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Backed vettel webber forcast at 4/1

It lost

Regards

M

Hands down most boring sport in the world

taxi for G2L

Yup and let's race that taxi against a ferrari. Hmmmmm, I wonder who's going to win?!?!

The Red Bull


Canada was a classic. Partly its an old track that allows action, mainly the weather

Valencia is a new track but a horror design wise. Monaco without the looks. No rain either. Result=bore.

Valencia is fast becoming the most boring track in the world for an F1 car. Even on F1 2010 for the PS3 it's shit. Only reason they have a race there is because of all the Spanish Alonso fans bringing in the $$$, like they had a second race in Germany when Schumacher dominated.

Agree todays race was def a yawnfest but F1 on the whole has picked up it's game and is trying to make it more spectacular.

Great shame the race was so dull, the weather was so hot that everyone in the crowd just cooked and got sunburned.

Great shame as Valencia is a great little city, I landed on Sat am and was in my seat within 70 mins of the plane touching down. Most entertaining bit of the weekend (other than beer and tapas) was waiting for the flight home on sunday evening - a little kid was running around shouting - "its Jake Humphrey" loudly from 5 yards behind him, the Dad is trying to get the kid to walk over and ask him for a photo, but the kid would not go. Photo eventually gets done with both Jake and Martin, and the noise dies down for a bit, but it entertained everyone for a few mins while the plane was late. Good job the plane didn't crash - half the grid who don't fly by private jet were on that flight, Alitalia seemed to delay the takeoff off a few mins of the Bologna flight to make sure Rob Semdley and a dozen or so other Ferrari team members were on it.

Terrible news about sky sports taking half the races from next season on - i know that the BBC is broke but there is plenty of crap they could have closed instead. I only watch F1, Top Gear and Sherlock on the Beeb.

Best tweet i have seen so far on it:- GrandPrixDiary Still, if Sky Sports show F1, at least, we'll get hacked transmissions of the drivers briefing and team meetings, so there is some benefit.

Ouch. not great news for those who can't afford the subscription.

Good news that the BBC made sure they got Arc day though...they outbid C4 on that one and wil now have paid decent money to show two races, like they did last year.

Nice to see they're not wasting their money

the Arc d' fucking triomphe?

give me a break.

Absolutely gutted. Gonna have to move house to watch 2012 season as not allowed Sky where I rent.

It's no problem for me because I always watch it hours after it finished. Just need to download it from somewhere from next year.

It's really bad news for fans who like to watch it live and don't already subscribe to sky sports. Having to pay a full sky sports subscription but still only getting half the races sucks.

I'm pretty sure they'll be showing it in a few pubs though so it's always available somewhere for free.

Just say that to your landlord. If you say "give me Sky or I'm off", he'll snap let you get Sky.

Sky are showing all races.

I live in a flat in an old converted Victorian house. He's bound by his deal when he bought the place. Nobody here has Sky or can get it.

https://discoversky.sky.com/skygo_non_dth/Default.aspx?DCMP=ilc-skygo_shop

Sky Go launches next month - a Sky subscription for online.

I don't think it's just about whether people can afford Sky or not. It's just for a lot of people a big chunk of the value they got from the license fee has now evaporated. I might be wrong, but I'm pretty sure the BBC does a lot of stuff that nobody watches or cares about that could be cut instead- F1 could scarcely be more popular.  Although you could argue that the whole point of the BBC is to fund stuff that is important but unpopular.

The thing I really object to is that with Sky you've either got to buy all of it, or none of it. I'd much rather subscribe to the F1 channel and the Rugby League channel and the Cricket channel, rather than have my money wasted on footballers.

Been pretty boring this year so hardly a loss is it?
Also Sky sports coverage > all other sports coverage

Several cracking races, and if you are a fan none are boring

If you don't have the subscription or can't afford it, its a loss

the BBC team are unparallelled imo. granted some/all might go to Sky

I think over 50% have been pretty dull. I'd say I was a fan and I've found them boring. Last week was good but usually it's needed variable weather.
Jake Humphrey drives me mad and I think Eddie is an idiot.
Brundle is superb and Coulthard offers a good insight into modern racing so hope Sky get them.
Only real negative I can think of is adverts mid-race. 

