Announcement expected in a few weeks.

*David Coulthard almost certain to fill Blundell's current role, however he may end up in Brundle's current role.
*Likely to be in an on-site studio or London studio, with on-site most likely option. MotoGP is only done in the paddock for cost purposes.
*Martin Brundle is expected to move should negotations succeed, he is likely to stay in his current role, but could move into either the Rider/Blundell role.

What a waste that would be, he has to commentate.

Agreed, Brundle has to stay as a commentator.....

They should do a mega move, and get Coulthard and Brundle in there together, with some BBC Talking head to keep up with the details and facts of the race.........could be good fun to have 2 Ex Drivers and a BBC commentator in the same booth .....

Agreed. I doubt he would take any other role.

After a successful first thread without any updates for the past few months, I have another update with a brand new thread to come with it!

The BBC Mole (he's not called that, but meh) tells me on another forum (some of you guys go on it) that there is not any news from the commentary side of things, but instead a lot more detail from the interactive perspective:

*The Interactive coverage will look very similar to what Sky SPORT has currently in Italy (link), as opposed to what Germany's Premiere currently has (link)
*Some bits of Premiere though, have been incorporated into the coverage.
*The only difference is that there is no Ferrari onboard channel, instead there will be a Highlights channel, which many will recognize, as it will be similar to F1 Digital+ in 2002.
*As mentioned in the previous thread, there will be four feeds: World Feed, Alternative Commentary (don't know yet about whether there will be an option for No Commentary), Onboard and a Highlights Channel.
*The Interactive coverage will last for up to ten hours for all support races and practice/qualifying sessions. Everything will be covered. The format is undecided, however, it is unlikely that the World Feed will be left open all day. I estimate for a typical European race on a Friday that coverage would begin at 8:00am and finish about 5:00/6:00pm.
*A one-hour highlights loop will be kept going overnight on Fridays and Saturdays.
*At 4pm, 6pm, 8pm and 10pm on the Sunday (differing for races outside Europe), a full race replay will be available along with the 3 other feeds. This is a good thing, so you could watch the World Feed live, and then watch the Onboard Feed if you wanted to in one of the replays.
*This will also be done at 7pm and 9pm on Mondays.
*Outside of these hours, a rolling feed of 15-30 minute highlights will be shown for up to 7 days.
*Timings may be affected by other sports coverage.

That's about it!

I've heard some different stuff...

Is that moving across to the FIA's website?

Any news on if this will be in HD? The picture quality at the moment is horrendous with really bad MPEG blocking..

I really don't care for everything else. If I can get SD qualifying and HD race with no advert breaks, thats great...

Hopefully this info will on the whole be true, but to be honest with the extremely strong digital interactive infrastructure the BBC already has in place I expect nothing less from them.

What we all still wanna know though is of course....

Well, I don't need to say it really, do I?

Cancelled my basic Sky subscription and ordered a Humax HD Freesat box today.

The money saved on Sky will pay for the £145 freesat box before the start of next season !

We really need to know about the commentators soon in case a campaign needs to be started to keep Martin Brundle at the microphone.

I'd be grateful for an update when you've got it set up, planning the same thing

Hoping FoM will broadcast in HD...

Pitpass claims Jonathan Legard, Martin Brundle, David Coulthard, Lee McKenzie and Jake Humphrey are the coverage team:

http://www.pitpass.com/fes_php/pitpass_new...es_art_id=36126

No, you do not but ....
A little birdie tells me you will not have to endure the grating tones of JAMES ALLEN in 2009

Jp

interesting...

A little birdie told me the same thing.

I haven't heard any rumours about HD, though. :\

I'll miss James Allens gems like "here in Valencia", when he is in Singapore....

Brundle

Radio 4 seems to be ramping up it's coverage of F1 on the Today programme. For the first time in recent memory they took up almost an entire slot this morning with comment from John Watson.

Could this be an indication that he will have some kind of role ?

