Take tonight, Friday night at 7:30pm and the Acropolis is on TV. Well the rally program is. First up we have to watch 5 minutes of the Rally Has been club give there opinions (What ever there worth) and then we have about 10 minutes of rally footage.

Then the adverts.

Back to the rallying, well no, its 5 minutes of chatter and fancy computer graphics then five minutes of rallying followed by more chatter.

Not exactly a rallying program is it?

And tomorrow the rally is on at 11:35pm. What time??? Sheesh, and how long is this on for? Just 25 minutes. So they´ve managed to edit a full days rallying into 25 minutes, well maybe 15 minutes if you take out the chatter and adverts.

No wonder people have stopped watching it.

I love rallying whether its driving, watching it live or watching on TV but recently the TV coverage has become somewhat stale. Plus the UK stages of the rally would be better off named The Rally of South Wales, but more on that in a moment.

Since the TV coverage has been taken over by Channel 4 the amount of time the actual action has been on TV has got shorter and shorter and shorter. And the time the program is on gets later and later with every rally.

If your not going to do anything with the rally any more channel 4 then release the right and give it to somebody who does care about it and can do something worth while.

Also, The rally of Great Britain used to be exactly that. I remember as a kid going to the Lake District or standing in the Welsh forests on several occasions, to watch the Rally and then again as an Adult going to Chatsworth Hall year after year.

That was until the rally became centralized! What! Centralized?

Yep, the rally is now run entirely in the same area of Wales, not Great Britain yet its still called the Rally of Great Britain! Go figure! I´ve got a few alternatives.

“The Rally of Mainly Wales but once or twice in Britain” or
“The Rally of a tiny part of Great Britain” or
“The Rally of South Wales” or
“The Rally that once was in Great Britain”

What happened to the rally being spread out over the country? If I want to go and watch it I have to travel over 300 miles each direction. The rally used to be spread about the country across several counties but not any more. Its down south and tidied neatly into a corner where nobody will notice.

I can always watch it on TV for 25 minutes a day spread out over 3 days, but I´d rather go there and watch it live, you just don´t get the same thrill watching it on TV as seeing a rally car blasting round a hairpin bend right in front, with the wheels spinning franticly for grip and the exhaust shooting flames every time the car changes gear. Plus the noise of the engine and the smell of spent petrol fumes. Nothing comes close.

So come on, Channel 4 get your act together and put on a show we can watch at a decent time and a decent length of program and those who organize the UK rally lets sort the rally out so its spread about a little bit more instead of being stuffed in a small corner of the country. After all the Rally of Great Britain only happens once a year and where ever I have been and what ever the weather has been like these places have been packed!

Update: March 2006

Yeah! Go Eurosport. Its on TV miles more because of Eurosports coverage. Excellent.

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