uk f1 tv coverage - sky, bbc and ch4

[henners88]

I was never really impressed by Sky's coverage if I'm honest. Having both I still always watched the BBC if they had the race in full and felt Sky offered nothing of a better quality. I don't really like Martin Brundle so that didn't help. I certainly wouldn't pay for Sky if it was the only option available as £400+ a year just for 20 or so races doesn't offer value for money if you are not in to other sports. This price point will be the major factor in whether fans either pay up or walk away.

Let's not forget back in 2011 when you could get Sky with the HD package for £32 a month it still didn't exceed their expectations. It'll be interesting to see how fans react in 2019.

[Akrapovic]

Originally Posted by Peter Mallett

Soo just because you have a gripe about the service you would cease watching the sport you love? Hmm, I think that is tenuous. BTW "you" as in "fans in general".

Up until recently I was an avid viewer. Now I can't even be @rsed to watch it on free to air. If I'm typical then I wonder how C4 will get on?

If the rules change back to something that resembles a sport I wouldn't mind betting many who currently won't pay, will change their minds.

But that's exactly what I'm saying. Yes, people will stop watching the sport if it drops in entertainment value, and if it becomes difficult or expensive to watch. F1 has achieved both.

How about I tell you that Sky Sports is dropping F1, and the only way to watch it will be through a subscription Russian streaming site that costs £100 a month. Will you stop watching it? Of course you will. Almost everybody will, because they've weighed the pros and cons to the new way of viewing and decided it's not for them.

Well the same is happening with Sky. People will stop watching it because it's gone from free (well, TV License) to £30-£60 a month, and they are forced to deal with a company that has a reputation for poor service.

It really is as simple as that. And that applies for every sport. My favorite is WEC. But if they dropped their online streaming package and went to Sky Sports only, I'd drop that too. If you need evidence of this, then just look at Skys viewing figures versus BBCs.

[Mike Harte]

Originally Posted by Peter Mallett

Living in various parts of the world as I have/do, Sky is no different to any other TV provider. So I really feel that it has no bearing on the discussion.

Although I agree with you in principle, Peter, Murdoch and BSB Sky are quite divisive especially in the UK. I do think that they have been foremost behind the escalating costs of spectating at and/or viewing various sports, and have been the main reason that so many of these sports have now disappeared behind paywalls. Even when Sky was losing money, they kept pushing up the amounts they were prepared to pay to broadcast events, which in turn has driven up the ridiculous salaries that are paid to some clods who are as thick as two short planks but possess the ability to kick a lump of leather around a field, for example. This, in turn, has pushed the cost of going through the turnstiles to horrific levels, often putting it beyond the reach of ordinary mortals.

The reason that I no longer watch has nothing to do with Sky or Murdoch, per se, because I stopped the moment that BCE allowed a terrestrial provider to cease showing all the races live, thus breaking his long held undertaking to always have it on FTA in the UK. My addiction to F was easy to break, because, like many others, I found myself falling asleep too often at the beginning of the races. It's not really the teams', or the drivers' fault but when Michael Schumacher started to totally dominate, a lot of the excitement was removed from the sport, and it became too predictable. And so my interest waned.

And as it did so, I found that I could also do without subscribing to Autosport which I had been reading since 1963/4. Which brings us back to the irony of Autosport putting an article that is critical of FOM allowing the UK's coverage of F1 to go on pay-to-view, and putting that article behind a paywall. As others have said, you couldn't make it up.

[Sodemo]

People don't like being made mugs of and I think F1 does that a lot. The way it closes out the public / fans at every opportunity. The high ticket prices. Moving TV coverage behind paywalls. Fans only have so much goodwill and each person has their own threshold for when "enough is enough".

[Akrapovic]

There's also a discussion to be had on if people can even afford it or not. Even if you want to, do you actually have the money to afford the Sky package that is required? When I was on minimum wage I couldn't. So what message does that send to me as a fan?

[bjohnsonsmith]

Originally Posted by Akrapovic

Of course it has everything to do with Sky, as the idea of "wanting" to watch anything is not black and white, but rather filled with grey. The benefits have to outweigh the negatives. The feeling I'm getting here is that the reason many will be dropping F1 is 3 fold

1) F1 is not producing a good enough show
2) Sky costs too much
3) Sky service is poor

I want to watch F1. But not enough to overcome Skys downsides.

