There’s an old saying intelevision: “TV is 49 per cent sound.”

While vision is the key ingredient, sounds play a far greater role than you might first imagine.

The most obvious audio enhancement to the Network Ten’s V8 Supercar telecasts is the commentary. The main job of booth commentators Neil Crompton, Bill Woods and Mark Oastler is similar to that of a translator overcoming a language barrier. They interpret pictures of a highly technical sport and translate them for non-expert viewers (who make up the majority of the audience). All the while, ensuring they add to the coverage for more knowledgeable fans. It’s a fine line to tread.    

Meanwhile, the pit commentators – Greg Rust and Daryl Beattie – are the moles on the ground, filling in the gaps from V8 Supercar’s epicentre. Without their regular injection of information, the booth commentators would struggle to piece together the story of the race.

But commentary is only small fraction of the 49 per cent equation. Next time you view a V8 telecast, conduct a simple experiment. Turn off the sound for a minute or so, and sit back and analyse the difference. You’ll feel totally detached from the racing. Rather than being drawn into the action, it all feels very foreign, and lacking in atmosphere.

The thing you’ll miss the most are the sounds picked up by Ten’s squadron of effects microphones. The network has them everywhere, mostly linked to cameras, picking up all manner of audio – from squealing brakes to roaring crowds. And let’s face it, there’s no better sound in the world than the throaty roar of a V8 engine. It’s music, sweet music.

But it’s not just the bellow of 5-litre V8 Ten is keen to transmit. A major focus in 2004 is catching driver/pit radio chatter. While chat such as “breathe, Mark, breathe” and “great job Marcos” has been a feature of its V8 telecasts for sometime, a constant deluge of requests from viewers has cemented its place.

Ten is happy to accommodate these requests for two main reasons. First, capturing driver or engineer communication is informative. And second, it makes the viewer feel closer to the action.  

Ten has two radio scanners in constant use – what it calls Spy 1 and Spy 2 – monitoring chat. As the telecast director focuses on a car, say, entering pitlane, Ten’s sound engineers begin eavesdropping on radio chat between driver and crew.

With races often featuring compulsory pitstops for fuel and tyres, Ten often catches some chatter which outlines what’s about to happen. For instance, when HRT’s Rob Starr says “pit next lap for fuel, Mark”, Ten’s audience learns of the red team’s plans at the same time Mark Skaife does. It’s little things like this that creates a more intimate experience for viewers. 

“We basically just scan the radios on the cars the telecast director has chosen to show, to help him tell the story of the race,” telecast audio supervisor, Ken Fryer said.

Ten has two radio scanners in constant use – what it calls Spy 1 and Spy 2 – monitoring chat.

“It’s not crucial to add the car/pit chat – it’s very much an additive – but it helps makes more sense of the pictures. And the ‘go, go, go’ brings the race into the viewers’ loungerooms.

“There’s only so much radio chat that we can use, as most of it bears no relation to the story we are trying to tell. But, apart from Spy 1 and Spy 2, we have another radio (scanner) that records everything onto CD at the big rounds.”

This CD is then reviewed post race or post practice/qualifying and any crucial or entertaining radio talk is added to highlights packages. A good example was at the recent Clipsal 500 meeting, when Garth Tander crashed in the morning warm-up at the infamous Turn 8.

“We didn’t hear it when it happened live, but we found we’d captured Murph’s reaction when he passed the accident scene. He said, ‘God, Garth has just had a massive accident, there’s crap everywhere’. We found that sound bite and sent it to the edit suite and they added it to program’s closer which showed the weekend’s highlights.

“Maybe people take those things for granted, but we thought it was actually a pretty flash thing to do.   

“When something happens on the track, quite often the radio will tell you why it happened.

“Most of the chat occurs during pitstops, so we are extra vigilant then. It’s great when two cars pit together, and it effectively becomes a battle of the pitcrews. In this case the chatter really enhances the pictures. 

“It’s the same when the yellow flag comes out. That’s the time when we scan all the cars.”

