Speed TV drops F1 coverage

[donskar]

Posted in today's Houston Chronicle that Speed TV will end its coverage of F1 at the end of this season. No word on who, if anyone, will pick up the coverage. Anyone have any info? Fox owns Speed; maybe they will pick it up.

[hyde and zeek]

Fox is moving to Baseball coverage, Autoweek has details. Time to find a racingfor.me invite for next year.

[bill shoe]

Don't know what will happen next year, but I'm disappointed to lose the Speed broadcast team. The fact that F1 is such an obscure sport in the US meant that Speed could actually stock the broadcast booth with knowledgable F1 people rather than typical blow-dried U.S. sports announcers.

Congratulations to Varsha, Hobbs, and Matchet for many years of a job done really well. Thanks. Hopefully the next broadcaster will have the sense to hire them.

[WhiteBlue]

Logic would suggest that Bernie went for a bigger channel with two races in the US getting on the calendar next year. I agree that the best thing the new TV channel could do is hiring the speed team. Get some continuity into the fan base.

[beardRage]

I hate this. This means no more F1 for me unless a channel I already have picks it up. Speed isn't the best, but I enjoy those guys.

[ecapox]

NBC is getting F1. What that means is no qualifying. No practice. Races tape delayed.

Garbage.
Garbage.
And more garbage.

I will not watch. Period. I would rather watch a shitty quality feed that is live than to watch it tape delayed. Now practice and qualy are going to be harder to find for me.

[beardRage]

WHAT?! No, screw that! Provided I could get Sky, how much would it cost?

[Pup]

That's a lot of hand wringing considering that a deal hasn't even been officially announced, much less any indication of what NBC would show, or when, or on what channel.

Sometimes I think this board is populated entirely by 13 year old girls. "OMG!!! Something in my world is CHANGING!!!"

Frankly, I can't stand the snarky, uninformed Speed commentators. Sure, NBC could be worse, but it could just as easily be better. I welcome the switch.

[beardRage]

Most likely changing for the worse. It's possible that NBC will do it properly. They might use the sky feed and have more extensive coverage than Speed ever had. But it's highly likely we will only get tape delayed races. It's not clear whether they outbid Speed or if Fox just put in a low bid and NBC lucked into it. As for your little comments, I'm a 27 year old 6'1" 300lb Amerifat. I'm entitled to post whatever stupid crap I want without thinking first

[donskar]

It's mostly conjecture at this time, of course.

IIRC, NBC recently bought a cable network (Spike?) in order to create a sport-focused cable channel. F1 would be a logical fit. Unknown, but probable, that NBC would broadcast the races time-delay at better viewing hours in order to get higher ratings. We die-hards do not represent enough "eyeballs" to be important to the network suits.

[Ray]

That's a lot of hand wringing considering that a deal hasn't even been officially announced, much less any indication of what NBC would show, or when, or on what channel.

Sometimes I think this board is populated entirely by 13 year old girls. "OMG!!! Something in my world is CHANGING!!!"

Frankly, I can't stand the snarky, uninformed Speed commentators. Sure, NBC could be worse, but it could just as easily be better. I welcome the switch.

WTF are you talking about? NBC will never show anything other than tape delayed garbage, there's no reason to believe they won't. Formula 1 has very little mainstream coverage, even on Speed it's pretty sparse coverage over a whole weekend, and you somehow believe the broadcaster that royally effed up the Olympics with their tape delayed crap this year is all of a sudden going to be decent about F1? Get real, or rather get a damn clue.

Snarky uninformed commentators on Speed? Really? One is a WCC winning mechanic, another a former McLaren driver with a very nice trophy cabinet, and the other is a TV presenter I'll grant you that, but he's been around Formula 1 for 20 years. You're absolutely amazing, Pup. That's probably the stupidest thing I've ever read on this site.

[Ian P.]