That team seems reasonable, not sure about Jake Humphrey though. Also the idea of having the anchors in a studio is not something I think will go down well. A quiet studio always drains the atmosphere at race events IMO, just look at A1gp, skys Nascar and Indycar coverage, SA tv's and Asian ESPN coverage of F1 and you will see my point. The anchors need to be at the track, none of this studio rubbish.

If he happened to be a commentator, there's only one possible candidate to be with him!



FYI: Lee McKenzie last season worked on the A1 GP coverage in the pitlane. The article says DC + Humphrey will be based in London, but I don't think that'll be the case.



BBC have the HD facilities available, it's just a matter of time if whether FOM give them HD feed. ITV have been "HD prepared" for most of the season.

Couldn't agree less, it makes no difference. The BBC are covering F1 on the British licence-payers' money and I think they're quite sensible to avoid unnecessary extra expense like flying their presenters around the world to stand in pit lanes where we can't even hear them.

BBC F1
+ 1x Brundle
- 1x Allen
= OK

I think I agree actually particularly when they add zero value like the two clowns Rider and Blundell do at the moment.

Defiantly, there so little value added with Rider and BlunderBell IMO...

Better off just with the two commentators and maybe one in the pit lane.

Is it just me or are there even more ITV ad brakes now??? It seems like we get 10-15 mins and then a 3 min brake!!!

It's only two extra people - the cameramen will already be there for in-race interviews with the drivers etc so maybe restrict the number of runners/assistants you fly out. I think having a build up at the circuit helps build the emotion and excitement of the race. Also, I assume Coultard's air ticket will be paid by Red Bull for a lot of the races with his role as consultant.

I think the Governenment sneakily changed the rules from 7 minutes/hr to 8, while also making the rules so complicated it's hard to be sure . Also ITV is making sure they don't get caught like they did at Imola 06 (IIRC) having to stick their 5th ad break in at the end of the race.

Welcome back, BBC

http://www.autosport.com/news/grapevine.php/id/71018

WHAT?

However, that explains why nothing has been announced... yet.

D.M.N... this source of "yours", is it just JB26 on a certain other forum?

Did the cat jump out the bag?

To answer your question: Yes. My main reason for this is to inform others that don't visit the "certain other forum" details about da coverage.

Heh. Keep it up, saves anyone else doing it

Quite. I had high hopes for Ryder, and whilst he isn't anywhere near as irritating as Rosenthal, he still reduces himself to lazy assumptions and rhyming couplets. His partisan approach, in the Spa highlights prog, in relation to the Hamilton penalty were as unprofessional and embarassing as anything I've ever seen from a sports broadcaster.

For once, on that occasion, it was Blunderell who put a bit of balance and perspective...and you know somebody's got to have said something extreme(ly stupid) for Blundell to avoid the age-old temptation (for him) of simply repeating back what was said to him.

I expect the BBC to still be fairly pro-Lewis, and have no probs with that being a British broadcaster, but I think few will thank them in the long run if this extends to the appalling bias shown by some members of the ITV F1 team. Whether the BBC Charter covers anything of this nature I'm not sure.

So lemme get this straight. You've been claiming to have 'insider' information on the goings on at the BBC when really, you've been cutting and pasting someone else's postings on the DigitalSpy forum who you don't really know? Yeeesh!

there speaks someone that has had no interaction with the bbc.
they don't give a monkeys about the licence-payers, profligate, wasteful and inefficent. producers will burn through exactly as many license fees as they are given to spend.

the only reason they are talking about studios is that the F1 coverage on bbc has been aportioned a smaller budget than itv currently spends ... that doesn't mean they have suddenly started to care about the license fees, it means some other production, probably some bbc3 tripe, or some saturday evening bollox, is getting loads more of your money to spend, leaving not quite so much here. that is all.

they managed to waste enough by flying more people to bejing than the olympic athletes and team members put together,so im sure they can cope with sendin them to the F1 races

Yup, to me 'presented from the studio' just means cheapskate. But then that's the real reason why ITV started presenting from the paddock/pits instead of taking the mobile studio like the did originally - cheaper. And pretty dumb when a car fires up in the middle of a link so all you can hear in the presenter apologizing for the noise. YOU'RE IN THE PITLANE, WHAT DID YOU EXPECT TO HAPPEN?

