BBC to lose F1 coverage from 2016

[Shakeman]

I don't believe TV is necessarily moving to Pay TV that's far too simplistic for a wide dynamic range of available offerings. FTA via advertising would still be the overwhelming preferred option for the sponsors of F1 i.e. the people who really make F1 possible. They need as many eyes to see their adverts and branding as possible, Pay TV would be a huge impediment to that model as the tiny audience's would no longer justify the level of current title sponsorship deals. F1 would would not survive in its current form.

I do not and never will send a brass razzoo to any of Murdoch's companies so if Sky is the only option to watch F1 then I'd simply become an ex-F1 fan. I'm not averse to Pay per view and if Bernie made an offering via STBs like the AppleTV, Roku and the Web I'd certainly be interested but that would put F1 in competition with Broadcasters who have paid a mint for the rights and doesn't answer the audience size problem.

Music isn't free put Taylor Swift can easily put it into the hands of her fans for free and make a fortune. There are many ways that artists can make money from their work and one extremely lucrative way is to sell the digital rights, the fans get it for free and the artist gets paid by the third party who want to give away with their Newspaper or in the case of Apple/U2 inflict it upon every iDevice owner for a limited period, the Apple/U2 deal was reputedly worth $100 Million. Music is not a good analogy for the complexity of F1 funding.

[RicME85]

So what if the F1 on Sky is sponsored by FairFX, the football is sponsored by Ford, comedy on Channel 4 is sponsored by Fosters, there is sponsors everywhere, its the world we live in.

As for complaints of ad breaks in the coverage...so what they are in free practice and during build up to quali and the race, why do you need that uninterrupted... there is nothing to miss out on.

To the earlier comment about 4 could put adverts in the race coverage on VOD ... that doesn't matter as its VOD the adverts will just be shoehorned in with the race 'paused' and resuming from the same place post ad break.

[ScottB]

I'd suggest that 'free' F1 being reduced to a studio with a 5 minute intro, straight into the race, then a 5 minute outro and done would be pretty awful, and, quite possibly, risky for the future of the sport...

Not to sound like Britain is the centre of the universe or anything, but the sport is pretty dependent on the place, almost all the teams are based here, and a large number of the team's engineers, designers, mechanics and so on are Brits. People who presumably were once kids watching races on TV and got excited by the racing, the technology, the engineering or whatever it was, which set them on the path to what they became. Would dumbing down and restricting the quality of F1 coverage risk choking off that sort of thing? Maybe not, but it did occur to me...

To be honest, if Channel 4 were only able to do such restricted coverage, I'd probably prefer them not to bother, or come to some sort of rebroadcast agreement to just show Sky's coverage if that was possible.


Like a few others have also said, I've no desire to pay Sky £50 odd a month for 10 or 11 races a year. Now TV isn't quite as bad, and will probably be my choice next year, at least for those out of Sky's races that are on in the afternoon / evening, and finding decent 'streams' online is getting annoying!

As a sport though, they need to be careful, there has to be a quality, viable free to air component. Chasing Sky and their ilk's money because it works for football is a potentially fatally flawed concept. Football has the benefit of fanatical, emotionally driven support, new fans are likely to be brought in by their relatives as they grow up and of course, the benefit that basically anyone, anywhere can kick something ball shaped around. F1 on the other hand doesn't have as much of the sort of emotion driven fanbase happy to fork out hundreds, indeed thousands, of pounds a year to follow their team. F1 needs to be 'discoverable' to get new fans. If it went Sky only, how do you motivate potential new fans to fork out a large amount of money before they are even sure that they like it? Add in the likes of Formula E starting to turn up in TV schedules for free and casual racing fans could easily be lost to the sport.

Boxing is particularly notable for a sport that chased Pay TV in a big way and has suffered massively as a result, as the dearth of freely available content saw the fanbase contract noticeably. The same could easily happen to F1.

[i70q7m7ghw]

Official C4 PR:-
http://www.channel4.com/info/press/news ... 6f68a35e34

[ESPImperium]

Those who have not been to a large scale gig in the past 2-3 years and has not seen it sponsored clearly hasn't been to see a large scale artist. I have been to 2 gigs in the past 2 years that have been sponsored, one was a rock/metal night with Black Stone Cherry/Airbourne/Theory of a Deadman and it was sponsored by a energy drinks firm who are in F1. On the backdrop they had the Green M for Monster. As for Taylor Swift, i did see her recent 1989 tour and it was sponsored by a shoe company. My next gig is Monster sponsored.

I do think the sponsorship thing is needed, and in fact I'm a massive supporter for the BBC charter to be changed to allow a certain amount of output sponsored. I think that if the BBC could raise £500m a year in sponsorship it would have saved many of the sports output they had.

I think thats the balance that F1 is trying to get at the moment, a balance between Pay TV with Sky and a commercial broadcaster in Channel 4 with a basis on the newer media outlets for a more subscription based output as well.

[i70q7m7ghw]

Those who have not been to a large scale gig in the past 2-3 years and has not seen it sponsored clearly hasn't been to see a large scale artist. I have been to 2 gigs in the past 2 years that have been sponsored, one was a rock/metal night with Black Stone Cherry/Airbourne/Theory of a Deadman and it was sponsored by a energy drinks firm who are in F1. On the backdrop they had the Green M for Monster. As for Taylor Swift, i did see her recent 1989 tour and it was sponsored by a shoe company. My next gig is Monster sponsored.

I do think the sponsorship thing is needed, and in fact I'm a massive supporter for the BBC charter to be changed to allow a certain amount of output sponsored. I think that if the BBC could raise £500m a year in sponsorship it would have saved many of the sports output they had.

