The nights are closing in, the clocks are ticking, and the 2011 season is nearly over. As of this Sunday evening, the era of F1's exclusive free-to-air coverage in the UK will be at an end, replaced by the uncertain concept of a split Sky/BBC broadcast package from 2012 to 2018.And naturally, with the BBC likely to be keen to big themselves up in an emotional finale to their all-too brief return to full-time Formula One coverage, Sky have stomped all over their big weekend with their enormous gold-plated size ten winklepickers, with the news that their new full-season broadcasts of F1 will be housed on an all-singing, all-dancing standalone Sky Sports F1 channel.
Friday's announcement made all sorts of promises, with talk of interactive options, advert-free races (though tellingly, not advert-free practice or qualifying sessions), and a whole plethora of Formula One-themed programmes (fingers crossed for an At Home With The Chandhoks reality TV show, for a start). But, frankly, what they have announced so far should not really be all that tempting for any Sky-less F1 fans to consider making the soul-destroying leap to Pay TV.
If there's some good news in amongst all the bluster from the self-appointed sporting hype merchants of the UK TV marketplace, it is that their F1 coverage will be all in one easily-findable place, rather than being shunted around their myriad other sports channels, leaving F1 fans digging around in their programme guides to find final practice from Canada buried on Sky Sports 8: The OCHO.
But that's where the good news ends, really. The idea of a company with the financial clout of Sky setting up a dedicated motorsport channel, and then simply filling it with F1 coverage and F1-related fluff smacks of a huge missed opportunity. This could have been the UK's SPEED Channel, but instead it's an unsatisfying bit of appeasement which, for me at least, still doesn't tempt me to part with the £50-odd a month required to access the sodding thing.
Before the plans were crystallised, all manner of rumours were bouncing about as to Sky's plans, not least one that suggested that the corporation would hoover up the relatively cheap rights to the F1 support package and show a frankly knee-trembling amount of motorsport per GP weekend. Not just F1, but GP2, GP3, Porsche Supercup, and whatever else was invited along. It could have been the sort of sporting awesomeness strong enough to cleave every marriage across middle England in two in a single stroke.
Instead, it's essentially a glitzy, glamorous and expensive version of precisely what the BBC are already doing with the coverage. Sure, the post-race show might go on for half an hour longer, or the pre-race build-up might start ten minutes earlier, but in essence, they are just 'showing the F1' at a farcically-inflated cost. Which doesn't really seem worth the process of getting an engineer to install an entertainment box filled with 877 superfluous channels, home shopping commercials and identical versions of one of ITV's digital stations time-delayed by a whole number of hours for.
The possibility of a full, dedicated motorsports channel might just have tipped the balance in favour of biting the bullet and giving in to the Sky juggernaut. The UK does already have a motorsports TV station, but Motors TV operates on a budget of around 45p a week, and unless what you're after is tape-delayed coverage of a regional BARC meeting at Knockhill from last April, it doesn't really fit the bill.
Not that the BBC's options for 2012 seem all that tempting either. The revelation that five of their ten live races for 2012 will comprise of the sporting insomnia cures that are Barcelona, Valencia, Singapore, Korea and Abu Dhabi, with the processional Monaco and the underwhelming China thrown in, if anything makes the argument to secure some sort of Sky Sports-based access slightly stronger, if only to escape all the hideousness by watching Australia, Suzuka, Canada or Monza for the mere cost of several hundreds of pounds a year.
Granted, the Beeb did at least sidestep the potential landmines of the possibly-cancelled Bahrain and US races, which might have diluted their live coverage still further, and the fact that their non-live race shows will be 90 or 120-minute packages, not just a quick hour-long summary, makes the possibility of going without live coverage of half the season a little more palatable, but nevertheless not exactly an ideal situation.
But the internal struggle in many UK-based F1 fans now essentially revolves around justifying missing half of the races (aside from the odd dubious internet stream, but for legal reasons this author must point out that he would never consider such an option) versus justifying paying around £40 a month minimum for, essentially, one extra channel.
It is an internal struggle that will probably rage across the off-season, certainly for me. And one that has no truly happy solution. But Sky could just have convinced me to join the dark side had their all-singing all-dancing new dedicated channel been a true commitment to motorsport. Instead, it's just a big shiny plinth to show off their new toy on. And frankly, they might need to do a bit more than that.
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Subscribe to this comment's feedGood article
Its a shame but understandable that Patty is restricted from embracing dubious internet streams. Are Patty's loyal readers allowed to say that they would gladly pay (say a fiver a race) for such a service? And are desparately hoping they can find a decent live feed next year?
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