Sailing On TV

All,

Does anyone remember when they used to have sailing on the TV.  Gone are the days of showing ultra30 sailing on afternoon grandstand.

I feel annoyed that the only sailing programes that I can find are Watersports World and Seamaster Sailing.  I think that is shocking that sports as rubbish as tiddly winks have more television coverage that sailing.

I am toying with the idea of writting a strongly worded letter to the bbc and sky to as them to have a word with themselves and pull there finger out.

Any Views?????

I caught the tail-end of an afternoon programme about the Round the Island race a couple of weeks ago.
A harassed-looking instructor had to transform two vapid, brainless, female presenters into half-decent crew. I can't remember what they were sailing, and neither did they, I reckon. However, one of them broke a nail! It was almost the end of her career that day !  
After years of preparation (well... the best part of 3 days, felt like years for the instructors) they completed the race and went back to their grossly-overpaid-for-the-quality-of-entertainment-provided jobs.... kids' TV presenters!! I can't fathom how this kind of show can encourage little kids to sail... unless it's to escape this type of TV drivel

I think that the problem is that sailing is not the most exciting of spectator sports, especially offshore racing, its great fun to do (don't get me wrong) but trying to make it into something that will entertain people who have no idea of the sports mechanics is next to impossible.  I would say, however that match racing and team racing are definately good for TV, team racing especially, races are about 5 min long, you could easilly pick the highlights out of a days racing to fill a half hour slot or so on a saturday afternoon. 

The other problem we have is that the vast majority of sailing is amature, and how many other amature sports get on TV?  The Ultra 30's were on because it was a pro circuit.  It would be good to hear from olympic class regattas like Hyeres and SPA, and even the youth worlds. 

I reckon it would be great to have a monthly slot on grandstand where they did a round up of all the major regattas, at least olympic, european, and world championships where UK teams did well, that alone would be enough of a start to get more people interested in the sport. 

There used to be 18 foot skiff sailing on a sky sports and also on a channel called extreme also on sky, it was on every week for about 9 months and then just dissappeared.

With regard to sailing not being the most thrilling thing to watch on tv if you are not a sailor then what about programmes like Matt Hayes fishing adventures, how is watching someone sit on the side of a river and catch nothng for hours and talk about bait and maggots thrilling. 

I think that is is shocking.  

Thats a good shout actually. 

If there is anyone out there on this forum or reads stuff from the forum that works for the bbc or any kind of tv network that let me or anyone know as we need to put more sailing on tv.

I think I may be forced to write a strongly worded letter/e-mail to the bbc telling them that they are missing out on a massive audience.