I wonder how many F1 fans there are that can't afford  a quid a day or whatever, not many I reckon

Plus F1 is shite - ooh the tyre change went well, one stop or two, what tyres are they using, shall I follow this faster car round for an hour and a half - farce.

Each to their own, I've quite enjoyed things this season.  Quite like Jake, knows enough to impress me and seems a nice enough chap.      BBC seem to have got it right this season imo, shame it's going over.

you can watch it on skyplayer live for free . just put in my user name and password and away you go. think you can use it on 4 different computers

I love Arc day, it's wasted on the Beeb as they can't be bothered showing all the races. Ch4 would show everything so I'm not sure why the beeb wasted their money TBH.

Sky will obv be better at doing the F1 stuff

FOTA have always insisted that F1 was always to be shown on free to air, I think this is the first move on a slippery slope. As a fan I hope not but as always money talks.

F1 has so much untapped potentail that hopefully sky will see and unleash

There must be 30-40% of geek fans that would love to have access to timing screens that the commentators have

Imagine watching the races with the ability to have "in screen" timing screens (or running it on an I pad or something)

There is so much that could be done with F1 I can only envisage sky improving the braodcasting

ITV ditched it because it wasn't getting the viewers, and the BBC couldn't afford the price that Billionaire Bernie was asking on their own.

Half the races on the BBC is a pretty good deal in the circumstances.

No it's not, what the BBC should have done is tell Bernie to stick it up his arse.

I agree Andrew just wish it was kept fully free to air.

What is wrong with the current live timing screen on formula1.com,which has a mobile version if required.

http://www.formula1.com/mobile_services/live_timing.html

Probably has never happened or is likely to happen, but in F1 when they start, the red lights come on and then when they go out, they're off - has there ever been a "false start" where someone takes off too early?  What would happen if they did and is there a penalty for such an event?

japan 98, trulli falsestarted and got sent to the back for a restart. then schumacher falsestarted and also got sent to the back. they finally got underway at the 3rd attempt

think schumacher may have needed to win that one to take the title too

Sky launching it's own F1 dedicated channel. All the races in HD. No adverts mid race.
Sounds like a good start. Will be interested to see what else is on there.

More inside news on that on my Diary shortly.......

Really, Sky have spent a bomb on F1, but they have really serious plans for it.

Sigh. I'm about 200 pages behind on your diary! I might get there in time for the new season!

I hope those plans include showing the support races,Eurosport have made a terrible job of showing the GP2 races this season.

Brundle going to Sky.

He was quoted as saying that the braodcasting technology Sky will put into F1 coverage was a major attraction

Not sure if i've missed the extra info on TK's thread yet but Brundle signing is class. Not a huge fan of Davidson but not listened to him for a while because of that so not writing him off yet.
Masterstroke is getting some totty involved. Georgie and Pinkham are incred.

They are gonna do to F1 what they did for the Premier League. A lotta money gone into this, & Sky won't be planning to lose on the deal.

I was thinking this earlier, what was the knee jerk to Sky getting football back in the day ?

Back before Sky, league football was really badly served by TV. Not a huge number of live games per season and when they were, they only seemed to feature Man U, Liverpool, Everton, Arsenal and Spurs. It was no real loss, plus there was the carrot dangled that fans of other teams were guaranteed a certain number of live games per season.

Random stat I saw this week - in the first season of football on Sky, the average wage of a Premiership footballer was 6 times the wage of the average fan. Now it's over 200 times.

Does this mean that they will be charging extra subscription for the F1 channel or will it be part of the normal Sky sports subscription?

No idea. I would imagine it will be part of the Sky Sports package, for now, anyway, until it establishes it's position. If it "takes off", well, it's a business, & it tries to monetise things, & earn a nice return on it's investment......

