If ever we needed proof that ITV is shortchanging viewers by showing randomly-placed adverts during its live coverage of Formula One, it came in today's final race in the world championship.
Lewis Hamilton, the world championship leader, was in sixth place in the Brazilian Grand Prix and fighting hard when his car suddenly ran into problems and he dropped 12 places to 18th in just one lap.
Dramatic. Shocking. Sensational. But we didn't see a single frame of it.
Why not? Because ITV thought we'd rather watch commercial messages from X Box, BMW, Sure, Norwich Union Direct and Vodafone.
Interesting as those companies' offerings might be, we viewers tuned in to watch the live race - and, thanks to their selfishness in buying airtime during the race instead of in the sections of the same programme before and after the race, we missed Hamilton's dramatic change of fortunes.
This is unforgiveable, for several reasons.
First, ITV have no idea what's going to happen next in a race in which anything can happen, and often does.
Secondly, Ofcom is shirking its duty to the viewing public by allowing ITV to get away with showing commercials during the live race coverage.
Ofcom says its own rules allow ITV to show commercials when the focus of the coverage shifts from one part of the event to another.
The specific wording is: In live coverage of long continuous events breaks may be taken at points where the focus of coverage shifts from one point to another of the event for example after a resume of the current placings in a race and before refocusing on a particular section of the race.
As any Formula One fan knows, there are no natural breaks in a Grand Prix race. The focus of the coverage should be total, from start to finish, not shift from one part of a race to another, as there are no "parts".
So there is no point at which the showing of ads could be justified. We know this. Ofcom knows this. And ITV knows this.
Nevertheless, ITV simply gives a rundown of the current positions and goes to an ad break, no doubt crossing its fingers that nothing interesting will happen while it's showing us ads instead of the race action.
This time, those crossed fingers didn't work. Whatever the problem was with Hamilton's car, it happened while we were being entertained by Norwich Union Direct and the rest, so we didn't see it.
Returning to the live race coverage to discover the potential world champion had unaccountably dropped to 18th place and was no longer a serious contender for the title was something that will leave a nasty taste in ITV viewers' mouths for years to come.
In fact, it's hard to be sure whether ITV are actually showing us an hour and a half of TV commercials interrupted by snatches of the Grand Prix, or the other way around.
One of the commentators even criticised the director for looking at exactly the wrong thing at exactly the wrong moment.
But that's what ITV does when it goes to an ad break while the race is in progress.
In the end, Kimi Raikkonen took the world championship just one point ahead of Lewis Hamilton - a well-deserved victory in this particular race - but those of us who have followed Lewis Hamilton's every move this season cannot help but feel cheated that we were deliberately prevented from watching the moment when the chance of seuring a world championship in his debut season finally eluded him.
ITV needs to re-think its policy, and Ofcom needs to do the decent thing and prevent the broadcaster from spoiling future seasons for us.
As regular readers know, this is the only site on the web that gives a full listing of all the advertisers who thought we'd be more interested in hearing about their services and products than in the Formula One Grand Prix itself.
Every race, this site lists the offending advertisers, the amount of the live race they've deprived us of, plus the total race time we've been robbed of so far this season.
This season, ITV robbed us of more than two entire races worth of live coverage.
Here is a list of this race's advertisers who thought we'd prefer to watch advertisements for their products and services rather than enjoying the race we'd tuned in to watch.
THE F1 ADVERTISERS ROLL OF SHAME
X Box 360
BMW 1 Series Coupe
Sure
Norwich Union Direct
Vodafone / Lewis Hamilton
Pepsi Max Your Life
Russian Standard Vodka
Snickers
Renault Laguna
Russian Standard Vodka (second offence)
Eon
Sony Ericsson
Tom Tom Go
Saab 9-3
Lynx Dry
Bulmers original
Honda
Rennie Dual Action
Audi R8
Eon (second offence)
Timberland
Fosters Super Chilled
Allure Homme Sport from Chanel
24-7 Football
Coors Light
Honda (second offence)
Direct Line
Here is the cumulative total of the losses suffered by viewers as a direct result of ITV's insensitivity in showing ads during the live race itself.
RACE TIME MISSED
Australia 06 mins 56 secs
Malaysia 14 mins 31 secs
Bahrain 14 mins 22 secs
Spain 14 mins 24 secs
Monaco 14 mins 15 secs
Canada 17 mins 15 secs
USA 14 mins 20 secs
France 14 mins 29 secs
Britain 14 mins 29 secs
European 14 mins 20 secs
Hungary 14 mins 20 secs
Turkey 14 mins 23 secs
Italy 14 mins 28 secs
Belgium 14 mins 27 secs
Japan 11 mins 20 secs
China 14 mins 21 secs
Brazil 14 mins 24 secs
TOTAL TIME LOST THIS SEASON: 4 hours 06 mins 04 secs
But who cares?
If you really do care about this loss of enjoyment, please sign the online petition at http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/spoilsports/
Jon McKnight
Author of Sort The Bastards!
