Sure the Beeb have the rights to BSB, and they paid handsomely for those rights, but unlike any other commercial organisation, they don’t seem to make any effort to exploit those rights, nor develop them, nor promote them.
They have the rights, to the exclusion of everyone else, its as if they were acting as spoilers.
As for MotoGP, they do show the premier class, but it is somewhat perfunctory, this week I can understand it, being as its Olympics time, but considering that they have terrestrial broadcast rights, you might think they would normally promote and develop the audience viewing figures, hardly, usually they put MotoGP on late at night, like around midnight, and only show maybe 20 minutes.
I’ve seen MotoGP live coverage halted completely when golf has overrun into a playoff, yet when a bike race has a restart and exceeds the available slot, it is cut off and we don’t get to see the finish! I recall on one such occasion the following show was a repeat, but still the Beeb cut the bikes out.
Compare to cable and Sky, which show every race, the 125’s the 250’s the premier and also all the qualifying and usually the raceday pre-event practice.
I understand that these are focusing on a particular audience but they do it because it makes economic sense, they get more subcribers and better advertising revenues, yet good old Beeb can fritter away the money that viewers must pay in the form of the tv licence (which is nothing more nor less than a compulsory tax).
This is the thing, the Beeb does not have to worry about viewing figures, and it does not need to concern itself about developing the rights for which they have paid, commercial tv channels would never countenance this kind of behaviour, their shareholders would want explanations.
As for the government trying to squeeze biking in the UK, well, look at some of the stuff they come out with, they say biking is becoming more dangerous, since more bikers are being killed, they somehow fail to also add that actually the number of fatalities per 100k miles has fallen, as there are far more miles and more bike riders out there. In fact taking this more realistic figures, fatalities have fallen by nearly a third in the last couple of years.
Why is it that we get police checks, or roadblocks, exclusively for bikes(only) to check for ‘safety’, when all the police actually do is take down names and addresses, and measure the size of number plates and look for the EU approved marks on mufflers - real safety inspection that eh ?
You don’t see this happen with cars, and yet they also can have overly loud exhausts fitted, and dodgy number plates, cars are generally only checked over if the driver has either committed some offence, or been in an accident, bikers get stopped whilst riding within the law.
Car drivers only have to pass one test, and then they can drive anything they like as long as they can afford the insurance, bike riders may have to pass up to three tests to do the same, and although the bike rider can go for the full power licence in one go, provided they are old enough, the unrestricted licence test is notoriously difficult.
We have bus lanes to try encourage the population to use public transport and ease traffic congestion, the government aknowledges that bikes and scooters could be a way to help, but will they let two wheelers use bus lanes, not a chance, you have to push like mad and campaign for years to get loacl authorities to allow this, you’d think that the government would issue some kind of recommendation as guidance to those authorities.
When they introduced congestion charging in London, it was predicted that scooter and bike usage would increase, and car use would reduce, did they increase the number of available parking bays, nope, despite there being an increase in available parking due to the reduction in cars.
Somehow, I get the impression that despite the statements made by politicians, roads and transport policy is largely unaffected by whatever shade of representation happens to be in power at the time, thus railways have been run down over decades, in favour of road transport, that bikes were supposed to be an integral part of transport policy to ease congestion, and yet we have pretty much the opposite when it comes to bikers rights.
There has been a consultation document published just recently, apparently with the support of the two main biker campaign groups BMF and MAG. That report suggests that bikers should have even more training, that tests to obtain a bike licence should reflect this, that bikers should be driven away from sports bikes to more ‘realistic’ motorcycles.
So what they are saying is, the test will be more difficult, you will need to shell out even more cash for the necessary training, that they wish to restrict the bikers choice of motorcycle despite this being a massive stereotyping of a whole group of people, and there is no corresponding action to train drivers of other vehicles to conduct themselves more safely.
note that 70% of all bike accidents with another vehicle are the fault of the driver of the vehicle - 'I didn’t see you ’ being the classic line - only because you didn’t fucking look you fraggle headed gimp!
Is there a drive to ensure that diesel spills are reduced or eliminated? not on any large scale that’s for sure and yet the police have the power to persue this.