I don't think it has everything to do with Sky. I have no preference if I watch F1 on BBC, now C4 or Sky. The commentary is what I'm primarily interested in. If I have to leave the room, I can still hear what's going on and if I have to go out for 5 minutes or so, the commentary can update me as to what's been going on.

With regards to F1 not producing a good show, that's not to do with Sky, that's down to F1 itself. Being an F1 fan, one wants to be able to follow the GPs on TV but understandably, no one wants to pay to watch if the racing is dull it can be watched for free.

The problem is moving it all to Sky. Personally, I hardly watch TV and I already pay £145.50 for my TV License, so I couldn't justify the extra cost of a Sky subscription, which I would hardly ever use.

[Lotusonpole]

It might be interesting to back-track and ask has the F1 audience shrank in sync with increasing Sat TV involvement and/or tinkering with rules. For example, we now have spec engines, spec gearboxes etc with a relatively tiny area left for designers to have freedom to be creative. Has the audience shrank the more designers freedoms have been reduced? I know the spec this and that were introduced with cost cutting in mind, but any team will spend its entire annual budget on whatever is still legal to develop. I think Ron Dennis touched on this during an interview late last season.

[bjohnsonsmith]

Originally Posted by Lotusonpole

It might be interesting to back-track and ask has the F1 audience shrank in sync with increasing Sat TV involvement and/or tinkering with rules. For example, we now have spec engines, spec gearboxes etc with a relatively tiny area left for designers to have freedom to be creative. Has the audience shrank the more designers freedoms have been reduced? I know the spec this and that were introduced with cost cutting in mind, but any team will spend its entire annual budget on whatever is still legal to develop. I think Ron Dennis touched on this during an interview late last season.

I can only speak for myself but I attempt to watch every GP during a season. Probably force of habit as I've been following F1 for several decades but occasionally I miss the odd race. However, what I've found my self doing, particularly over the last 3 years or so, is drift off, go online, check e-mails and mess around on Facebook. The racing just isn't holding my attention. The last time something like this happened, was during the Schumacher/Ferrari years and I stopped watching for the best part of 2 and a half years.

[chillibowl]

Originally Posted by bjohnsonsmith

... However, what I've found my self doing, particularly over the last 3 years or so, is drift off, go online, check e-mails and mess around on Facebook. ...

domination by one team can have that effect but i wonder if that sort of multi tasking approach to watching TV isnt becoming the new normal regardless of what is on or how exciting that program is.

[bjohnsonsmith]

Originally Posted by chillibowl

domination by one team can have that effect but i wonder if that sort of multi tasking approach to watching TV isnt becoming the new normal regardless of what is on or how exciting that program is.

It could quite possibly becoming the new norm but I don't watch much TV and if I'm watching a race I tend to do this if I start to get bored during the race and that has become more frequent.

[Moneyseeker]

Originally Posted by Akrapovic

There's also a discussion to be had on if people can even afford it or not. Even if you want to, do you actually have the money to afford the Sky package that is required? When I was on minimum wage I couldn't. So what message does that send to me as a fan?

BE thinks that only 70 year olds looking to buy another Rolex are the target audience for F1, so presumably he thinks a Sky sub is mere small change to them....

[bjohnsonsmith]

Originally Posted by Moneyseeker

BE thinks that only 70 year olds looking to buy another Rolex are the target audience for F1, so presumably he thinks a Sky sub is mere small change to them....

That's absurd. How on Earth did he come up with that?

[Casper]

Originally Posted by Mike Harte

The reason that I no longer watch has nothing to do with Sky or Murdoch, per se, because I stopped the moment that BCE allowed a terrestrial provider to cease showing all the races live

Are you saying he should have somehow bent the arm of the providor (BBC??) and forced them to televise F1. Did the BBC decide to ditch it on a cost basis or a ROI basis or simply because not enough people watched it? The UK viewing audience is not the centre of the universe even though some think it is.

[Mike Harte]

Originally Posted by Casper

Are you saying he should have somehow bent the arm of the providor (BBC??) and forced them to televise F1. Did the BBC decide to ditch it on a cost basis or a ROI basis or simply because not enough people watched it? The UK viewing audience is not the centre of the universe even though some think it is.

Cost saving, so they tell us. And it is worth noting that viewing figures show that numbers have reduced considerably; initially a 66% drop for the Sky only live races, although I believe that that figure may have improved slightly. The audience numbers for the 2015 Singapore GP were the lowest GP figures for many years. Year on year, the BBC's highlights' package audience dropped by 25%, whilst Sky's live audience fell by 32%, so maybe my other statement may not be accurate.

