F1 TV coverage threadFormula 1 

The teams and Bernie must have cashed in big-time on this if they have agreed to sign the deal, but it's a very narrow-sighted approach they are taking and they haven't thought about the long-game. The BBC obviously aren't interested in F1 now that the Brits aren't winning (which was the only reason they were interested in the first place).

I've no doubt that F1 will return to the BBC in 2019 though.. once the rights to show it are dirt cheap because it is a washed-up series, attracting nobodies in the seats, and is a sport that nobody is interested in.

Hopefully the BBC can still afford to keep giving the likes of Gary Linekar and Bruice their free ride through life with their obscene contracts... they're the people I'm really worried for now.
 
Famine
I guess you don't watch much on Five then? Five uses the US model of advertising breaks - almost none between shows, but one after the cold open/open credits, one after ten minutes, one after half an hour, one after fifty minutes, one before the end credits. And they're terrible adverts - almost all for Pikey shops and rental stores like Bright House. Most of the adverts on Sky are, oddly, for Sky.
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I feel the opposite, I really like Five and no I'm not a Pikey. I like the American broadcast style and have never had a problem with their adverts or adverts in general on any channel. They have a decent selection of discovery channel and nat geo content like air crash investigation last night. I can sometimes seem like the 'CSI Channel' but its certainly come miles since in launched, even the news coverage ain't bad (Emma Crosby). Also they are getting Big Brother for 2011 :lol:

I think Sky is totally stupid. You pay an absurd amount (plus the license fee) for hundreds of shopping channels, re-runs and also get adverts on all channels which is beyond crazy (seeing as your paying). I hate the interface and the remote plus once you buy it you apparently get hooked so you have to pay for the rest of your life, I have personally never seen someone leave Sky.
 
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Team Principles were not aware of the deal, they want to know about it in detail.
They are concerned as they want F1 on free to view where possible.
UK sponsor payments will drop.
 
Robin.
I feel the opposite, I really like Five and no I'm not a Pikey. I like the American broadcast style and have never had a problem with their adverts or adverts in general on any channel. They have a decent selection or discovery channel and nat geo content like air crash investigation last night. I can sometimes seem like the 'CSI Channel' but its certainly come miles since in launched, even the news coverage ain't bad (Emma Crosby). Also they are getting Big Brother for 2011 :lol:
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Yes, Big Brother is a massive downside to Five. My wife loves her Aussie soaps and I can't imagine she'll be watching any of them in case she accidentally gets some Big Brother.

Robin.
I think Sky is totally stupid. You pay an absurd amount (plus the license fee) for hundreds of shopping channels, re-runs and also get adverts on all channels which is beyond crazy.
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The only adverts you get on the movie and sport channels are between the content, not in the middle of it...

It also depends on your package (fnarr!). You can load your Sky Subscription up to bursting point (as chavs tend to - because more channels are better, even though they only watch MTV and Eastenders), or you can take a basic subscription and get the Discovery Channel and Nat Geo content on their own actual channels rather than on Five between Aussie soaps and "documentaries" about sharks and Nazis (and Nazi sharks).

The shopping channels and mindless "close" pap are also on all the Freeview channels outside of normal broadcast times. We have a Freeview box in one room and the number of times I've been watching something sane one day and flicked it on the next to find a phone-in guess-the-number game or a JML Infomercial is not countable by any human numbering system.

A basic Sky package costs as much as a TV Licence - but is opt-in.

Robin.
I hate the interface and the remote plus once you buy it you apparently get hooked so you have to pay for the rest of your life, I have personally never seen someone leave Sky.
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I've left Sky twice.

I'm not sure what the interface issue is, as the Sky one isn't significantly different from SkyHD which is identical to Freeview's.
 
If the BBC didn't spend their money on things like "LETS FIND THE NEXT PERSON TO BE A TREE IN ALICE IN WONDERLAND", Total Wipeout and other god awful shows, they'd probably save a bunch.

I also heard of them cutting Wimbledon, it's ridiculous.
 
Cut Antiques roadshow and Strictly come dancing becasue they're both absolutely crap. Same with that morning cooking show and the country one.
 
