Murdoch muscles BBC out of Formula One driving seat
BSkyB has snatched the full Formula 1 broadcasting rights from the BBC, which had been the exclusive channel showing the live races since 2009. It's a deal sure to upset fans of the Beeb's recent slick coverage of F1, which has won bumper TV ratings. BSkyB will – from the start of the 2012 motor-racing season – broadcast every …
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Human Right not to have to pay to watch F1
This is against my human rights! Taking F1 away from the BBC will impact on my right to a family life!
Maybe Murdoch is punishing the BBC for negative news coverage over the phone hacking scandal. ITV is next. What will Murdoch steal away from them? 60 Minute Makeover? Yeah go on then.
Lose F1 to save BBC World services and BBC4
This is a BBC World service issue not Sky or Murdock. It’s so our licence fee money can go towards paying for BBC programming for other countries that don’t pay a licence. I believe this used to be paid for by the FCO before the cuts. It’s that or lose the quality programming of BBC4, which will not doubt have the same viewing figures of Sky F1.
Yes.
It was paid for by the FCO. Cutting the BBC World Service is frankly unforgivable. If we can afford more for foreign aid (much of it of dubious value), surely we can preserve the most widely trusted broadcaster on the planet?
For once I agree with the Daily Mail
Dear good I never thought it would come to this but I agree with the Daily Mail
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2020090/Blow-BBC-Sky-Sports-snatches-rights-screen-live-Formula-One-races.html?ITO=149
F1 and MotoGP are the only sports I watch on the tele and now F1 is more or less gone. Of course MotoGP will probably got the same way if Dorna think they can screw more dosh from the media.
Double Whammy?
When it moves to Sky will it be accessible by everyone or just those who pay for a sports package?
Sky and some other broadcasters are like a dealer tapping an addict, squeezing them for as much as they can when they to satisfy their addiction. Hopefully punters will resist and just give it up, find some alternative to enjoy.
I've had the withdrawal pains when channels have been dropped, when series have gone to channels I don't pay for and when shows have simply been cancelled mid-series. I can't even get Free-to-Air ITV1 nor Five on Sky Freesat without paying for a viewing card.
It doesn't drive me to spend extra money, I simply don't watch that channel any more while calling them ***ing ***s and making sure everyone knows what I think of them.
sky tv - the land where everything is free
> When it moves to Sky will it be accessible by everyone
of course. rupert murdoch is one of the world's greatest humanitarians motivated only by the need to spread decency and integrity throughout the world and to give away as much of his fortune as he possibly can. his good works outshine anything mother theresa or bob geldof ever did. rupert murdoch is most definitely not an evil, money-grabbing bastard who uses his tax-dodging monopolistic media empire to rip off as many people for as much as he can. no sir.
in case you can't detect scarcasm, ask yourself this question: when was the last time sky ever made anything available to their suckers (i mean customers) without making them pay through the nose for it?
Pay TV
Any TV you have to pay for should be barred from having ad breaks. Funding ought to be by any one of these three: Licence fee, subscription or advertising. The fact that Rupe charges subscription (or PPV) and runs loads of advertising is one of the two reasons I won't get sky.
The other reason is that I have always considered the dirty digger to be one of the dodgiest people on the planet and I will do everything I reasonably can to avoid giving him a single penny.
"Free" stuff
AFAIK Sky News is still free-to-air on Freeview - mind calling it a news channel is pushing it a bit. Sky Sports News was removed a while back I believe, but was free-to-air for a while.
I think it's time to shout at the BBC..
... as some other have pointed out, this is purely an issue that should be levelled at the BBC, Sky just jumped in on a good offer and I don't think Bernie's gives a monkeys where is money is coming from.
Petition your MP for scrutiny into the BBC and how it handles it's money, maybe some FoI's concerning the finances of the the other (poorer quality) channels like 3 and 4 and World Service which justify saving money on a Sport which will effectively remove it from the British public to enjoy.
And seeing as most of that will fail cause the BBC is so far up Governments arse a round of farewell emails to your favourite teams and drivers so they realise hwo much this move has hurt some of their most devoted fans.
No way will I pay for this.
Screw it, I am not even bothering next year with it. If I want coverage I guess I'll just have to read it online, but if this is how the beeb and Sky are going to do it now, screw them.
