TOU93

Downhill24 on Facebook posted a few days ago that a round was going to be held at Maydena. The only other info I could find was a locked page on Maydena site, this screenshot was from Monday and now that page has been taken down. https://www.pinkbike.com/photo/25779179/

Too close to the first WC. Why injure yourself in race on the other side of the world before the WC season has even started.

Bloody Hell, I thought I knew that name. He was exec producer/head of television of the Australian V8 Supercar race series when I worked on it mid 2010's, he was a flog then and didn't understand TV or the market and looks like he still doesn't understand TV or the market he is working with. As the saying goes 'Shit floats to the top'

@PauRexs: It's more than just cameras and cam ops but more always helps. More cameras means more edit storage space, ingest time and more loggers/editors to go through the footage to get the bits they want/need. Now with UHD and more high frame rate cameras the files are huge, ingest time even with the fastest NAS's are still limited to the NAS write speeds. WRC has an incredible setup and between 30-40 loggers, ingest editors and stage editors and show editors. WRC has dedicated IT network engineers that go everywhere with the kit to make sure it's all running as smooth as possible, EWS the editors are their own IT support. EWS is probably 2-5 people trying to dump all the media to a small NAS and then editing off that. The EWS crew are doing the best they can with the resources, time and money they are given. We will just have to wait and see what Discovery do and how much money and resources they throw at it next year. Also it just gives you more reason to go to a race in person!

As someone who works in TV and has worked WRC and mountain bike events, you can't compare WRC to EWS. WRC has multi million dollar TV broadcast contracts, multiple helis in the air at one, every car having multiple cameras always recording and strategically placed other cameras on the stages. There is also not that many cars to cover, EWS has hundreds of riders in the top categories. The way the WRC works is incredibly efficient and amazing to get to see. EWS broadcast rights is prolly worth like $12.50 even with Discovery trying to screw everything up. It's just a few dedicated people doing it for the love of the sport. They don't have helis/cars/motos to drop them from stage to stage, WRC is also on roads, so it's sorta easy to go from stage to stage, on EWS most the trails are in the middle of no where and they aren't allowed to use the track to get to the bottom till the last rider is down and when that is done the U21 are a stage or two ahead. EWS is just a really, really hard thing to cover without a lot of cam ops and helis. To put it into perspective for just for the TV coverage equipment and crew for a ODI cricket you are looking at around $AUD200,000-300,000. The TV truck doing the coverage is in the range of $AUD10-20mil to build with all it's equipment.

Of all the races of the year, why isn’t this the one they broadcast the juniors live!!! Would love to watch the juniors absolutely kill it.

@bykeco: They could hire the same production company but I doubt they will as Discovery Sports will have their preferred people/production company. They might poach a producer or director but everyone in this industry thinks they are better than everyone else and can do a better job without understanding what the viewers actually want. I haven't worked in Europe but worked on World Cup/Champs in Aus and other Red Bull(MTB and other) in Aus and the US. The broadcast facilities provider that does the WC coverage is the biggest in the world and they have trucks and gear absolutely everywhere. In an ideal world you would use the same truck/flyaway everywhere but with the big breaks between races makes it hard compared to every weekend sport. 90% of the crew will be freelance. The only full time people on site will be some people from Red Bull, a few people from the production company and tech crew for the facilities provider. The director, producers, replay lead and maybe the broadcast engineer/techs will be the only ones to do every round. If the budget is there to travel the same crew to every event they will. Operators will do any work, sport, studio, news. The director is in control of what the camera operators do, they tell them what shots and look they are looking for. The cam ops do get a bit of creative control but not much. Once again budget sets what level of operator you get as all the good ones will be booked on season long contracts with the other major sports and studio shows for top dollar.

All this depends on how much money they throw at it and which production company Warner/Discovery/ESO choose. Red Bull didn't produce the DH in house, they used a production company to produce the broadcasts for them. Warner/Discovery/ESO will give the production company the brief for the look and feel of the coverage the production company will make it work up inside the budget. The production company does have some say in the look and feel but is always limited by budget. But more money doesn't make a better coverage when you have idiots at the top forcing you to make bad TV from the start. Source: Work in live television and have worked on MTB coverage.

I tried adding my two bikes to my car and rental apartment insurance policy. The two bikes were more expensive than the car and apartment combined. They said Los Angeles, even if bikes are stored inside, has huge bike theft so the premiums are ridiculous.