In our world North of the 49th, we have the luxury of TSN. Oh Joy ....
What they use is likely the British Sky feed with What's-his-name and D. Coultard.
If you think the Speed comentatry is poor (I think it is GREAT) you would hate the overemphasized, uninformed commentary we suffer through. Better suited to Women's Soccer.
Not only that, but for some bizarre reason, the Spped coverage is blocked. We do get pre-race coverage and some practice sessions, but qualifying and race are "Not In This Broadcast Area".

If a tape delay were carefully done they could air the entire event with commercial breaks without loosing out on any of the race. So long as you can come to grips with the broadcast starting live and running about 15 minutes delayed at the end, we would have the best of all worlds. The sponsors would get air time without the annimosity generated by loosing race coverage and we would see the entire (slightly interrupted) race. Even have time to go get breakfast during the commercials.

My vote is for Steve M. David H. and Bob V. to get picked up by someone astute enough to see the potential.

[bhall]

Realize that NBC is a bit more than just NBC, that it's NBC, NBC Universal, USA Network, Hulu, G4 and all Comcast Sports channels, and I think it's pretty easy to see that such a move is potentially a pretty big step up from the current arrangement with Speed/Fox.

Logic would suggest that Bernie went for a bigger channel with two races in the US getting on the calendar next year. I agree that the best thing the new TV channel could do is hiring the speed team. Get some continuity into the fan base.

Ecclestone went for the biggest payday. If the highest bid had come from public access in Aurora, IL, he would have gladly taken that money and told the rest of America where to go.

[donskar]

This piece from Fox News is even more bad news for US racing fans. Sounds like "Speed TV" will degenerate into "baseballbaseballbaseballandsomeotherstuff TV":

The departure of F1 comes as Fox Sports moves closer to rebranding its motorsports network into a broad-based national sports network. Fox has not commented on the rebranded channel, expected to be called Fox Sports 1, but it is expected to be heavily utilized in the eight-year television contract announced earlier this month with Major League Baseball.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/sports/2012/10/1 ... z29DYO8Pck

[Ray]

If a tape delay were carefully done they could air the entire event with commercial breaks without losing out on any of the race.

That's what Fox did for their 4-5 races a year. Every commercial break resumed where the action stopped. You were a few minutes behind, but the 3-4 laps normally lost during a break were still shown, even if it was a bit behind. Not the best solution, which would be no commercial breaks, but a compromise that worked. The problem they had was at they started coverage on the warm up lap, and ended at the checkers. Which is BS because there's like two hours of coverage before the NASCAR races, and about a half hour afterwards. And NASCAR is crap, so it really stings to be shortchanged like that.

My vote is for Steve M. David H. and Bob V. to get picked up by someone astute enough to see the potential.

It is my understanding that Hobbo and Steve are free agents, but Bob is contractually bound to Speed/Fox. I'd love to see all three get the gig, but I doubt it's possible, sadly.

Realize that NBC is a bit more than just NBC, that it's NBC, NBC Universal, USA Network, Hulu, G4 and all Comcast Sports channels, and I think it's pretty easy to see that such a move is potentially a pretty big step up from the current arrangement with Speed/Fox.

I realize that, but I have no inclination they'll do anything but absolute bare bones, tape delayed crap riddled with commercials. If Fox couldn't do it, and they didn't, then I have very little hope for NBC or their subsidiaries. They after all showed who won events before they were tape delay aired from the Olympics, and Formula 1 has nowhere near the audience or commercial viability that the Olympics does. The only hope they have is ESPN3, but I don't know who owns ESPN, and their ALMS coverage is by far the worst broadcast of any sporting event I've ever seen. From severe and inexcusable audio dropouts (they played the audio from the very beginning of a race for 20 minutes after an hour and a half of racing before it was fixed), to commentators being way louder than race cars, ESPN3 coverage is barely tolerable. The only reason I suffered through it on ALMS race weekends is because they had Hindy and Jeremy Shaw commentating.