F1 TV coverage threadFormula 1 

The scary part is it will likely only get worse once we move into the European races and they interfere with their 8 hours of pregame shows for whatever sport they happen to be showing that day. Guessing it will be at its worst during the NBA Finals and fall when handegg starts up.
 
I managed to see some of the ESP... uh, Sky Sports simulcasted coverage of the race from beautiful Albert Park in lovely Melbourne, Victoria, Australia last night. My reaction? Try: "what the 🤬 is this 🤬?" To me, ESPN's Formula coverage was more like, "we're throwing on the towel in only the first round of the fight." Almost as if ESPN was facing Mike Tyson in his prime. The broadcast overlay looks great from the Sky Sports side. However, it seemed completely random for ESPN to show commercials without warning. There are usually moments where media timeouts are called in traditional sports. ESPN just seemed haphazardly showing commercials or things like that. Compared to the former Speedvision, the former SPEED Channel, and NBC Sports Network; ESPN is a drastic fail. Hell, ESPN was better with F1 coverage back in the late '80s and early '90s when Bob Varsha and David Hobbs were calling races on ESPN before both eventually joined (then) Speedvision. You can even look up YouTube videos of past ESPN F1 coverage then compared to now. My grade from sampling ESPN's simulcast of F1 from Sky Sports? F. I wanted to say "D-" in fairness, but I can't truly justify ESPN starting out like this. ESPN might as well do tape-delayed F1 coverage.

I am normally a positive thinking person and want the best for everyone and everything. But if ESPN continues like this with Formula 1 coverage, then we'll be watching the world's most prestigious motorsport being covered by amateur-level individuals on a world-class broadcasting network. At this rate, this is going to be a disappointing deal for TV viewers to watch F1. I certainly hope ESPN learns from the lukewarm reactions others have given ESPN for their coverage and work to improve their coverage they are seriously trying to market.
 
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I had a feeling I was going to miss NBC Sports' coverage and boy, was I right. What ESPN is doing barely qualifies as coverage at all and knowing them, it won't get much better.
 
People gave lukewarm reactions to ESPN with Facebook commenters. Guess what? Twitter was just as vocal. Believe me- I was on Twitter a few minutes ago before posting this comment. Type in "ESPN F1" or "ESPNF1" into the Twitter search to see what Tweets people have made. If you think Facebook was harsh on ESPN's F1 coverage, look on Twitter.

Just to put this into perspective, imagine you were watching your first-ever F1 coverage, and you saw how ESPN did things. Would you watch any future races judging how ESPN handled this coverage? Would you think of F1 in a way different of how it is televised? Last night's coverage was utter failure.
 
The coverage would be more watchable without "side-by-side" action every 5 laps and filling in the viewers on what happens during the commercial, I mean "side-by-side" breaks instead of the cluster:censored: we got this morning. (Me and my dad watched some of the ESPN re-run starting at 11 AM EST, then I discovered the race re-airing on Univision Deportes, so we switched over and watched the remainder of the race in Spanish.)
 
The coverage would be more watchable without "side-by-side" action every 5 laps and filling in the viewers on what happens during the commercial, I mean "side-by-side" breaks instead of the cluster:censored: we got this morning. (Me and my dad watched some of the ESPN re-run starting at 11 AM EST, then I discovered the race re-airing on Univision Deportes, so we switched over and watched the remainder of the race in Spanish.)

Correct. We would be in side by side and you would see someone's radio come up and we never get to hear it. NBC would always go back and replay what we missed in commercial breaks.

I can't figure out how Liberty figured this would be a good idea. Just to piggy back on Sky's coverage is never going to work. I've got a feeling that ESPN low balled their bid hoping that they wouldn't get it. When they got it they probably went, "oh crap, now what do we do?" Once the F1 streaming service comes out you're probably going to see ESPN's numbers plummet even further down than they will from Australia to Bahrain.
 
Don’t forget that NBC refused to bid due to the digital rights being witheld. ESPN may have been Liberty’s only option, no matter how basic.
 
Facebook,twitter, forums all saying the same. Espn ruined it for everyone watching their channel. Why bother bidding for F1 when you miss over a third of the race for commercials. People are switching off, finding illegal streams instead because they have no option. So that means they aren’t watching the ads. Bernie was signing agreements a while ago which stipulated no ads during the race. That obviously hasn’t carried over, they need to rectify this immediately or F1 wont be ‘cracking’ the US anytime soon, and that is one of liberty’s main objectives. Paying a fair amount for a sports channel should mean you can watch ALL of the live action. Until then people will switch off or seek alternative methods.
 
As cruel it may be, I'm glad most seem to be in agreement ESPN's handling of the IP thus far is 🤬 and judging by everyone I've talked, won't change anytime soon.

There's the (conspiracy) theory that Liberty is intentionally doing this to drive attention toward F1 TV which doesn't make much sense in the grand scheme of things. I knew I wasn't going to care for this when it was announced and I'm already considering not watching it on ESPN again altogether and finding alternative means.
 
While I agree ESPN's "coverage" (being generous) is poor...it's also only F1. If it was a series I was more concerned about I'd be more than upset. As it stands, I don't feel like I'm missing a ton, lol.
 
