BBC vs Sky - The Story so Far

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Originally Posted by Mark

It's confusing for the viewer as you don't know one race to the next. Is this one going to be live on BBC or is this a Sky only one.

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I luckily already had Sky Sports and so got F1 without thinking and watch every race here for sheer ease, rather than working out the different arrangements for each weekend like you say.

Agree all round though it would be better if F1 stayed set like last year on BBC 1 every week.

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Originally Posted by henners88

Do sky F1 viewers like yourself miss watching it on the BBC at all? I prefer the format and even if I could be bothered to tune in on Sky, it (bbc) would always be my first choice if it was available. Then again all the races are on the BBC now, just some of them have a few laps missing and are televised a few hours late.


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The in race commentary from Sky is quite good. I mostly miss the off track stuff like Eddie Jordan and Jake Humphrey. I was always pretty indifferent towards Coulthard. I always switch to the Beebs for pre and post race coverage. Sky takes the race mainly because of that superb Red button.

Dont get me wrong, I would be delighted if BBC kept all live coverage the way it was last year, but I am a fan of Brundle and like the commentary of Sky as a constant. Overall I dont watch much coverage of anything off track so that doesn't affect me much.

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Originally Posted by henners88

Do sky F1 viewers like yourself miss watching it on the BBC at all? I prefer the format and even if I could be bothered to tune in on Sky, it (bbc) would always be my first choice if it was available. Then again all the races are on the BBC now, just some of them have a few laps missing and are televised a few hours late.


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Yes, even though I can watch it on Sky I still always prefer the BBC if possible, even if that means waiting for the highlights.

There is also the issue that BBC is at the top of the EPG, whereas Sky is pretty much hidden away so it's hard to know if a race is on.

I do think the BBC coverage will be quite a lot worse next year as Jake is gone.

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Originally Posted by henners88

The ideal situation in all this would have been for Bernie and the Beeb to reach an agreement to maybe reduce the fee as the sport would still be available to the wider audience base. We would still have the dream team we saw last year and the coverage would be great for everybody. Money is involved however and the Sport would rather have the instant cash than the potential viewers it seems. I agree Sky can't be blamed for this and its totally the powers that be and the BBC. Time will tell how damaging this has been to the popularity of the sport in the UK with viewing figures already giving us an early insight into this.

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It's a free market, Bernie needs to make a return on behalf of CVC so he isn't one for charity unless it's the only option.

In this case the best opportunities for Bernie and the fans was to have Channel 4 share the rights.

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Originally Posted by Mark

There is also the issue that BBC is at the top of the EPG, whereas Sky is pretty much hidden away so it's hard to know if a race is on.

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That for me is the biggest factor in choosing between the two! Then I remember BBC one isn't HD so I have to carry on digging.

I only watch the race and may or may not watch the pre/post-race shows depending on how busy I am and how good the race was. I have to say I don't really see a big difference in the race coverage, DC is close to Brundle standards.

Eddie Jordan does annoy me though for the sheer volume of trash he talks, and occasionally the BBC crew seem to get it very wrong, as in Abu Dhabi where they seemed to be spending an awfully long time discussing Grosjean's driving and how it caused the accident late on in the race. None of them seemed to notice the accident was initiated by Perez which was poor.

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Originally Posted by wedge

In this case the best opportunities for Bernie and the fans was to have Channel 4 share the rights.

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C4 would have needed 15 minutes of in-race as to balance the books. That's quite a lot more than ITV had when they had the rights.

What's really to blame for this mess are the Tories. If they hadn't "frozen" [real-terms cut] the licence fee and made the BBC pay for S4C and the World Service out of the licence fee on top of that, the BBC would have had the money to keep going as they were.

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Originally Posted by Somebody

What's really to blame for this mess are the Tories. If they hadn't "frozen" [real-terms cut] the licence fee and made the BBC pay for S4C and the World Service out of the licence fee on top of that, the BBC would have had the money to keep going as they were.

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Probably a bigger factor was blowing the thick end of a billion quid on relocating to Manchester, which was instigated by the previous regime.

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Originally Posted by henners88

Do sky F1 viewers like yourself miss watching it on the BBC at all? I prefer the format and even if I could be bothered to tune in on Sky, it (bbc) would always be my first choice if it was available. Then again all the races are on the BBC now, just some of them have a few laps missing and are televised a few hours late.

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I tend to flip between the channels for the build-up as both have their fair share of waffle and filler, but for the races I default to Sky as I slightly prefer the commentary team. More often than not I watch the BBC highlights later.

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Originally Posted by AndyL

Probably a bigger factor was blowing the thick end of a billion quid on relocating to Manchester, which was instigated by the previous regime.

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Most of which will pay for itself: if they'd stayed in London they'd have practically had to rebuild TV Centre. The place is falling apart and riddled with asbestos and 70's wiring. Indeed they've already said that their Olympic coverage would have been technically impossible from the old facilities.