It must also be noted that BCE, in January 2015, attributed the reducing audience around the world to the fact that more and more of F1 is being moved to pay-to-view services. This must be why he has signed so many contracts recently with subscription only providers such as BSB Sky in the UK, a Fox company in Australia, another Fox company in the USA, and I believe Sky in Germany - all the aforementioned controlled by Murdoch - whilst in Spain FOM has tied up with Telefonica. It must therefore signal the fact that his intention is to push down viewer numbers even further.

[Mike Harte]

Originally Posted by Casper

Are you saying he should have somehow bent the arm of the providor (BBC??) and forced them to televise F1. Did the BBC decide to ditch it on a cost basis or a ROI basis or simply because not enough people watched it? The UK viewing audience is not the centre of the universe even though some think it is.

What is the point of signing a contract if the parties to it treat as if it was not worth the paper that it was written on. FOM had a binding contract with the BBC to show all the races live on terrestrial TV, which met BCE's commitment to show all GPs live on FTA. He then allowed them to break that contract because he could raise more money by allowing Sky to show all the races live, with the BBC only showing 10 races. He then compounded that by allowing the BBC to escape completely from their contract. And although the BBC claim that it was for financial reasons, they are not short of money; they just choose to spend it on overpaid and under-worked executives. For example, just one of hundreds, the executive hired to oversee the move of staff from London to a new centre in Manchester. She was paid a multi 6 figure sum to conduct the move, although she lives in New York and the BBC paid, on top of her salary, for weekly 1st class travel over the Atlantic plus putting her up in a 5 star hotel. And she even made a mess of the job, because less than 25% of the staff and presenters have actually made the move, with many of them still commuting between the two cities. To be fair to her, the BBC was warned by those that they intended to move that they didn't want to go, but it was supposed to be her job to persuade them that it was a good idea.

[S griffin]

Blame Bernie for not keeping with the cuts to BBC and putting the price down. All he cares about it is greed and F1 is becoming poorer and poorer for it

[Sodemo]

Originally Posted by Mike Harte

What is the point of signing a contract if the parties to it treat as if it was not worth the paper that it was written on. FOM had a binding contract with the BBC to show all the races live on terrestrial TV, which met BCE's commitment to show all GPs live on FTA. He then allowed them to break that contract because he could raise more money by allowing Sky to show all the races live, with the BBC only showing 10 races. He then compounded that by allowing the BBC to escape completely from their contract. And although the BBC claim that it was for financial reasons, they are not short of money; they just choose to spend it on overpaid and under-worked executives. For example, just one of hundreds, the executive hired to oversee the move of staff from London to a new centre in Manchester. She was paid a multi 6 figure sum to conduct the move, although she lives in New York and the BBC paid, on top of her salary, for weekly 1st class travel over the Atlantic plus putting her up in a 5 star hotel. And she even made a mess of the job, because less than 25% of the staff and presenters have actually made the move, with many of them still commuting between the two cities. To be fair to her, the BBC was warned by those that they intended to move that they didn't want to go, but it was supposed to be her job to persuade them that it was a good idea.

To be honest, the amount of waste I saw in my brief time there made my eyes water.

[chillibowl]

but surely if waste is an issue, then a state run agency like the BBC, funded by yourselves and your fellow taxpayers, being asked to subsidize a sport which generates over a billion in profit each year is equally, if not more, wasteful no?

of course there is a social good in some sports broadcasting by the national provider but i would think that is a hard case to make about F1 these days.

[bjohnsonsmith]

Originally Posted by Mike Harte

What is the point of signing a contract if the parties to it treat as if it was not worth the paper that it was written on. FOM had a binding contract with the BBC to show all the races live on terrestrial TV, which met BCE's commitment to show all GPs live on FTA. He then allowed them to break that contract because he could raise more money by allowing Sky to show all the races live, with the BBC only showing 10 races. He then compounded that by allowing the BBC to escape completely from their contract. And although the BBC claim that it was for financial reasons, they are not short of money; they just choose to spend it on overpaid and under-worked executives. For example, just one of hundreds, the executive hired to oversee the move of staff from London to a new centre in Manchester. She was paid a multi 6 figure sum to conduct the move, although she lives in New York and the BBC paid, on top of her salary, for weekly 1st class travel over the Atlantic plus putting her up in a 5 star hotel. And she even made a mess of the job, because less than 25% of the staff and presenters have actually made the move, with many of them still commuting between the two cities. To be fair to her, the BBC was warned by those that they intended to move that they didn't want to go, but it was supposed to be her job to persuade them that it was a good idea.