This also breaks the Concord agreement, Bernie has to get F1 shown on free to air stations (namely as the car companies and advertisers want it that way). This is in breach of that, and is utterly frustrating for us fans. So no, not a chance will I watch something split on two channels, and on pay per view. I maybe a fan, but I will not pay or give a rats behind about it if this is what they try and force on us. Will simply move onto something more interesting.
How the world works for TV
1) Pay your license fee
2) Pay for the box/subscription
3) Pay for the channels you want
4) Pay for the event you want (e.g. pay-per-view)
5) Still get adverts
You do have, of course, options:
a) Don't watch. There's loads of races you can watch and only need to suffer 1). e.g. British Superbikes
b) Complain 1. Write to FIA/F1 and state that you will no longer follow it and why.
c) Complain 2. Write to OfCOM and complain that too much sport is now controlled by Sky (don't expect anything to happen)
d) Propose. Write to the Beeb and ask them to cover some other race you like (e.g. Touring cars, Sidecars, Speedway, Hill climbs; whatever). This could actually be a golden opportunity for some exciting and under-rated sports to get a look-in.
BSB
BSB is on ITV and therefore comes with (5).
MotoGP, however, is on the BBC and doesn't. However MotoGP stopped being interesting when they introduced traction control. So now the bikes may be faster than the 125s but aren't really any harder to ride. In the old days controlling the power of those bikes coming out of a corner was the preserve of the select few and mostly where races were won and lost, these days it's controlled by a computer and the races are won and lost mostly on who has the fastest bike. So it's back to being a Honda benefit again.
On the bright side...
I only maintain my TV license to watch F1, via the internet, it's the only thing I watch live, so when it goes, so does my license.
I wonder how long it will take to convince the Beeb that I've done it.
someone needs a clue transplant
> I wonder how long it will take to convince the Beeb that I've done it.
eddied, the bbc doesn't give a fuck if you have a tv licence or not. it has no way of knowing. the tv licence money is collected by crapita (i think) on behalf of a government agency that once upon a time was part of the post office. the bbc is not involved in this at all. they just get most of the dosh that's collected.
also, you don't need a tv licence get bbc content over the interweb. legally the licence allows you to operate a receiver for broadcast tv signals.
Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt
Someone didn't do their research properly.
If you're watching it streamed online as it's being broadcast you need a TV licence.
Only "On Demand" exempts you - for the time being at least, expect that to change in future years.
http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/faqs/FAQ104/
Simples
everyone ditch their Sky subscription.
Really? you couldn't do without it?
every cloud
Its a disaster but half as much humpries and jordan seems to soften the blow a bit and to be honest brundle and coultard are dire together.
I duisagree
I quite like Brundle and Coultard as commentators, they are extremely knowledgeable and seem to gell well. Considering they are primarily racing drivers, they do a very good job, and certainly better than some previous efforts.
As to the deal itself - I won't be getting Sky so that another viewer lost for the non-FTA races.
Lets add this up
Lose F1 to sky and save money, or sack the boys who follows the directors round to open the gold plated petrol caps and fill their corporate chauffer driven limo's?
No brainer, F1 must go!!
Hmmmm
Since when has Ms Ecclestone ever been for anything except herself ?
The only thing keeping me paying the licence fee now is the large amount of threatening letters, and visits, I will get if I cancel it......
What needs to be done
This kind of exclusivity deal should be made very illegal.
Just because one broadcaster is showing the event, they absolutely should not be allowed to lock out other broadcasters from showing it.
Let the market decide. Anything else is just blatant anti-competitive, rent-seeking behaviour, and directly harms the consumer.
A good deal for the Beeb? Yeah, right...
"Highlights" for every other race? Funny - I remember when the Beeb got a vaguely similar deal for England RU internationals; it pretty much marked the end of my interest in the 6 Nations. Because someone else's opinion of what all the "interesting" bits were, shown in predigested form hours after the event, is of no use to me; waiting in real time, live, to see what, if anything, will happen is a vital part of the pleasure.
Right now my wife and I watch every race of the season; I can guarantee that we won't be bothering to watch mere highlights, though - and that means we probably won't bother to watch the live races either; what's the point? (Oh, and, no, I'm not forking out for a Sky subscription again, just for the privilege of getting back what until now has been free to air - I've been there, and I'm not going back.)
I wait with interest to see how F1 viewing figures go - I suspect that the drop will be near-precipitous.
BBC F1 Petition
Please support the BBC F1 petition,
License payers want F1 to be free to air on the BBC, and the BBC should have consulted properly with License Payers before making such a significant change.
