Maybe I'm just greedy. Maybe I just don't know how good I have it. When I don't get to attend a race in person, I look forward to and enjoy watching the races live on Speed Channel. I also find them frustrating to watch.

The source of my frustrations are the commercials breaks during the race itself. Certain sports are designed with TV coverage in mind. All the "major" US sports (American Football, Baseball, Basketball and Ice Hockey) have TV timeouts - specific breaks in play that allow the TV station to show commercials without the viewer missing any of the action. Motorcycle racing doesn't have these "natural" breaks.

When racing is shown on tape delay, the commercials are typically inserted where you don't miss anything important (and sometimes you don't miss anything at all, as the race picks up from the same instant it was stopped for the commercials). For a live race, this obviously isn't possible.

The only solution I can think of would be to show the race commercial free, but if the ad revenue pays for the program to be shown at all, how could that happen? Well, two recent examples of sporting coverage point to a way that might work. Currently, the World Cup is being played in Asia, and is being shown on the ABC/ESPN networks. Soccer is similar to bike racing in that it doesn't have natural breaks during the two halves of the game. It is shown commercial free, and we're reminded of that by the commentators letting us know that this or that portion of the game is brought to us commercial free by one of the sponsors - along with that sponsors logo appearing in a corner of the screen.

Similarly, recent coverage of the Giro D'Italia (Italian bicycle race) had a "this half hour brought to you commercial free by" section every day during its live coverage.

Could the same principles be applied to live motorcycle racing on Speed? I think they could, and I'll use the Supersport coverage from Road America as an example of how.

The program showing the race had an hour time slot - and lasted 3 seconds shy of the full hour. During that hour, the green light to checkered flag time of the race itself was 22 minutes and 52 seconds. Wouldn't it be cool if a sponsor or sponsors stepped up to the plate and gave us 25 minutes of commercial free programming during the race itself - this is less than the precedents set by the 30 minutes of the Giro and 45 minutes of a soccer half.

The Supersport race from Road America illustrates my point very well because it is a Supersport (shorter number of laps) race at a fast track (again, shortens the race from a time perspective), but even a full on superbike race only lasts around 40-45 minutes, very comparable to a half of soccer.

Supersport coverage timeline, with the start of the program at the top

Looking at the Supersport coverage, we viewers only got to see just over three quarters of the race (76%). Of an almost 23 minute race, five and a half minutes were taken up by commercials. Even if we need all the current commercials for the programming to survive, that 5 minutes and 30 seconds could be moved around in the hour to give us the race commercial free whilst still preserving the total amount of commercial minutes, which account for 27% of the program in question, by the way.

Speed Channel itself has already set a precedent for moving commercials around to give the viewers the best coverage they can whilst preserving the ad revenue that enables us to get any coverage in the first place. Speed Channel's F1 car racing coverage of final qualifying being the best example. This hour is typically dead for the first 20 minutes or so as none of the racers want to waste their qualifying effort on a green track, so Speed Channel pumps in the commercials early which regularly results in an extended commercial free end to qualifying so the viewers get to see all the action.

I also believe the commercial free approach works in the advertisers' favor. I, for one, would be a lot more likely to support an advertiser who allowed me to see the race in its entirety, rather than one who interrupted it.

All in all, this could be a win win situation for all of us, the viewers, the advertisers and Speed Channel itself. Let us know what your opinions on the subject are by taking part in our poll - click here.