Thankyou for that. I will watch Saturday and see what its like. I don't bet but enjoy watching the racing esp on 4HD it makes atr look very poor.

Channel 4 have been starting before 2 for weeks now. In the winter the racing starts earlier, in the summer it is later in the day. The "better" races on the card are towards the end of that days meeting so they wont start at 1.30 if the big race of the day is at 4.15 will they ?

The big race of the day will be at 3.50 normally to coincide with football half times.

Grand National is usually 4pm to 415 ish so that doesn't tally. The main race is at the time to suit race goers not football fans

They said in December, when they did a press launch for their new coverage, that generally the main race on a Saturday will be at 3:50 to try and attract people to watch during the football half-times.

It won't apply to many major race days such as the Grand National and the Derby though (and also periods when there isn't much daylight at that time)

They also want the programme to be two and half hours long as supposed to two hours.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012...g-new-era-2013

Decent enough first programme considering with the Cheltenham call off...

Nick Luck's bits from Cheltenham made it feel like a 'Morning line' with a few live races. Luck grew on me on the morning line, from his VERY pompous days on RUK. However still not sure of him as a #2. We will see. chances and all that.

I'm liking the new theme tune, but like someone mentioned I want to hear a bit more of the dramatic-ness of it and less of the 'build up' of it.

So not the National or the Derby ( which is during the summer anyway ) and not in mid winter. So how many footballing Saturdays will it affect ?? Not that many. In fact this coming Saturday the feature race is at 3.20

It was okay. I liked the new team more than I thought I would. It'd be a bit unfair to judge too harshly on today's programme when the main feature had been abandoned.

Graphics were a step backwards, though. And maybe a bit too much filler for me as well as opposed to action. I also noticed a few awkward pauses at times, especially near the end of the show. Some of these things will address themselves over time as they get used to the new setup and become more comfortable in their respective roles, I'd imagine.

Tanya seemed a little quiet and uncomfortable at times in the studio, perhaps missing her old colleagues.

It's a good point you make, when you factor in things like International weeks it probably only be around half the year that there will be clashes.

In any event the people they will be trying to attract can only be watching Final Score or Soccer Saturday, I'm not sure what viewing figures they get but it can't be anything that would massively change Channel 4's figures

I will not affect any football matches as no live matches are shown on tv on a Saturday at 3pm and anyone who is at a football match will be unlikely to see the race in the stadium.

I suspect that it may be aimed at those listening to football on the radio who may be attracted to switching from BBC Radio Five Live to Channel Four during half-time.

or more the soccer Saturday viewers.

That's the point I was making, I don't know what the viewing figures are for Soccer Saturday and Final Score, but even if all those viewers switched over at half time it wouldn't make a huge difference to Channel 4's viewing figures

I think they covered The Derby up to about 1990

Can't say the papers exactly gave an enthusiastic reception to the new coverage - the Express calls it ''inauspicious'' today

I actually like the new graphics.

The presentation is a bit "safe" at the moment but that will no doubt change in time. You have to give casual viewers a reason to view, particularly to shows like The Morning Line, and that means some strong personalities with strong views.

Reminds me a bit of when TV franchises passed from one company to another. The reality rarely lived up to the promise and, in the case of Breakfast TV changes, very soon the new show began to more closely resemble its predecessor.

As new faces settle in their own characters will come to the fore and they will gain confidence. The show probably needs to find a new "McCririck" though. The big danger is if you end up with all racing people talking racing to racing enthusiasts - you have to reach out to a wider audience, particularly for the big events, but without dumbing down too much.

The gem in the whole thing though is Clare Balding.

Not sure what all the big fuss is about the old Ch4 racing coverage - recently it had been abysmal with main presenters merely going through the motions and coverage and analysis shoe-horned in to the all too frequent and in-yer-face adverts. Not to mention some of the worse and abject indents ever seen on mainstream TV ... "In Dubai" in monotone repeat play every 10 minutes has it's limits on most humans ... everything from top to bottom was completely stale.

Hopefully the new team and presenters will bring a freshness to the coverage and less of the routine amateur guff that was all to frequent from the old team.

This is what they should be concentrating on:

Tipping winners - that is what most "viewers" really want after all and an infant could have performed better in that aspect than the likes of Francome.

Giving expert and clear analysis and not what is the best-backed horse or paddock pick as the horses are entering the stalls or ready for the "tapes to go up".

More features from the big names plus the up and comers and not what was your biggest memory from 40 years ago type tripe that they were regularly trotting out.

Doing away with the seeming importance of Betfair as it ultimately means very little to the average viewer and just seemed like one long glowing recommendation/commission from CH4 to me ... if you wanted to be up to date with that side of things you would actually be online.

Yes, they used to do this years go (often when during one course days). I think in midweek meetings they still did a fair bit of it

All of which is nothing to do with who has the production contract, those adverts for Dubai and bookmakers were and are what was and is keeping Channel 4 Racing on air. Before Ofcom allowed bookmakers to advertise on TV there was talking of Channel 4 getting rid of racing altogether. So without those things you don't like, which are really not in the control of who is charge of the production there would be no Channel 4 Racing, with probably only the flagship events shown on TV.

I heartily agree with this!!

Racing on Ch4. Sad loss of Grand National, Derby and Royal Ascot to BBC. But with Carl Hicks and Claire Balding, you will all be in very good hands.

They are also what is spoiling it sadly - by all means have advertising but it has to be done a bit more tastefully than what has been happening recently.

CH4 need to balance it out so it doesn't spoil the coverage and is less in your face or they simply won't have any viewers - I very rarely watch it live now and usually record it to fast forward through the adverts and assorted guff they were outputting.

Hopefully the new production team will slot everything in a bit better - let's face it they could hardly fail on that score.

We had comments about the number of BT and Sainsburys adverts and ad breaks during the London 2012 Paralympic Games: C4 has to fund the programming through advertising just as DMGT had to raise advertising revenue from Bookies and Tipsters to fund Text on 4's Racing Pages service.

Text on 4 goes at some point between 00:00:00 and 23:59:59 on Monday 7th January 2013.

You will be in a very small minority there. Most people watch racing to have a bet, in which case non-live viewing is pointless. To that extent, C4 can sell whatever adverts they want in the full knowledge it will make no material impact to viewing figures.

I often record it when I am busy on Saturday afternoons and watch it Sunday morning.

As for C4's new coverage it was all in all a bit mixed.

Despite the loss of the Cheltenham meeting on the positive side the visit to Seven Barrows was very interesting as was the piece on the recovery from an horrendous injury of jockey Isabel Thompsett at Oaksey House. Along with the views of a few jockeys it was obviously part of the objective to increase the focus on those who work in the sport and it worked well.

On the negative side however I wondered why no one from the team actually bothered to venture to Musselburgh but stayed in a studio in Cheltenham so we basically got a talking shop. The touchscreen and the graphics definitely need some tweaking. No one seemed sure how to operate the former and the latter were often far too small to read and didn't even show the trainer! However the most disappointing aspect was the time given ahead of the races to see the runners in the paddock. It was woefully too short but hopefully they can tweak the balance and get it right.