TBK-Light.com

How the BBC sustained it? They didn't. That's why they dropped it. When ITV found out how much the BBC was spending, they couldn't believe it.

In an ideal world teams would get a more equal share. But why the hell should Marussia get the same as Red Bull?

_________________
Dan Wheldon | 1978 - 2011

Do you know how much ITV paid(max value/per year)?

About Marussia getting the same as RBR, yeah, that's not what I meant.

I would like it to be more like English Football Premiership where 40% of total income is shared equally to all teams, then they distribute the rest according to championship position, afaik.

Peformance should always be rewarded, that's my view, so I'm perfectly confortable with champion of WCC receiving quite more than last one. It just seems F1 takes it to an extreme where the last ones receive really little.

That way, teams wouldn't rely on money that driver's bring as much as they do now. Let's not get foolish here, pay drivers will always exist in F1(as there is no such thing as: "we already have enough money"), even because some of them also have lot's of talent like Perez, Maldonado, Grosjean, Sutil........ (even if the trend to crash is inherent in some of them)

You can't really compare like for like with ITV because their contracts ran at different times, ITV's last contract was for £150 million 6 years (£25 million per year), when the BBC took over the coverage, they paid the same per year fee (following conventional thinking, they should have paid more), the total cost of F1 production for BBC is still within the £35 million p.a. bracket, but doing the deal with Sky they only saved £10 million is a year iirc.

However, the BBC were extremely stupid when Bernie offered them the contract and agreed to pay without asking why Bernie was offering them the coverage for a year that ITV were contracted to broadcast it in, it beggars belief they didn't ask why, but then this is the BBC we're talking about.

I don't know where that article is getting the "$100m annually" from, me thinks it's a figure they've picked out of the air as that's way over what the contact cost is annually - now if you add up the 10 years, it comes pretty close to that figure, so erm, it's not hard to work out what Christian Sylt has done...

The BBC never paid $80 mill, that's just stupid, that's more likely to be the overall cost of producing the coverage including the license cost, for a minute there I thought I was reading the Mail, I could write a better article than that.

Speedcafe's reported Alan Jones will be joining Network 10's coverage with Greg Rust and Daryl Beattie.

Craig Baird is going to focus more on racing.

The 80m are indeed probably the total contract value along several years. I can't think of any broadcaster being even close to that value, annually, and keep it sustainable.

No channel, nowhere in the planet, can fill sponsors/advertising in a year that in total covers the that figure.

edit: visiting it's thread on atlas, I found out that TF1 paid 31m Euros per year while Canal+ will pay 29. Quite a huge value per year, never thought they could "extract" that much from French broadcasters

My understanding is that it was £200m over 5 years, which is £40m a year.

ITV's was around £25m.

I think that's just the basic rights. The BBC was spending a lot more on the production costs as well.

_________________
Dan Wheldon | 1978 - 2011

There's a bit in Steve Rider's book where he talks about getting a phone call from one of the production team on the BBC shortly after the deal has been signed as he was enquiring how much ITV spent on producing their coverage.

Suffice to say, the answer was more than the BBC chap was expecting.

_________________
Dan Wheldon ¦ 1978-2011
Marco Simoncelli ¦ 1987-2011
Jules Bianchi ¦ 1989-2015
Justin Wilson ¦ 1978-2015

Yeah, I know he's mad and I don't care. I do not care. I did not care then. I do not care now. I'm here to race him.

They might have had more chance of keeping the contract if their funding hadn't been frozen a year after the contract was signed.

Yeah but at the same time, the use of the funding is questionable. They spend millions upon millions on Wimbledon, despite people being at work when it's on. They have a rolling news channel and a parliament channel which should be 1 channel. They have BBC3 and BBC4 which are just showing repeats of shows - which is exactly why they have iPlayer. The channel layout at BBC seems very very inefficient.

Less funding should mean tightening the belts and loose ends so you can sustain your programming. Not just dropping expensive stuff so you don't have to fix the issues.

Yeaa, considering the mess they're in and their inability to do things properly, I can't understand why people want the BBC to get more money.

People were at work for most of the Olypmics coverage, should the BBC have not covered that either? I don't really see how BBC Parliament and News 24 could be combined, and I'd imagine the savings of closing BBC Parliament would be minimal. I think its true at some point iPlayer (or an equivalent) will become the way most people watch TV, but I think that's a long way off.

The BBC have made substantial cuts elsewhere - BBC2 no longer has a daytime schedule of original content, a lot of local radio programmes are no longer local and their making redundancies on the news side.

The point I was trying to make was the BBC couldn't anticipate what was going to happen to their funding, hence why they had to get out of the F1 contract.

I dont know if this has been posted but here is NBC and NBC Sports Networks times and channels for the races
http://scores.nbcsports.msnbc.com/nascar/schedule.asp?series=FORM1

And my cable provider still doesn't provide NBC Sports Network That's only 4 races on the main channel. Hopefully they'll get a deal in time

Sky will apparently be showing 5 archive races before each race this year.

For Melbourne:
Sat 9 Mar:
8.30pm to 10.30pm - F1 Classic race: Australia 1994

Sun 10 Mar:
8.30pm to 10.30pm - F1 Classic race: Australia 1999

Mon 11 Mar:
8.30pm to 10.30pm - F1 Classic race: Australia 2003

Tue 12 Mar:
8.30pm to 10.30pm - F1 Classic race: Australia 2007

Wed 13 Mar:
8.30pm to 10.30pm - F1 Classic race: Australia 2010

although I'm a Kimi fanboy, the 2007 race was pretty underwhelming.

Sky testing underway. Looks like they're using the FOM camera stands. Sky graphics mimicking FOM's.

_________________
Dan Wheldon | 1978 - 2011

The 3D is actually pretty good at times.

And it just gets worse as sky announced (splitscreen) adverts during the race

So no more Jacques Schulz, adverts....pretty sure I'm not going to extend my contract at the end of this month.

Adverts on Pay TV is completely unacceptable imo. Between 2 programs that's fine, but you pay for uninterrupted coverage after all.

Plus, Marcel can get all sessions of F1 for free in Germany