read.