F1 going to Sky

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Originally Posted by CarlMetro

It's simple, we as F1 fans suffered probably the worst levels of coverage in recent times when we got stuffed up with ITV coverage. Poor presenters, a very poor commentator (James Allen) and some of the worst directors and ad breaks in the history of TV. Oh how we rejoiced when the BBC announced that it was taking over again and our faith was richly rewarded with what has been perhaps some of the best sport, let alone F1, coverage we have ever seen. I sincerly doubt that Sky will manage to achieve the same levels the BBC F1 team has. Christ the BBC even won a BAFTA for it.

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ITV pushed F1 coverage to another level with over 3 hrs of coverage on Sunday and over 2 hrs on Saturday which has become obligatory on the Beeb now.

They had Tony Jardine and Simon Taylor doing analysis but the Steve Rider years were poor by the fact that Mark Blundell couldn't add anything useful.

James Allen wasn't that bad and even Legard had his share of haters.

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Originally Posted by Daniel

Sometimes I think the problem with the ITV coverage wasn't simply the presenters, I mean you only need to look at how good Ted Kravitz is on the BBC coverage and how bad he was on the ITV coverage. You get the feeling that the people calling the shots just didn't have an idea. It seemed like the presenters were constantly being pestered to talk about the British drivers and Louise Goodman's ability to ask the most ridiculous questions was amazing, the level of contempt shown to her by the drivers was fantastic :D

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Ted Kravitz was a suspect appointment and appeared to be out of his depth but actually got better as the years went by. His pit notes after each GP on ITV's website was essential reading.

ITV never fully embraced multimedia.

Yep ITV coverage (adverts aside) was way better than what BBC had been doing up to that point.

The BBC improved on that immensely and with no adverts.

When did we start getting every race live? A long time ago I think, a run broken at one point by ITV when they failed to cover the USA grand Prix live.

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Originally Posted by Mark

Yep ITV coverage (adverts aside) was way better than what BBC had been doing up to that point.

The BBC improved on that immensely and with no adverts.

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And on the presentation, though Steve Rider had been a big improvement over Jim Rosenthal.

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Originally Posted by Mark

When did we start getting every race live? A long time ago I think, a run broken at one point by ITV when they failed to cover the USA grand Prix live.

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Early 1990s, I think, though the commentary from Canada (and South Africa when it returned briefly to the calendar) was not done live from the circuit for quite some while.

I'm wondering whether Top Up TV could be a relatively cost effctive way to get Sky for the F1 next year? It's cheaper than getting Sky Sports through Sky (and saves me an argument with my landlord about putting a dish on his precious wall!) but only SS1 and SS2 are available. What's the betting that F1 gets shunted to SS3 or SS4 when it clashes with Premier League football and England cricket?

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Originally Posted by Dave B

Amazingly ITV won 3 BAFTAs for their coverage, even though the actual racing was produced by FOM.

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I'm guessing not for the '05 Imola race.

The BBC haven't had an Ofcom complaint upheld against their coverage so they've got one over ITV there.

According to worldsalaries.org the average monthly employment income in the UK is £1400 which means that a Sky Sports HD subscription of £50 is about 3.5% of the average net income. I would be more than happy to roll that out for full-season in-depth high-definition coverage of Formula 1 and IndyCar, the only two sports series I really follow.

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Originally Posted by Dr. Krogshöj

According to worldsalaries.org the average monthly employment income in the UK is £1400 which means that a Sky Sports HD subscription of £50 is about 3.5% of the average net income. I would be more than happy to roll that out for full-season in-depth high-definition coverage of Formula 1 and IndyCar, the only two sports series I really follow.

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No offence pal, but that's cloud cuckoo land. Not that I doubt the figures, but I wonder how many households have 3.5% of their income just sitting around unaccounted for at the end of each month...I know we don't.

I haven't had time to trawl through the 250+ posts on here but, firstly, I'm gutted over this TV deal. Looks like it will adversely affect the dynamics of our future F1 coverage. However, as an Irish viewer, I do have free access to Setanta Sports and I wonder if that will still be the case for 2012. The commentary, while previously done by Setanta Sports men Declan Quigley and David Kennedy, has been done by the Beeb commentary team on all of the races this season. The feed is obviously borrowed from them. Fingers crossed that they can do the same with Sky though, admittedly not knowing much about either company, it doesn't seem like a very likely scenario. Anybody know any more about this?

As far as I have read, the commentators will be the same for BBC and Sky while the will have different presenting teams. Hopefully Jake and CO will follow the money to sky

In the F1 forum the team were talking to the crowd and one of them shouted to Jake 'Don't go to Sky!'