Have your say at www.petitionbuzz.com/petitions/bbcf1
*Please* Sign It, Tweet It, and Pass it on!
The BBC
The BBC didn't make this decision, it was made for them. Sky outbid them plain and simple.
The BBC contract has two more years to run
It was the BBC's decision. They got Sky to agree to allow the every-other crap, Bernie just trousers the cash.
RIP F1 and FIA
Limited audience, diminishing sponsors, narrow-minded management...
It used to be fun
Look how successful A1GP was!
The main problem I find with Sky Sports is that the pre event coverage just drags on too long without enough real content to fill the time. Half an hour - an hour is enough!
Highlights Plus
Essentially most of what is left out of the highlights is cars going round without incident or overtaking. We can think of this as liberating a couple of hours during the best part of Sunday to do something more constructive. But if you really want to watch nothing much happening then maybe it could be recreated in CGI with videorealistic pre-rendered tracks onto which CGI cars are rendered, tracking their positions throughout the race, and spliced inbetween the real highlight footage to recreate the full-length race.
Hit the Red Button and you get to morph the CGI cars into alternative rides eg dragons or flying carpets, and change the setting of the track to the Moon or Shanghai in the 1920s...
Or you could just find a website streaming the Sky feed.
Obviously not an F1 fan, are you?
They don't have to be crashing or 'taking to be interesting.
Maybe I want to watch things on my TV, instead of huddling 'round a monitor with my misses?
Unfuckingbelievable....
The only fucking thing on BBC I pay a license fee to see. I'm fucked if I'm paying Sky the money for Sky Sports just to watch it. I'm afraid I may just turn into a freetard for that one.
Just thought I'd let you know...
Motorsports are boring. Yes I know they take a great amount of skill and strategy but being a successful business owner does too. That doesn't mean I want to watch board meetings on TV.
While I'm on the topic, the idea of wanting to watch professional poker players on television confuses me as well.
Can't agree there
A lot of motorsport is exciting, but not F1.
F1 and some other series have rules which actually prevent a lot of the exciting stuff from happening. And before anybody shouts up about safety the rules I'm talking about have nothing to do with safety.
For example, allowing huge amounts of aerodynamically generated downforce means that overtaking using the slingshot effect is difficult. When a driver gets too close to the car in front their car loses downforce and so loses grip. This means it's harder to get a "tow" from the car in front in order to pass.
Another example is the brakes. They are too effective for exciting racing. They are so good that the drivers have little or no leeway when it comes to braking points. So passing on the brakes, which is common in other race series is not so common in F1.
Both those examples are caused by the rules being created in the interests of making the cars give the fastest lap times rather than the best racing. If it was a sport like, for example, hillclimbing where every driver gets one or two goes on their own to set the fastest time then the rules would make sense. They make no sense at all for mass start racing.
Then of course there are the circuits. The incredibly wide circuits with constant radius turns make for duller racing whatever the rules. That's why Monaco is often the most exciting event on the calendar. It puzzles me that Ecclestone and his cronies love Monaco for this, but seem to encourage the other circuits to become more and more boring.
If you find motorsport boring I suggest you take a look at the last round of BSB at Oulton Park. Which is the last motorsport event I watched on TV. OK so it wasn't as good as it could have been because the conditions were so wet, but even a fairly dull BSB race makes F1 look like drying paint.
Rules
I kinda of agree with you that some of the rules have made things a bit worse for F1 but most of them do actually have good reason for.
Forinstance, the underside fan that Bernie himself had on his cars when he had a team was baned, bot to make things boring, but because it made such a huge difference in corner speeds that firstly no one could compete (which does making it boring) and it was hugely unsafe.
The speeds they were going for that period of racing was stupid, if something went wrong people would have died.
in a sense thats what most of the rules are for, safty and fairness, at the moment anyone can have there own design of car many of the other motorsports have much tighter than F1 with what can be used, an example would be that in some motor sports they all have the same engines. In F1 we dont. The point isnt about crashing an overtaking, yes its quite spectacular but thats not the reason we watch it, F1 has some of the biggest fastest most advanced racing cars on the planet with some of the best drivers as well.
But have they gone a bit far with the rules? yes i would say they have, an example would be that this season a simple nudge is no longer seen as a racing incident, its now stop go penelty, in my opinion that trend will stop drivings trying to overtake, of course the flip side is that the racing director doesnt want people to crash at 180MPH so i can see their point i just dont agree with it.