Pretty sure it's part of the sports package. Can get money from advertisters though.

At present, yes.

Pretty sure I'll never watch it again unless I can nick it off t'internet.

For next year at least you need either a sports subscription or an HD subscription.

Surely you worry about my wages, Matt?

Thanks, I get sky sports included in my Virgin package so will watch. Not sure I would if I had to pay extra.

I probably would actually, its the only time I get peace and quiet on a Sunday.

It  is a separate channel,running for the 3 days of an F1 weekend,don't know that it will make it to Virgin.

oh balls, may just be watching BBC events then.

i am sure sky did F1 quite a few seasons ago when ITV first took over from the BBC sure they had stuff behind the red button allowing you pick which feed you wanted

it was box office though and cost about £15 a race which was a little silly as ITV was showing it free

Yes I do Tikay. It's a constant weight on my poor shoulders.

I just can't bring myself to pay for a full sky package just so I can watch F1.

Free links shared on here FTW  :D

That would have been Bernie Vision  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F1_Digital%2B)I took the last 6 races for £50.Compared to what was normally available at the time it was a great improvement,but not a £12 (the normal price) a race improvement.

Yes, absolutely.

In the book I recently read about Ecclestone's life, he bemoaned the failure of "Bernie Vision" (correct title "F1 Digital+") over & over again, having invested a fortune in it. It was a colossal enterprise, & was owned by FOM - Formula One Management, a company controlled wholly by Ecclestone.

For the scale of it, see this from it's Wiki page.....

The operation involved transporting around 200 tons of equipment to each race. To transport the equipment required 18 trucks for European rounds or two Boeing 747 jumbo jets for fly-away races. At the race venue, a 1200 sq m air-conditioned tent was setup containing the majority of the equipment. The service was run by Eddie Baker, and the tent was colloquially referred to as Bakersville.[4]

Two hundred staff were employed to provide the coverage. A two-week turn around was required to dismantle and reassemble all the equipment. Dismantling would begin immediately following a race broadcast on Sunday and would be finished by Tuesday. It would then be transported to the next venue. Between Friday and Sunday the broadcast centre would be reassembled and all cameras and cabling around the circuit would be completed by Wednesday. The equipment was tested on Thursday in preparation for the first broadcast of a race meeting on Friday.[5]

But he priced it way too high, & eventually, he found a better way of doing it. These days, FOM still produces the TV feed from all bar two venues, but they use the indigenous TV companies for the OB set up. So, dear Bernie still controls it, still makes all the money from it, but he has, in effect, outsourced the work to "local" TV stations in each counttry.

Bernie is a very stubborn, & very greedy, man. He's also vey clever, & very, very, rich. Digital F1 was one of his few mistakes, but he turned the situation round, & still made a fortune out of it eventually. He no longer "owns" F1 as such, but he still controls FOM.


 

Losing just half the F1 races had the same cost as all of BBC4.

Pretty much a no brainer picking between the two if the BBC is to fulfill its remit as a public service broadcaster.

How can anyone possibly argue with that?

You seem to take a very Reithian view of the BBC. The idea that the BBC should only put on programs where the commercial sector does not want to (e.g. never ending Songs of Praise) has been pretty much discredited- no one will want to pay the license fee in that case. The BBC does have to provide popular programs along with the worthy stuff.

Sky might very well not make any money from F1, but that's not the point. The point for Sky is to strip the BBC of anything you might want to watch on it until the license fee is so unpopular it is scrapped. At which point Sky will have a monopoly on the TV of the UK, and can a) rake it in b) control the politics of the UK.

To be honest I don't mind paying for sport on TV- I think Pay TV is its natural home. What I object to is that Sky bundle it all together so you have to pay for a load of rammel you don't want, just to watch the stuff you do. Even if you only want the F1 (and I've got friends like this), that'll be £360 a year, please. Why can't we have an F1 channel for £5 per month, which we can watch without anything else?

wp Skippy. You made me have to look a word up. fml.