Talk To Me: Turn Up The Stars, Turn Down The Booth Jockeys
We are not Formula1 experts here at IDLM, but we do like Drive To Survive, the Netflix TV series that follows the travelling circus that is F1. We won’t try to criticize what happened in the final laps Sunday at Abu Dhabi.
Except to say perennial Mercedes champion Lewis Hamilton may have been hosed by F1 officials, handing the title to Dutchman Max Verstappen (who’s been one of the stars of DTS). After a crash by Nicholas Latifi triggered a restart on the final lap of the race, Verstappen caught and passed the Mercedes of Hamilton, who was struggling on worn tires with less grip.
On the broadcast Mercedes boss Toto Wolff could be heard screaming at F1 official Michael Masi over the radio.” Michael! Michael! You have to go back a lap," Wolff said, saying the results should count from only the lap before the Safety Car came in. Masi replied: "Toto ... Toto ... this is a motor race.”
There will likely be endless protestations and appeals of the decision. Was it fair? We can’t say. What is true, however is that F1’s use of live driver audio during the race gave viewers a unique insight into the tension and exultation of the participants. This candid commentary is one of the selling points of F1.
Verstappen was hearing exulting, "Oh my God, oh my God" on the radio as he won, later saying to his Red Bull team: "It's insane ... can we do this for another 10 or 15 years together."
As we wrote in I'm All Ears: Let Athletes Have Their Say in September this year, “The success of Netflix’s F1 documentary series Drive To Survive is a perfect example of the public’s demand for the inner sanctum of sport. Drive To Survive has plenty of the Nuke LaLoosh blarney from athletes and owners. But it also has enough free-wheeling about the bitchiness between drivers, the headaches of team managers and some of the greatest video from the pits to intrigue even the least serious fans.
“We have long resisted the excitement of F1 and other motor sports— in spite of the live driver/ pits audio provided. It was difficult— especially when covering the racing for a living— to reconcile sport with people you’d interviewed dying on the track. But F1 has managed to make the driving less lethal. Following the death of legend Ayrton Senna in 1994 measures were introduced to slow the cars, including bodywork aerodynamic limitations, a pit-lane speed limit and grooved tires… While there are still spectacular crashes captured in Drive To Survive, this allows the focus to be less on the fatal history of the circuit and more on the current star power of the sport.
“So cameras and microphones capture owners threatening to fire drivers, drivers telling each other to go “suck balls”, rivals acting like scorned school boys after crashes. There is a brutal honesty about the financial travails of owners who are arrested and lose their teams (Force India) or sponsors (Haas) in midseason.
“In one Season 2 clip swaggering Aussie driver Daniel Riccadio laughingly calls the Netflix team “c**ts” and dares them to put the clip in the series. Clearly this has brought F1 a whole new audience of fans cooped up by Covid.
“Not everyone in F1 bought into this candour. The top two teams— Ferrari and Mercedes— were conspicuous by their absence from Year 1. But the overwhelming global success of the series convinced them to join in Year 2— although less eagerly than teams like Renault, Haas, Sauber and Williams.
“In short there is a huge appetite to hear as well as see the action. The NFL has broached it with the documentary series Hard Knocks, but in games players are largely silent. As we wrote in August 2018, they’ve got a ways to go before being like the CFL.
“For all the shade cast on the CFL, you have to give credit to the league and its exclusive broadcaster for having the nerve to defy the industry’s reluctance to go full-audio. In doing so they have stayed ahead of their cousins in the NFL on such technological and viewing innovations. The use of video replay to reverse (or call) penalties is the sort of insight that fans want— even if it makes coaches, GMs and owners blanch.
“Perhaps the best way to get the NFL, NHL, MSL and NBA to follow the CFL’s lead is to introduce a profit motive. As we’ve suggested for many years now, fans would probably be amenable to paying for a special channel with unlimited audio. Pay a special fee on top of your NHL Centre Ice or NFL Red Zone subscription and get full live audio from games.
“The effect might be like what happened when Hollywood converted from silent to talkies. Instead of scandal they’d have a new generation of viewers interested in their product. You can just see the promotion: ‘Fans, you’ve have seen their favourite sports stars for years. Now hear them live for the first time’.
It’s just crazy enough to work. But that’s the CFL. Sometimes it's crazy like a fox.”
The CFL might have gotten carried away with audio by bringing the lead singer of the Arkells into the broadcast booth during the fourth-quarter tension at Sunday’s Grey Cup. But that annoying blip aside they’re generally on the right track. We can only hope the other sports lift the shroud at join F1 in letting its all hang out.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com). The best-selling author was nominated for the BBN Business Book award of 2020 for Personal Account with Tony Comper. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, he’s also a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. His new book with his son Evan Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History is now available on http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx