Gave it away at the end of todays FP3:

Will be back on 5live next year
Will hopefully also be on the red button

was what he said to sign off on sports extra this afternoon

The DC thing is a curious one to me.

We don't really know anything about if he'll be trackside, appearing during the race broadcasts (as oppose to maybe just the mooted Friday evening show), if he's trackside/in studio during races will he be at all of the races etc?

And that then throws up some interesting questions in itself about the Beeb's coverage overall..

I.E. if DC is to be a pundit at all of the races then surely that must mean he will be trackside. Can you really see DC flying from Monaco to London every 2 weekends for 9 months to sit in a tv studio? Me neither. I can however see him flying to each of the racetracks throughtout the season, especially as his only confirmed role at the moment is that of being a Red Bull consutant. They might want him available at any point up until raceday.

And if he is trackside maybe they all will be.

Bit more news:

*Looks like they will be in a London studio - not confirmed but at this time likely.
*There will be THREE pitlane reporters. Adam Parsons and Lee McKensie are the likely two, the third one is a "Question Mark" as such. It would seem like it could be Holly Samos, but it appears BBC want to keep the Radio 5 Live team as they were for 2009. So, I dunno who the third person is. We can start guessing, but......

Is Martin Brundle confirmed yet? And any word on Ben Edwards? Id love to have him as a commentator to just liven up races even at their most boring point.

I think there will be very little 'name' presenters/interviewers/commentators on the BBC coverage and it will be mainly people already with the company.

well if thats true then that is shitouse.

I have been concerned that the BBC will simply "poach" some of the Five Live F1 team and transfer them to the TV coverage. That would simply dilute the excellent radio coverage, and you can never guarantee that radio people will successfully transfer to TV.

Brundle is likely to be confirmed within next few weeks.

Not really.. it's the BBC. They're going to want to use their own people. It would be a smack in the face to their current staff if they ignored them all and went with outsiders. Brundle and Coulthard seem to be the exceptions to that, which is fine by me.. I like both. Let's see how they do. I have faith in the BBC. They are a professional outfit and their sports coverage is the best there is imho.

Well imo brundle is a must. Coulthard not so much, and he is continuing as a key figure at RBR so i doubt he will be in the commentary, and i really do believe ben edwards is the best commentator to fulfil the position. what company is he with, eurosport? smack in the face or not, they broadcast for the fans, not to keep the staff happy, well thats how it should be anyway.

ITV... a much bigger stumbling block.

Will the BBC broadcast F1 in HD?

If FOM provide them the feed, then yes.

Thanks.
Do we know if FOM plans on feeding in HD?

Not sure. Just found this from May 2007, but I don't think that ever materialised.

I wonder what exactly the analysts’ role would be. Will they have someone crammed into the corner of the commentary box, frantically working out various team’s fuel strategies on a BBC Micro and then occasionally informing the commentators of their predictions and also their own personal recommendations on what the teams should do? I hear Mike Gascoyne is currently unemployed and would be good at this job! Perhaps he could also do technical features in the build-up towards the Grand Prix, explaining the latest developments appearing on the cars - a bit like Gary Anderson's comments in the Technical Focus sections in the GP reviews in Autosport.

Yep, Gascoyne would be, as long as they didn't ask him stupid questions and repetitive questions.

Bernie obviously doesn't realise that if they broadcast in HD we would go and get all the equipment ! We follow the lead of what is available not the other way around.
The minute they start broadcasting in HD a huge proprotion of the F1 watching community will sort out a HD package, basically everyone that can afford it and that's partly down to him too.

I fail to see why that's any different a possibility than when every F1 fan in Europe had the option to go out and buy the equipment/subscription needed to watch the digital/interactive F1 feed a few years back.

Virtually nobody invested in what was needed to watch it, and where is that feed now? It doesn't exist.

Just to be clear on this whole HD thing.

FOM already use HD Cameras at the tracks, well almost, the on-board cameras are not HD capable yet!

To send the world feed out in HD would require a massive investment from FOM and therefore they are waiting for the 4 big broadcasters to commit to broadcasting the races in HD.

BBC, Fuji and Sky Italia have all said they would and are very keen to do it. Apparently the one broadcaster holding things up is Premiere in Germany. I understand that the HD take up in Germany is pretty small, which I find surprising??

Anyway the rest of this thread is keeping me amused somewhat!

Cheers,

J

I'm guessing the HD take in Germany would be larger IF it's F1 base was bigger!

Well, Germany is a bit cuckoo regarding HD, a year or so ago they actually canceled Pro7 and SAT.1 HD, while in our really, really small country the TV stations are preparing to go (at least partially) HD sometime next year which would of course most probably also include the F1 coverage.

The trouble with that was you needed a Sky Sports subscription, at about £35/month = £420/year, plus IIRC £12 per race for the FOM ppv. Total £624 for a 17-race season. It was just too expensive.

Err, Germany is a pretty big audience already.