There's the (conspiracy) theory that Liberty is intentionally doing this to drive attention toward F1 TV which doesn't make much sense in the grand scheme of things. I knew I wasn't going to care for this when it was announced and I'm already considering not watching it on ESPN again altogether and finding alternative means.

That sounds, like most conspiracy theory's, insane haha... wouldn't Liberty want the only message about F1 to be positive to get more people to sign up to the cheaper and better F1TV service?
 
Okay, it's not TV coverage but the videos on the Formula 1 YouTube channel would be so much better if they didn't have music; most of them are informative text videos to convey the story of what happened in that particular race but with music playing.

Why not just have the raw noises?

 
As Channel 4 will no longer show any live races, apart from the British GP, I am going to leave watching F1 and instead watch Formula E in 2019. I’m not paying Sky’s extortionate fee, and though I am a little sad about this as I have been an avid fan of F1 since 1993, I feel that Formula E also has the very best drivers in the world, many of them ex-F1, and will have BMW, Mercedes, Audi and Porsche all competing together which is unprecedented, and also some good world tracks as well. F1 management people will regret this - I think that there will be many people thinking just as I am.
 
As Channel 4 will no longer show any live races, apart from the British GP, I am going to leave watching F1 and instead watch Formula E in 2019. I’m not paying Sky’s extortionate fee, and though I am a little sad about this as I have been an avid fan of F1 since 1993, I feel that Formula E also has the very best drivers in the world, many of them ex-F1, and will have BMW, Mercedes, Audi and Porsche all competing together which is unprecedented, and also some good world tracks as well. F1 management people will regret this - I think that there will be many people thinking just as I am.
You do have other viewing options, renegotiate your sky contract, ( ipay 22.50 per month) . Get a subscription to official f1 streaming, use a motorised satellite dish and watch it on german tv. Or even go to the pub for races. Formula E is getting better but its no substitute for f1.
 
I know UK F1 fans are gonna know about this already but as a 1st time (contract free) Sky Now user as of last weekends French GP I can say that it is a pretty good service overall and quality wise, easily beats out those dodgy "free" streams that are minefields of malware clickbait that will lead you directly to a borked PC quicker than a very quick thing if you are unlucky or stupid.

Just a bit pricey at £7.99 for the one day methinks, especially as it only plays at 720p with what looks to be about 30 fps and not a nice modern 1080p @60 fps. Rumour has it that it will be buffed to 1080p by end of year though.

As another not wanting to pay Sky many hundreds of squids a year for dozens of channels I have precisely zero interest in to be able to watch just that one channel that I do have an interest in, I am also looking to the practicalities of using a VPN for my 2019 and onwards F1 coverage.
 
Some good news regarding the new UK SKY TV deal is that the highlights of each race and live showing of the British GP look set to be on Channel 4.

If you've forgot, Sky have a new 5 year deal starting in 2019 where they have pretty much all the rights except for the British GP and must make highlights of each race available somewhere. They could've easily set up a channel on Freeview behind the Nesquik or provided a rubbish stream so at least so called free to air viewers get a proper programme of leftovers and the sport is accessible to young viewers on a main channel.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/44753980

UK's Channel 4 is set to continue in F1
Pay TV channel Sky takes on exclusive rights to F1 in the UK next year, and the worry both among those who like to watch F1 and those who take part in it was that this would lead to a potentially catastrophic drop in audiences and exposure.

There is a free-to-air aspect of Sky's contract, which provides for live coverage of the British Grand Prix and highlights of all the other races on a channel that has "90% technical availability".

Until now, the question had been what that would mean, and where F1 would end up. Would it be buried on an obscure channel with limited reach somewhere on the Freeview programme guide, or stay on a mainstream outlet?

BBC Sport has learned this weekend that Channel 4 - which took over the free-to-air rights to F1 in the UK from the BBC in 2016 - is on the verge of concluding a deal to take on this aspect of the contract.

Channel 4's head of F1, Stephen Lyle, is at Silverstone. He would not comment, but sources close to the discussions have confirmed that an agreement for C4 to continue is very close.

This is positive news for both F1 and British fans, because it guarantees that substantial coverage of the sport will still be available to all the population, and the sport will keep a high profile in one of its biggest and most important and influential markets.

C4 has a strong sense of its own brand and mission, and it will be expected to continue to make distinctive, high-quality programmes on its own terms and with its own production and presenting team.

It is not clear when a deal will be confirmed, as there are still a couple of areas that have yet to be resolved between C4 and Sky. But it is expected to be within the next weeks.
 
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CNN International has a Formula One magazine programme called The Circuit; it was on in the background at my mate's house whilst I was waiting for him to get ready. It was the typical, not too specialist programme with some actually intriguing behind the scenes stuff but something really caught my attention:

They have fillers between segments which feature this season's Toro Rosso just zooming past the camera but the hilarious thing is that the audio is dubbed with an old V10 engine rather than the current V6Ts.


You only need to watch the first 10 seconds of this video from last year to see what I mean.

 
I don't know if it applies in the UK thanks to the Sky live contract. Could be wrong though.
In the uk the only thing it gives you is live tack data/timings and then full access to their vault of old Grand Prix.
To watch live races you need a Sky Sports subscription
 
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