If they didn't pay convicted drug dealers £2.5m presenting contracts, they'd save a bit of money. And remember, there is no opt-out - I merely turn off the shows presented and have no say in the fact the money we are legally required to pay them to watch anything on any channel is given to people "of questionable morality".
 
akmuq
Cut Antiques roadshow and Strictly come dancing becasue they're both absolutely crap. Same with that morning cooking show and the country one.
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You are then left with the News, Eastenders and Bill Oddie in a hut.
 
DrTrouserPlank
Well It's been accepted. If this was just an idea being floated I would be confident that it wouldn't happen because F1 is a sport that needs viewers, and Sky doesn't get the figures that BBC would. I assume however that the deal has been signed.

I can't believe that the teams have signed up to this idea. It won't kill F1 as an all-sky package would have, but it will neuter it.
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As far as I know they haven't. It was news to them as well.

Moot
Team Principles were not aware of the deal, they want to know about it in detail.
They are concerned as they want F1 on free to view where possible.
UK sponsor payments will drop.
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Like he said. And imagine McLaren, which depends heavily on UK viewers as far as sponsorship dollars are concerned.

Famine
Some website brought up a comparison. They pointed out that if you take out a Sky subscription just for F1, it'll cost you £487 a year as a new customer - £610 if you go for the HD option.

For some reason they decided not to point out that if you buy a TV just to watch F1, it already costs you £145.50 in the UK and that even if you take the Sky option, this charge is put on top as the TV Licence is required to operate equipment to receive television as it is broadcast on any channel, including iPlayer live. Yes, you're paying the BBC so you can watch F1 on a different channel!

So it's not free at all. And unlike Sky, you cannot opt out of it.


Incidentally, I don't have Sky Sports and have no intention of taking a subscription for the F1.
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Well no, it's not "free" at all, but I would bet many, even not on these forums, watch enough to warrant that licensing fee and that the number of people who would have a tv "only" for an F1 race are extremely small. But for those that would, it would be obscenely expensive.
 
So does that mean that cause there is no way my dad will pay for sky tv that I won't be able to watch f1 live!!!!????
 
And I would bet that the number of people who buy a Sky subscription "only" for an F1 race are extremely small too - which makes one wonder why the numbers are relevant in the first place, particularly if the cost of watching on BBC is going to be ignored or pretend that it's free.

The fact remains that if it costs £487 to get a Sky subscription just to watch F1 next year, it actually costs £632.50 and 23% of that cost will go to a company you aren't even necessarily buying a product from.


The BBC is not "free".
 
lbsf1
So does that mean that cause there is no way my dad will pay for sky tv that I won't be able to watch f1 live!!!!????
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You will only be able to watch half the races. You've got to hope they don't get Bahrain, Catalunya, Valencia, Hungoraring etc.

My main concern is to what extent the coverage on the other half of the races are.

I can't envisage that the sky coverage will be able to rival the award winning coverage the BBC provides, furthermore I can't see why people would want to pay 4 times as much (5 times as much for HD) for coverage that isn't likely to be as good as what there is already. It's all moot anyway, because if the BBC aren't prepared to pay for full coverage, F1 fans are over a barrel anyway.
 
Famine
And I would bet that the number of people who buy a Sky subscription "only" for an F1 race are extremely small too - which makes one wonder why the numbers are relevant in the first place, particularly if the cost of watching on BBC is going to be ignored or pretend that it's free.

The fact remains that if it costs £487 to get a Sky subscription just to watch F1 next year, it actually costs £632.50 and 23% of that cost will go to a company you aren't even necessarily buying a product from.


The BBC is not "free".
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Its not "free" however the amount you pay to watch bbc you have to pay for any tv, so that is kinda a default anyway.
 
Stevisiov
You will only be able to watch half the races. You've got to hope they don't get Bahrain, Catalunya, Valencia, Hungoraring etc.
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From the bbc's attitude so far that they are delighted to be showing the f1, I can see them giving sky first pick of the races.
 
Stevisiov
You will only be able to watch half the races. You've got to hope they don't get Bahrain, Catalunya, Valencia, Hungoraring etc.