Wasn't there some scandal, a couple of years ago about outgoing senior executives at BBC being payed vast sums?

[Mike Harte]

Nothing much has changed at the BBC. Although it is paid for directly by TV viewers, which is mandated by law and is, theoretically, a public body it is virtually unaccountable. Unfortunately at the moment, our politicians are trying to manipulate how it runs and what programmes it makes, no body really controls how it is being run.

It has huge layers of management, and every time that economies have to be made, it is nearly always the lower levels and the real workers that are cut along with programming; we now have more repeats and repeats of repeats than at any time in it's history. But the upper echelon seem to be safe from accountants knives, and even now they are recruiting more managers of paperclips at obscene salaries, plus more managers/executives to manage the redundancies.

[Sodemo]

Originally Posted by chillibowl

but surely if waste is an issue, then a state run agency like the BBC, funded by yourselves and your fellow taxpayers, being asked to subsidize a sport which generates over a billion in profit each year is equally, if not more, wasteful no?

of course there is a social good in some sports broadcasting by the national provider but i would think that is a hard case to make about F1 these days.

I completely agree. I personally feel that any state run track or TV broadcaster needs to have a serious look at itself if it wants to line Bernie's pockets.

The waste is endemic, in every department. A lot of it is born from incompetence, I don't think that there is any underhand dealings going on (or none that I was aware of), just people being basically bad at their job and making poor decisions. Like the decision to open a new studio at the cost of £100M instead of upgrading the old one at a cost of £30M because of "PR" reasons.

[Moneyseeker]

Originally Posted by Mike Harte

Nothing much has changed at the BBC. Although it is paid for directly by TV viewers, which is mandated by law and is, theoretically, a public body it is virtually unaccountable. Unfortunately at the moment, our politicians are trying to manipulate how it runs and what programmes it makes, no body really controls how it is being run.

It has huge layers of management, and every time that economies have to be made, it is nearly always the lower levels and the real workers that are cut along with programming; we now have more repeats and repeats of repeats than at any time in it's history. But the upper echelon seem to be safe from accountants knives, and even now they are recruiting more managers of paperclips at obscene salaries, plus more managers/executives to manage the redundancies.

W1A captured this well and was made by the BBC!

[Mike Harte]

Originally Posted by Moneyseeker

W1A captured this well and was made by the BBC!

So true. But then the BBC's management has as much grasp of the concept of irony as does Autosport.

[Casper]

Originally Posted by Mike Harte

What is the point of signing a contract if the parties to it treat as if it was not worth the paper that it was written on. FOM had a binding contract with the BBC to show all the races live on terrestrial TV, which met BCE's commitment to show all GPs live on FTA. He then allowed them to break that contract because he could raise more money by allowing Sky to show all the races live, with the BBC only showing 10 races. He then compounded that by allowing the BBC to escape completely from their contract. And although the BBC claim that it was for financial reasons, they are not short of money; they just choose to spend it on overpaid and under-worked executives. For example, just one of hundreds, the executive hired to oversee the move of staff from London to a new centre in Manchester. She was paid a multi 6 figure sum to conduct the move, although she lives in New York and the BBC paid, on top of her salary, for weekly 1st class travel over the Atlantic plus putting her up in a 5 star hotel. And she even made a mess of the job, because less than 25% of the staff and presenters have actually made the move, with many of them still commuting between the two cities. To be fair to her, the BBC was warned by those that they intended to move that they didn't want to go, but it was supposed to be her job to persuade them that it was a good idea.

Contracts are written to suit the contracted parties and no one else. It obviously suited all parties to agree to what they signed and the subsequent actions. I repeat though that the UK is not the centre of the viewing universe and BE knows it. There has been a point made that it is being done to increase the value of the commercial rights as moves are made to sell those rights, all speculation of course but it seems reasonable. If that were the case wheels within wheels have been turning and it profits everyone involved to go along with the new arrangements. You scratch my back and I will scratch yours.

[midgetman]

If I were trying to build a sustainable fan base I would be insisting that each PPV broadcaster HAD to offer a FTA highlights programme - maybe only half an hour including chit chat - to one of the FTA companies in order to capture new interested parties. And yes maybe satisfy old cynics like me, because we are also consumers of the sponsors' products.

Or maybe sell/give an FOM official edit that can top and tailed by broadcaster staff.

But there is no long term interest in F1 from the management downwards.