Football has the same issues, yeah the rules dont change but their interpretation does, any sport does, you either like it or you dont, i cant stand football, i admire Motorbike racing but i dont like it.
each to their own
Lucky you....
At least it´s not as bad as the coverage on La Sexta, in Spain. They cut to adverts every 15mins and reduce the main picture to a small subframe. Worst bit, the cycle of ads, is exactly the same on every break. Frikkin´ Groundhog day or whaaaaaaaaaaat.
They typically cut to an ad in the seconds before a race and have actually missed the start of at least three races this season. Even missed the restart of Monaco. Un-fucking-believably piss poor.
Sky isn´t all bad by comparison. With the sound down, naturally.
Still, you´ve got Eddy Jordan, so it all balances out, I guess...
El Reg
Given we're now at 120+ comments, good to see that the El Reg readership can show their passions for the important things in life :)
Arsebiscuits
Damn.
Like others, F1 was the only sport I watched and there it goes. I won't be getting Sky becaue I'm buggered if I'll opt-in to pay the football tax.
As some movie-star said recently of Tom Cruise and his Scientard friends: "That ain't MY religion, baby".
Or something roughly like that.
So someone else can continue to pay for Posh's sunglasses cos I won't.
Highlights?
Will the BBC's view of F1 highlights correspond to mine - from the 5 red lights going out until the chequered flag? I doubt it.
Like the many, I won't be shelling out for MurdockTV Sports....
Now... If the Olympics were made exclusive to Sky, would the money the BBC save pay for proper F1 coverage - and maybe even a bit of live test cricket?
what
I was just getting back into f1 again thanks to the bbc hd coverage is brilliant. They also have a good subtitles so watching the talking before the race and after where I could finally understand what was hapebing and listening to the stuff in the race as well was brilliant. Now if it goes to sky I got to take a 12 month subscription to sky sports just for formula 1 with no idea of how the coverage or the subtitles will be like during formula 1.
Sorry that just annoyed me and once the bbc stop broadcasting it, they lost me again. The reason it gained viewers is because its on bbc. Switch it elsewhere and the viewer go down. Simple. Maybe the bbc should have a live iplayer contract instead.
Sky SOP
This is sky standard operating procedure of finding something that has a big fan base on Free to air and then moving it behind a paywall. It is how they make their money.
They did this with 24 and Lost. They wait for a while for the content to become popular then swoop in and bid mega money to grab the fan base (hopefully).
Or torrenting
Actually my first torrent was Farscape Peacekeeper Wars which Sky snatched from the BBC.
After Lost was snatched from C4 I torrented that as well. Until it got boring.
As to F1, looks like I need another LNB and the switch to handle it.
And finally US drama - I now ONLY download it since it tends to get mistreated or pinched.
BBC & F1
From the article in the papers a few weeks back the BBC, were looking at dropping it completely. The reason being was it is the most expensive program they broadcast, costing each licence payer something like £1 were the average is normally around 7 pence. With only around 2m to 4m viewers , with the cuts I guess they could no longer justify it.
I guess they tried to keep some of it, by working out this deal.
Except...
That's £1 for 20 races, with over 3.5 hours coverage per race, plus another 1.5 or so for Qually. That's 100 hours of TV, plus about another 90 hours of coverage of Practice on iplayer, and then another 20ish hours of post-race red button coverage.
That sounds like a bargain to me!
damnit
well, to be honest, F1 has been getting very boring, that i keep on forgetting to watch it
at least now, i won't be able to watch it, so won't have to feel annoyed that i've missed it
Want my license fee back
I want my license fee back for the 2012 coverage the beeb already had the contract for that's been given the Sky!
Hope their coverage is better than it was for A1GP, that was utter shine!
Could be worse!
At least you get F1 coverage broadcast at all in the UK - across the pond we get it on a premium cable channel (SPEED) and radio is only broadcast by satellite. Luckily, so few people care about F1 over here that there's almost no risk of unintentionally hearing about a race, so I can wait a day or two and find the BBC coverage... somewhere on the Internet. So I'll still be unhappy if Sky's coverage isn't up to BBC standards.
The plan
"so few people care about F1 over here "
That's what they are trying to work towards over here.
Formula One Gerbils in a Wheel
Much more entertaining. They also tower over Ecclesone in real life.
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