My main concern is to what extent the coverage on the other half of the races are.

I can't envisage that the sky coverage will be able to rival the award winning coverage the BBC provides, furthermore I can't see why people would want to pay 4 times as much (5 times as much for HD) for coverage that isn't likely to be as good as what there is already. It's all moot anyway, because if the BBC aren't prepared to pay for full coverage, F1 fans are over a barrel anyway.
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I enjoy the valencia gp, it gives me a chance to do important things like mowing the lawn, cleaning the oven and re-runs of mythbusters and how do they do that.
 
Famine
Yes, Big Brother is a massive downside to Five. My wife loves her Aussie soaps and I can't imagine she'll be watching any of them in case she accidentally gets some Big Brother.
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I'm a big fan of Home and Away... seriously.

Famine
It also depends on your package (fnarr!). You can load your Sky Subscription up to bursting point (as chavs tend to - because more channels are better, even though they only watch MTV and Eastenders), or you can take a basic subscription and get the Discovery Channel and Nat Geo content on their own actual channels rather than on Five between Aussie soaps and "documentaries" about sharks and Nazis (and Nazi sharks).
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I have seen people fill the subscription to the brim (£40 ish) for the hell of it just so they can say they have a 1000 channels :lol:

Famine
The shopping channels and mindless "close" pap are also on all the Freeview channels outside of normal broadcast times.
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But at least its free on freeview. You should be paying to get rid off them, not to get more.

Famine
I'm not sure what the interface issue is, as the Sky one isn't significantly different from SkyHD which is identical to Freeview's.
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Well I can't speak for Sky HD but the standard Sky interface looks like it fell out of the 90's which funnily enough it did because it hasn't really changed much at all. Its so damn sluggish and ugly. I have 5 year old freeview boxes which go through menus faster than a current sky box. Some interfaces look much more modern and are better laid out (there's no standardisation from box to box).

The remote has not changed in over a decade and feels clunky and heavy. Whereas other remotes have become sleek and well thought out this one has old tech written on over it (the oval buttons are a dead giveaway of the era).

Of course its all a personal preference.

Robin.
 
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lbsf1
From the bbc's attitude so far that they are delighted to be showing the f1, I can see them giving sky first pick of the races.
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Sky will be showing all races, it's not a case of who gets what.

The BBC will show half the races, with the British GP, Monaco, and the final race of the season being among them... the rest of the races the BBC will show will probably depend on the amount of viewers they are likely to get - hence more European races (which air at a reasonable time) and less 'middle of the night' races.

Of course, that means that there is no guarantee that the BBC will be able to show the race where the Championship is decided...
 
Stevisiov
You will only be able to watch half the races. You've got to hope they don't get Bahrain, Catalunya, Valencia, Hungoraring etc.
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Actually, the provisionl calendar presented to the teams this week has Bahrain at the 18th round of the championship. This means that there is a good chance that the championship will be settled there. If it is, and the BBC don't show it, you can bet that all we'll get it bitching about it for a week.

Furthermore, the Hungaroring is statistically the circuit most likely to produce an unexpected result. More drivers on the grid won their first race in Hungary than at any other circuit. In the past nine years, eight different drivers have won the Hungarian Grand Prix (Lewis Hamilton did it in 2007 an 2009). And 50% of the time, the winning driver has had a poor race there the next year. It might seem bland and uninspiring and it might be difficult to overtake there, but the Hungaroring is an unpolished gem simply because it is so unpredictable.

Stevisiov
Perhaps, but will the teams do anything? Can they do anything? I don't know.
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I don't think the teams have any control over who broadcasts what and when. The only thing that they could possibly do is take a cut in WCC payouts at the end of the year in exchange for the BBC retaining the rights for a lower fee - but that would probably mean syndication fees would decrease, so the teams would lose a lot in the payouts. And since those payouts form a substantial part of their budget from year to year, they'll never agree to it.
 
Robin.
I'm a big fan of Home and Away... seriously.
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When are you getting a penned-in "BLOOD AND SAND" tattoo? :D

Robin.
I have seen people fill the subscription to the brim (£40 ish) for the hell of it just so they can say they have a 1000 channels :lol:
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£40? You can easily run up £130 a month without even having to touch the PPV stuff. And yes, there are people like that - they probably also have a 52" LED 3DTV that they view it on (from Bright House) just to say that they do.