Hi Ross,

Maybe I should have made my point clearer. The tv audience in Germany is big but the HD audience and the amount of people with HD is pretty small. Therefore Premiere dont want to make the investment while the audience is small, therefore they dont want to commit to FOM to broadcast the HD feed. Therefore FOM dont want to invest huge amounts of money until Premiere commit to HD.

Does that clear it up??

not sure it does actually, sorry!

J

It was clear enough already, thanks Don't worry about our resident specialist in disagreeable one-liners

Any feel for timescale once FOM decide to go HD, is it too late for 2009 already?

On Premiere, I'd have thought HD would be just what they need to bring in subscribers when RTL is free (though advert-ridden admittedly).

To be honest I don't know enough about HD transmissions and the amount of time it would take to get it up and running.

All I do know is that if it is not in HD next year it wont be because the BBC did not want it in HD!

Premiere are very unlikely to go for the HD option in 2009 either - at least (guess) in the first half of the season.

As Jason has already pointed out the take-up in Germany for HD appears to be low. Throw in the small matter of $300m or whatever the mindblowing figure it is they are paying for the F1 contract and you can soon see that paying even more for next year, especially when there is no leading German driver in the series, isn't high on their priority list.

Allied to that, they have recently undergone a major change both in subscription bracketing for sports, and a substantial encryption system revamp over the last few months, first of all to gain more money particularly from the F1 fans who were previously avoiding the football option and getting things quite cheap, and also to prevent cracked versions of Premiere making it outside of Germany.

All this is going to take time to bed down, and undoubtedly they will spend a good few months analysing how good the new encryption structures are. If it all works as they are probably hoping, then maybe second half of '09 - but more likely 2010, HD will become higher on the agenda.

Imperial: Yes, you are quite right, the digital feed was available (before it hit the UK in 2002) if you looked in the right places and went to extreme lengths to get it back in those days. However the cost of buying such a system was very expensive. The mainstream fans particularly hardly knew about it in the UK, and most that did know were put off by the price.

Sorry my response was to DMN but by the time I entered my reply several people had posted in between his statement and my answer.

Even with a drop, the German market (for F1 viewers, irrelevant of HD) is still fairly significant. Their average viewership is often close to the UK's best numbers.

According to the Daily Mail, the BBC and Jonathan Legard have agreed terms:

"Five's Jonathan Legard has agreed terms to be behind the mike when Formula One returns to BBC next March but won't be paid anywhere near the reported £50,000 per race predecessor Murray Walker receives for Honda ambassador work."

I do wish Charlie Sale would learn a bit more about the broadcast industry before he writes about it.

It should read behind the "mic" (short for microphone), not behind the "mike" which could mean some guy called Mike??

And did anybody think that Legard would be getting paid £50,000 a race???

Jason, "mike" is perfectly OK (or okay ;) ). I agree with you about the salary though, why on earth would they pay Legard in line with what Honda pay Walker?

Hi Orin,

I was just having a pop at Sale and the Daily Mail, they seem to have a pop at everyone else!

J

Are Honda really giving Murray 50k a race?

youve got to be kidding, 50k a race ahahaha

I doubt very much that Murray Walker is getting paid 50k a race, but then you just have to remember that it was the Daily Mail that said it!

That's not correct.

You did not need a Sky sports subscription at all. As long as you had a receiver you could subscribe to the F1 channel on its own.

That takes it from £35 to £16-35, plus installation and connection fees, some of us didnt have sky at home in the first place and didn't have control over whether it was installed ;)

I just hope that there is similar news about Martin Brundle soon.

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=BKgNPbz7xZk&feature=related ???

They do have an extra 20 million or so residents though.

Oh, I'd have gone for it if I'd known. I was analogue only at the time though. Perhaps I looked on the Sky site...

Probably for everyone he attends, yes.

I know his fee for appearances is in the region of 30k. So 50k for a race weekend isnt that much of a stretch i dont think.

How many races did he attend?

Thats a HUGE amount.

As I said earlier in the thread, Murray was not getting 50K a race from Honda. I was merely pointing out the craziness of the Daily Mail for writing such stuff.

I do believe that alongside MB and JA there was a third 'person that does not speak' to help out with the stats and analysis.

otherwise knowin as a producer.

incorrect-otherwise known as Autosport's Mark Hughes

jb26 on the Digital Spy forum has said that the following have either extended or signed a contract with BBC Sport. You can draw you're own conclusions from the exclusion of a main commentator from that list.

Jonathan Agnew
Manish Bhasin
Martin Brundle - Left ITV Sport; Joining BBC Sport.
Andrew Castle
Andrew Cotter
David Coulthard - Joining BBC Sport.
Amanda Davies
Jill Douglas
Tony Gubba
Celina Hinchcliffe
Sarah-Jane Mee - Left Sky News; Joining BBC Sport by the looks of things.
Lee McKenzie - Left Sky Sports; Joining BBC Sport.
Alison Mitchell
Stuart Pyke
Philip Studd

Where's Legard on that list?