Armchair punters suffer blow with demise of Racing Channel
The shock announcement was made by presenter, Richard Pitman, when the station came on air shortly after noon yesterday. Today will be the last afternoon the Channel will cover racing. It also covers American racing extensively in the evenings and that will cease on January 31.
The Racing Channel’s future had become increasingly uncertain since January 1, when it lost the right to transmit Irish racing. They had been left with only nine British meetings and a motley diet of international racing, mainly comprising totally uninteresting South African fare.
The Channel had given Irish racing enormous coverage since May 1 of last year. They had it free of charge, however, and no effort was made over many months to reach agreement with Horse Racing Ireland on a fee for the service. Indeed, the attitude of the Racing Channel had puzzled HRI, but yesterday the chickens finally came home to roost.
David Holdgate, Chief Executive of SIS, which produces the Racing Channel and handles distribution on behalf of TRNI, said he had been informed of TRNI’s decision, following their failure to reach agreement for continued coverage of racing in Ireland.
Pitman, best known as the jockey of Crisp, gallant runner-up behind the legendary Red Rum in the Aintree Grand National of 1973, had the unenviable task of informing viewers.
“It is a very sad day”, said Pitman. “I was here for the wedding and I’m here for the funeral also!”
The demise of the Racing Channel leaves HRI with Attheraces as the only bidder for the right to show Irish racing live.
But Attheraces’ track record in the past is that it has little interest in showing most of the Irish game live and generally cherry-picks. This is perfectly understandable, of course, because it is contracted to show a huge amount of British racing.
Reacting to the news that the Racing Channel was now firmly out of the game, Jerry Desmond, chairman of the media-rights committee of HRI, said: “I’m obviously disappointed. They did a very comprehensive service for us, but I hope people will remember that we gave them the pictures free of charge for seven months.
“I want to reiterate again that all we ever wanted from the Racing Channel was that they guarantee their own figures.”