I think thats the balance that F1 is trying to get at the moment, a balance between Pay TV with Sky and a commercial broadcaster in Channel 4 with a basis on the newer media outlets for a more subscription based output as well.

I saw Public Enemy and The Prodigy earlier this month, no such sponsorship there. Are you sure the sponsorship you saw wasn't for the venue instead?

The positive thing here is Channel 4 are actually in the business of making money, and if they can make their F1 coverage work and the viewing figures they need perhaps they can push for a contract to get all of the races live, regardless of what SKY want to do.

[adrianjordan]

Music might not be free to buy, but I can listen to it for free on the radio or YouTube...I suggest that an artist would struggle to gain widespread fame if they were only behind a pay wall with no free to listen access...

[geogate]

sweet that Channel 4 have got it. Be sweeter still if they hired John McCririck to do the Grid walk

[autogyro]

Music might not be free to buy, but I can listen to it for free on the radio or YouTube...I suggest that an artist would struggle to gain widespread fame if they were only behind a pay wall with no free to listen access...

The main problem with music is quality.
The digital format has been used on all mediums to compress the sound so as to increase transfer speed and the quantity on store.
This coupled to the use of samples by so called modern musicians and the abysmal presenters has meant that modern young people have NEVER heard decent music.
My last project in the field was to develop a high quality music format with surround sound making full use of the developing digital capabilities.
It included live performances of surround sound.
Of course the so called music industry (which is nothing but low end marketing now) took no interest and in fact made moves to prevent the work.
It is much the same in TV coverage of sports events, quantity over rides quality and the modern technology is used solely for this purpose and cost saving.
Viewers moan about the F1 sounds of old but on modern TVs the speakers will prevent that anyway.
I have noted the slow demise of F1 for some time and I have seen no attempts to improve anything just a continual increase in marketing hype and cost debate.

[RicME85]

sweet that Channel 4 have got it. Be sweeter still if they hired John McCririck to do the Grid walk

Team staff would end up with black eyes on the more crowded grids

[i70q7m7ghw]

Talking of broadcasting team...

Lee McKenzie seems quite happy at the BBC, so I don't think she's going to move to Channel 4, she wasn't interested in moving to SKY a few years ago either. I suspect Ben Edwards would take the commentary role if it was offered to him, but I imagine James Allen is probably already talking to C4 and probably has been for some time. DC is a bit of an unknown... if C4 want a driver in the comm box, do they have any other option? I doubt Susie will jump ship, I suspect she will go back to doing the Moto GP coverage. EJ? Again not sure, but I don't really see what option C4 have in terms of pundits, SKY has got everyone else... unless of course C4 try to lure some of them away from SKY?

[R_Redding]

Lee McKenzie seems quite happy at the BBC

She was probably happy while the Beeb had coverage , she was still doing all the races as the beeb were selling live coverage of all the races et al to Canadas TS4 ?.. it just wasnt being shown in the uk though.

Do they need her now they have nothing to show.

I doubt Susie will jump ship, I suspect she will go back to doing the Moto GP coverage.

I thougt the beeb lost that to BT Sport a few yrs ago..

DC is a bit of an unknown

He may stay at the beeb.. He's supposed to be doing the new Chris Evans Top Gear.

Rob

[hemichromis]

Talking of broadcasting team...

Lee McKenzie seems quite happy at the BBC, so I don't think she's going to move to Channel 4, she wasn't interested in moving to SKY a few years ago either. I suspect Ben Edwards would take the commentary role if it was offered to him, but I imagine James Allen is probably already talking to C4 and probably has been for some time. DC is a bit of an unknown... if C4 want a driver in the comm box, do they have any other option? I doubt Susie will jump ship, I suspect she will go back to doing the Moto GP coverage. EJ? Again not sure, but I don't really see what option C4 have in terms of pundits, SKY has got everyone else... unless of course C4 try to lure some of them away from SKY?

They were happy when BBC had F1. Why would they stay now?

[i70q7m7ghw]

Lee McKenzie seems quite happy at the BBC

She was probably happy while the Beeb had coverage , she was still doing all the races as the beeb were selling live coverage of all the races et al to Canadas TS4 ?.. it just wasnt being shown in the uk though.

Do they need her now they have nothing to show.

I doubt Susie will jump ship, I suspect she will go back to doing the Moto GP coverage.

I thougt the beeb lost that to BT Sport a few yrs ago..

DC is a bit of an unknown

He may stay at the beeb.. He's supposed to be doing the new Chris Evans Top Gear.

Rob

Lee seems to be doing equestrian events etc. which I think gives her a chance to run a show rather than be someone in the background. She wants to be a presenter, but I think that's a tough job to land in F1, she used to do it for the GP2 coverage. She seems happy doing presenting for the BBC in areas other than F1 so I suspect that's where she will stay. Besides, the BBC aren't completely losing F1, they'll still have the 5live team and they might still do the videos online etc.

Didn't know about BBC losing MotoGP (I don't watch it), either way I'm not convinced Susie is a shoe in for the presenter role, I think C4 will want to pick someone new.

I just read about DC doing Top Gear... that's probably him calling it quits on commentary then?

[ScottB]

I believe the idea with new Top Gear is that it'll be Chris Evans with different guest hosts, which was where the rumour of Jenson doing it came from I suspect. I'm sure DC could easily pop up in a guest host capacity while working for Channel 4's F1 coverage.

I could see 4 making a play for Coulthard, not so sure about the rest of the Beeb team though. EJ does occasionally come out with a good scoop, but you have to weigh that up against the random gibberish he comes out with and the sycophantic way he talks about Bernie at every opportunity. Can't see them wanting Suzy purely because having a new lead host is a quick and easy way of making their coverage distinct from what went before.

Wonder if 4's involvement with Guy Martin could see him feature?