Robin.
But at least its free on freeview. You should be paying to get rid off them, not to get more.
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They're just filler - like Channel 4 on a terrestrial tuner. The trick is to set up Favourite channels so you don't ever have to even see their name.

Robin.
Well I can't speak for Sky HD but the standard Sky interface looks like it fell out of the 90's which funnily enough it did because it hasn't really changed much at all. Its so damn sluggish and ugly. I have 5 year old freeview boxes which go through menus faster than a current sky box. Some interfaces look much more modern and are better laid out (there's no standardisation from box to box).

The remote has not changed in over a decade and feels clunky and heavy. Whereas other remotes have become sleek and well thought out this one has old tech written on over it (the oval buttons are a dead giveaway of the era).

Of course its all a personal preference.
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Indeed - I quite like the Sky+ remote. Compare it to something like a TV/VCR/Video+ remote that came with Trinitron TVs in the early 90s which has a thousand buttons, all with cryptic symbols, and a two-sided remote and it stands up to the test. Those things were horrors. The SkyHD remote is much the same but slightly slimmer. Either way, you know that if you see Alan Carr on your screen, you can shatter it with one throw.

lbsf1
Its not "free" however the amount you pay to watch bbc you have to pay for any tv, so that is kinda a default anyway.
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I just want you to think about what you're saying here.

Let's say you have two products. Each product does the job you want it to do, only one is three times the price. So the cheaper one makes sense. But wait, the company that makes the cheaper one employs slave labour in the far East. Now you have a choice - buy the cheaper one knowing that means giving your money to a company that employs slave labour, or buy the more expensive product.

Now imagine that it doesn't really matter which one you pick - you still have to give your money to the company that makes the cheaper product and employs slave labour. Isn't that just ridiculous? Say every time you bought a Mars bar (for the US: Milky Way, not to be confused with UK Milky Way which is the US 3 Musketeers) for 30p, you had to give 10p to Nestle who have been boycotted since 1977 in the US and Europe for marketing practices surrounding infant formula in underdeveloped countries. Say every time you bought a £60 pair of Adidas training shoes you had to give £15 to Nike who allegedly use sweatshops in southeast Asia. Does this not sound patently idiotic?

And yet that's the situation regarding broadcast TV in the UK. If you pay your dollar to Sky, or Virgin it doesn't matter - you still have to pay the same amount to the BBC regardless. It doesn't matter what business practices the BBC get up to - including paying a convicted drug dealer £2.5m a year - because you have no ability to say "screw you and your dodgy dealings, I'm taking my money elsewhere". You still have to pay them. I'm sure many people have recently decided that they don't want to give Murdoch any money and are cancelling their Sky subscriptions and I say that's a good thing - the Murdochs have been up to some shenanigans lately, people object to those shenanigans and vote with their wallets. What happens if BBC journalists are found to have been up to the same shenanigans? You can't withdraw funding and move to another network, because you still have to give them money!


The fact that you have to pay the BBC £145.50 - and the reason F1 is moving on is because the BBC want it to be more and feel they can't afford it at that rate - is very relevant indeed. I hope it will lead more people, like Seismica earlier in the thread, to question the cartel we call the TV Licence.
 
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Stevisiov
Perhaps, but will the teams do anything? Can they do anything? I don't know.
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No.

I think they've signed it already and they're just making sure that it is legal under the Concord agreement.

Whitmarsh's concerns seem to be more about making sure they are getting enough of a cut from the Sky deal along with making sure the prize structure stays the same, rather than keeping the sport's viewing figures up.

They ought to realise that the rear-wing sponsors aren't going to pay their $300M per year fee when only half of the races will have decent exposure. Their sponsorship revenue will collapse, and I guess they think that's ok as long as the Sky deal props them up to the tune of what they lose. It's a bit short-sighted though, as if Sky pull out at the end of 2018 they won't have the revenue structures in place to keep racing.
 

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