Producers back wrong horse with new show; IN THE SADDLE

THE news that Channel Four was planning a half-hour lunchtime racing programme to be broadcast every weekday was welcomed at the time but, sadly for all concerned, six weeks down the line from its high profile launch, the whole product has left much to be desired.

For some bizarre reason, the producers of this new lunchtime show decided that people tuning in at 12.30pm cannot possibly be of sound mind and are almost certainly ignorant about everything surrounding the sport. Remember: this programme is broadcast on a terrestrial channel which has covered racing extensively since its inception.

Taking a leaf out of the New Labour government's policy of education, education, education, the show's producers have started from a point of believing that this "new" audience of racing know "hee-haw" and have to be educated from primary one level. It's not quite "this is a horse", but the base camp isn't much higher up the intellectual mountain.

Main presenters such as Mike Cattermole and Alice Plunkett just about manage to carry this off, explaining why some jockeys have a 7lb allowance, why some have to get nasty and give the horse a good skelp and even how if you put your (pounds) 1 on a 3/1 shot, that means you get (pounds) 4 back (titter ye not), but the basic format, the racing fare on offer and the timing of it are all wrong.

Last week, our lunchtime feast included a selling handicap at Catterick and some of the other races have been equally as poor, many so bad they would barely make a betting shop punter look up from the fruit machine. Racecourses are understandably reluctant to schedule their best race at 12.45pm, a fact which seems to have been completely overlooked.

Because of this, the studio team are forced to try to drum up interest in races which are about to become instantly forgettable, regularly making cases for backing certain horses which would not win a walkover, in order to convince the nation they are about to watch the greatest race since Special Cargo's Whitbread Gold Cup (ask your dad if you're not old enough).

Then there's the betting. Oh dear. It pains me to even think about it. "Hot" horses and "not" horses. Get it? Who thought that one up? And, of course, the trifecta. Like Channel Four's shameless plugging of the Tote's Scoop6 on a Saturday, the lunchtime show tries to inject some oomph into the trifecta, nominating four horses you should perm in order to win a dividend. Inexplicably though, they present you with these selections from their brains trust about 10 seconds before the off. How is anyone going to be able to get a bet on? Try phoning on a trifecta with five minutes to go before the start of any race and you'll be glad the bookmakers all have freephone numbers. What's the point of tipping if no one can take the advice?

Also on betting, nothing delights the on-screen team more than a mother-of-three taking time out from her ironing to phone the daily (pounds) 100 free bet line and get picked as the winner.

Even better if she decides to row in with the hunch of the studio guest, which, on one day recently, was a woman from Coronation Street who once starred in the Carry On Films and who claimed that she "would punt on two flies crawling up a wall".

So much for introducing the sport as a kind of acceptable face of gambling and one which would provide five minutes of entertainment for your pound as compared to 30 seconds for the lottery. This person spoke as if she needed therapy for her addiction. All in all, the programme represents a wholly unsatisfactory projection of racing and needs to be completely revamped if it's to survive beyond the current run, due to end after the Cheltenham Festival in March.

And so, after all of the fuss of the past few weeks, the BHB and the newspaper trade have returned to the status quo. The men who run horse-racing have been pushed back into the sea from which they emerged a month ago with all sorts of threats and cash demands for papers to cough up more than your average royal butler could earn in a year of selling unwanted gifts.

After several newspapers started dropping certain minor cards and others began highlighting what they'd been doing for years anyway, dropping sponsors' names from certain race titles to save space, the BHB started to get a bit windy and decided that, actually, there would be no increase in charges and that it had been simply a proposal for discussion. Or rather, had been thrown in the bin.

Finally, in an attempt to save some kind of face, the BHB insisted that the string attached to the freezing of the current charges would be that "sponsors names are incorporated within the racecard", effectively dictating editorial policy to the newspapers. Oops, wrong move again.

Back in the landing craft, licking their wounds, their leaky boats were finally sunk by a wholesale rejection of that particular suggestion on Friday afternoon, leaving the BHB out of bullets, their uniforms in tatters and the white flag of surrender hoisted on a blunt bayonet.

Battered, bruised and completely shafted, racing's rulers were finally forced to concede further that the papers will not have to renegotiate until the nominal date of March 2007, by which time the Chinese could be here and anyone remotely interested in runners and riders will probably have them delivered to their mobiles, freeing up plenty of space to cover the Old Firm's weekly battles in the Premiership.

At the risk of incurring the wrath of Mark Johnston, who defended BHB chief Peter Savill in his Racing Post column on Friday, this whole unseemly mess, which ultimately traces back to Savill remember, could undoubtedly have been prevented if racing's top man had shown a semblance of understanding as to how newspapers operate.

As it is, the BHB have lost a war it should never have started. It has been forced into an embarrassing climbdown and humiliating surrender. Savill has been allowed to keep his sword but the next time he swings it around his head and demands that opponents fall down and prostrate themselves in front of him, the sound of muffled laughter will be difficult to suppress.

Copyright 2002 SMG Sunday Newspapers Ltd.
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