Anyway, if they're not going to pay for a studio at each race like they used to, they might as well present from London. It did feel a bit hollow when they did it once before, remember when ITV fell out with Bernie over their contract which originally only allowed site access to the commentators and they had to present from London? Serious lack of atmosphere, but then with the crappy buildups ITV have been doing since Ryder/Blundell were appointed, I only tune in 10 mins before the start now.

Any plans to put it on BBC HD?

You say that as if the OP had tried to hide it ... when he hasn't, he stated up-front in his post that he was simply taking material from another forum which he thought would be of interest to us.

You can get down off the high horse now ;).

Well he didn't say it like that originally - it's been edited - but I wasn't trying to cause trouble and he did at least admit it once I asked about it so was fair enough to me. Like I say, if the mole is legit (and he really does appear to be) then someone needs to post it here.

http://forums.autosport.com/showthread.php...threadid=103303

My very first post (which for the record, I cannot edit) :

"I have recieved word from an "inside source" on another forum...."

Lee McKenzie is expected to do the Support Races the *Spy* (pun intended) has said.

I'd expect her to be presenting - if she turns out better that what Webster has been this year on ITV4, then I'd be happy.

But that's a different board. We've been referring to the one here, that you did edit - four minutes after I pointed it out. And it certainly didn't have the "tells me on another forum (some of you guys go on it) " bit when I posted. It says so below the post.

Does it really matter where it comes from as long as it's accurate?

No, of course not - which is a point I made as my second post in this thread after D.M.N. openly admitted where it came from. But editing something in afterwards does matter.

(In my last post I said "different board" - I meant "different post" of course.

Will the BBC have a live timing channel like Premiere/Sky

Right the information that I have been posting have come from one of four places:

*Digital Spy Forums (jb26/ariusuk).
*Autosport Forums (JasonSw).
*Newspaper Sites (The Guardian, Pitpass etc.)

I cannot see why this needs so much debate over "who" my sources are, why this is becoming such a big deal "who" they are, well I have no idea. If one person was saying completely different to another person, then yes, I wouldn't be surprised if the validity of the source was being questioned.

There are some people (including myself) that are passionate about the quality of TV coverage and would like to know about what BBC plans next year.

It also helps to gauge an idea of what people think about certain pundits, which can be helpful. I did change the opening sentence of this thread to reiterate that the person who revealed this information is not a different "source", he is the same person that I got some details off for the 1st part of this thread (BBC Coverage Update - all discussions go here).

I'm not sure why sources are being questioned who have specified their role with the BBC, but there you go.



Don't think so. I think they've only got capicity for four channels, with two others for other sporting events. I might need to check that for you.

My intention from the first post was a humourous comment - as evidenced by the ;) along with it, and my subsequent post. I'm an occasional poster on the original DS thread and a reader throughout the day (username TMLS313, just to show I'm not hiding under this other username) and just found it all silly, and as such with that let's just let it all lie.

Ah OK. Fair enough.

Blinkin' hell, my post was meant in jest as well - hence the emoticon at the end! I couldn't give two-hoots where the info came from. DigitalSpy or Timbuktu!

Lol!

Some more bits from the BBC staff member that comments on Digital Spy Forums (shortened) :

Good
*Qualifying build-up expected to be 1/2 hour.
*Race build-up expected to be between 1/2 and 3/4 hours.
*This is about the same as ITV, with ITV if you remove commercials plus any competition/website advertising, you'd get about 35/40 minutes of buildup.
*Comments from Brundle expected - an announcement regarding him is likely to come post season.
*Holly Samos and Lee McKenzie are likely confirmed, Adam Parsons is a question mark at the moment.
*McKenzie is the most likely candidate to present the support races.

Bad
*Ben Edwards out of the running unless he has a change of heart.

Any news on David Croft? He likely to remain as commentator on Five Live?