Spy 1 and Spy 2 each monitor 16 cars, which covers the entire field at most V8 events. However, rarely are more than half the drivers heard.

“At the end of the race, we’re always keeping an ear out for ‘thanks boys’ or ‘great job’ comments,” Fryer continued.

So are there some cars that Ken likes to see on screen? In other words, are some drivers more talkative and entertaining than others?

“Greg Murphy is an obvious one, he’s reasonably articulate (in the car) and emotional at times,” Ken relayed (see breakout). “And Mark Skaife and Craig Lowndes are also very good on the radio as well.

“But someone like John Bowe doesn’t say very much. Nor does Jason Bright, who tends to be monosyllabic when he’s in the car.” 

In all cases, the trick is to let the meaty comments go to air, but without the, er, colourful language, entering people’s loungerooms. When Ten receives negative feedback from viewers, it’s often because bad language has slipped through. But such are the pitfalls of live (or same day) television. Another common complaint is that the commentators often speak over the top of the pit/car chat. But, in their defence, unless they develop the ability to read minds, there’s no real solution to what’s a relatively minor downside of hooking into the radios. 

Ten is keen to improve communication between commentators and drivers during safety car periods and pitstops. That's a big part Ken Fryer's (in blue top) and his crew's job on raceday.

An indication of how keen viewers are on hearing radio chat, was BigPond’s dropping of Ten’s commentary for its broadband race coverage (which exclusively uses onboard vision), in favour of the raw in-car sound. In any case, both are supplied to the Internet service provider by Ten. All up the network’s sound mixer operates an incredible 196 channels, with a minimum of 120 used at standard rounds. This includes the spy scanner (2), effects (60), tape machines and music (20), commentators (4) and a myriad of other ‘aural pleasure’.

These days, music is added to the telecast – mostly before and after breaks – directly from an Internet site. It means Ken no longer has to scour his CD collection for appropriate tunes.

Ten is also keen to improve communication between commentators and drivers during safety car periods. The network has dabbled with idea for a while now, although the teams are, understandably, somewhat reluctant.  It’s a similar story with technology enabling two competing drivers to chat with each other during a caution period. Wouldn’t viewers just love Ten to suddenly connect old mates Mark Skaife and Russell Ingall up for a mid-race chin-wag...

Good Talent One way or another, viewers regularly hear Greg Murphy’s voice from within his Kmart Commodore during Network Ten’s telecasts. First, Murph is usually in the thick of the action at the front of the field. The #51 Holden carries a veritable studio of on-board cameras, which means the director often ‘throws’ to vision of (or from within) Murph’s machine. And, the Kiwi driver is usually pretty chatty and, at times, animated when communicating with his team. ‘Animated’ is a nice way of saying Murphy goes off his nut sometimes when things don’t pan out as planned. Remember the incident at Winton last year when Murph was penalised for hitting the rear of Craig Lowndes’ Falcon? How could any of us forget! Ten aired just a small portion of Murphy’s reaction when he heard he’d copped a drive-through. The rest was, let’s say, unusable in a family timeslot. V8X remembers one of the journalists in the media centre tuning into the radio chat at that time. The journo’s scanner quickly zeroed in on Murph, and needed new batteries by the time he’d finished his  two-minute spray! In fact, there’s a lot of chat that Network Ten captures that can’t be aired. Many drivers tend to be less-than-complimentary about their peers when out on the track. For this reason alone, teams aren’t exactly ‘over the moon’ about having their radios scanned. And they are also conscious of revealing their secrets. A good example of a team ensuring it played its cards close to its chest was broadcast out of Eastern Creek in April by BigPond. On this occasion, Murph found himself in the ‘early’ bottom 50 per cent qualifying session and was discussing tactics with his engineer Erik Pender. When Pender asked him about the track conditions, Murph was obviously mindful that his faster rivals may benefit from his ‘pioneering’ and didn’t answer. “Hey, I don’t want everyone else to know,” Greg Murphy reminded his engineer. It was a rare occasion when Murph was unusually quiet. Otherwise, he’s what TV talkshow hosts would describe as “good talent”.