BBC to lose F1 coverage from 2016

[CHT]

What revenue?

They cut F1 to save money.

This is the same as company cutting product lines to save cost. Reason? The product line is not making money, thats why they cut.

They don't make money from what they broadcast (except where they sell programmes to others e.g. Top Gear). There is no income for the BBC associated with F1 or any other sport.

The BBC pays to show Wimbledon. How much? No idea but ESPN paid £300m in 2011 for 12 years of rights.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/tennis ... -2020.html
The BBC paid £204m for three years of rights to show highlights, yes highlights, of Premiership matches. Oh, and it was the only bidder...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/footba ... t-bid.html

The BBC doesn't like F1 because it doesn't fit in with the Corporation's current ideologies. It was an easy "oh let's save some money that is almost the same as the F1 cost, funny that!"

BBC is a profit driven organization that exist to make money by selling subscription, TV series, TV commercial for and during the program they broadcast. The more popular the program they are broadcasting, they more expensive the subscription and TV commercial slots.

And Yes , they do make money, And the reason they are willing to continue paying for Wimbledon and BPL because they make commercial sense and because F1 is too expensive as it required to pay for a bunch of "celebrity" crew to fly around the world to provide coverage for a sport that has declining global audience

[Just_a_fan]

The BBC does not exist to make money at all. It exists as a public service broadcaster funded by taxation.

The BBC has a commercial arm (BBC Worldwide) that sells stuff to people outside of the UK. Stuff like Doctor Who, Top Gear etc make about 25% of the BBC Worldwide's income. Worldwide brings in about 1/5 of BBC's budget.

F1, like all sport, is a cost to the BBC without an income stream. They paid Bernie a shed load of money for the rights to broadcast the races. That shed load of cash has been decided to be a shed load they'd rather spend elsewhere. So they've dropped F1.

[CHT]

The BBC does not exist to make money at all. It exists as a public service broadcaster funded by taxation.

The BBC has a commercial arm (BBC Worldwide) that sells stuff to people outside of the UK. Stuff like Doctor Who, Top Gear etc make about 25% of the BBC Worldwide's income. Worldwide brings in about 1/5 of BBC's budget.

F1, like all sport, is a cost to the BBC without an income stream. They paid Bernie a shed load of money for the rights to broadcast the races. That shed load of cash has been decided to be a shed load they'd rather spend elsewhere. So they've dropped F1.

BBC is a media company, just like CNN. And I would repeat myself they exist to make money, and the reason why they canned F1 is because they dont see that as a money making program.

http://advertising.bbcworldwide.com/home/specs
https://www.bbcadhub.com/account/login/?returnTo=%2f
http://bbcworldwide.com/annual-review/a ... eview.aspx
http://www.statista.com/statistics/2847 ... by-source/
http://bbcworldwide.com/media/64030/bbc ... 011-12.pdf

[Just_a_fan]

You can repeat it all you like but the BBC does not exist to make money. It is not like CNN at all. The BBC exists under a Royal Charter with the following purpose:

The Public Purposes
The Public Purposes of the BBC are as follows—
(a) sustaining citizenship and civil society;
(b) promoting education and learning;
(c) stimulating creativity and cultural excellence;
(d) representing the UK, its nations, regions and communities;
(e) bringing the UK to the world and the world to the UK;
(f) in promoting its other purposes, helping to deliver to the public the benefit of
emerging communications technologies and services and, in addition, taking a
leading role in the switchover to digital television.

Anything it does is to fulfil that Purpose. It is allowed to use BBC Worldwide to sell shows to other countries only in order to make money to fulfil its Public Purpose. That income is about 20% of the total BBC income - the remaining 80% comes from taxation in the form of the TV Licence Fee.

If the BBC's rights from FOM had allowed it to resell its content to others then it would have done so and likely kept F1. However it can't do that so F1 was a pure cost. BBC management decided to dump that cost; just like they decided not to spend money on just about every other sport except football and tennis. Snooker and darts are likely to be lost too soon.

[hemichromis]

You can repeat it all you like but the BBC does not exist to make money. It is not like CNN at all. The BBC exists under a Royal Charter with the following purpose:

The Public Purposes
The Public Purposes of the BBC are as follows—
(a) sustaining citizenship and civil society;
(b) promoting education and learning;
(c) stimulating creativity and cultural excellence;
(d) representing the UK, its nations, regions and communities;
(e) bringing the UK to the world and the world to the UK;
(f) in promoting its other purposes, helping to deliver to the public the benefit of
emerging communications technologies and services and, in addition, taking a
leading role in the switchover to digital television.

Anything it does is to fulfil that Purpose. It is allowed to use BBC Worldwide to sell shows to other countries only in order to make money to fulfil its Public Purpose. That income is about 20% of the total BBC income - the remaining 80% comes from taxation in the form of the TV Licence Fee.

If the BBC's rights from FOM had allowed it to resell its content to others then it would have done so and likely kept F1. However it can't do that so F1 was a pure cost. BBC management decided to dump that cost; just like they decided not to spend money on just about every other sport except football and tennis. Snooker and darts are likely to be lost too soon.

You are correct!! (I know you know this!)

[Jolle]

DC has signed to C4
http://www.gpupdate.net/en/f1-news/3344 ... o-f1-team/

hmmm, funny, I thought he just signed a contract for the new Top Gear show on BBC...
to bad, would have been a nice TopGear - F1 integration somewhere

[i70q7m7ghw]

DC has signed to C4
http://www.gpupdate.net/en/f1-news/3344 ... o-f1-team/

hmmm, funny, I thought he just signed a contract for the new Top Gear show on BBC...
to bad, would have been a nice TopGear - F1 integration somewhere

He could potentially do both? Although I'm not sure, Suzi Perry ruled out doing Top Gear because she said it wasn't possible to do both. The Top Gear thing hasn't officially been announced as far as I'm aware? So perhaps it was nothing more than a rumour.

It's good DC is part of the new broadcast team, I am a bit concerned about the rest of the team, I hope they bring some more people over from the BBC instead of using lots of unknowns from their own ranks. They definitely need more ex-drivers as pundits, considering SKY have got most of them already!

[hemichromis]

I really want Suzi Perry to come over. I feel she did a beautiful job off-setting Eddie Jordan's eccentricities.

What i don't want is the Sky F1 scenario were all the commentators look the same, sound the same, and talk about the same things!

[CHT]

Here is a statement from Chairman taken from BBC Worldwide Annual report.

The BBC Worldwide Board is responsible
for ensuring that the company, BBC
Worldwide Limited, continues to support
its shareholder and parent, the BBC.
It does this by delivering sustainable
returns while at the same time providing
both the BBC and the wider UK creative
community with an internationally
recognised export platform. Fundamental
to our role, however, is the overriding
obligation to ensure that, at all times, the
BBC brand and its reputation is protected
in all respects. The governance of the
Board and the company has been
designed with these principles in mind

This is a copy of BBC financial statement, please show us which part of the statement indicate that the BBC operation is funded by taxpayer money.
http://bbcworldwide.com/media/64030/bbc ... 011-12.pdf

Go to page 42 of the annual report and you tell me which part of the report mention anything about obligation as public service. All they talk about is no different to other profit driven company, and that is PROFIT for their shareholder.

[pob]

The BBC did make a little money back by selling their F1 commentary to other nations. They still did this even after selling out to Sky, so Coulthard/Ben Edwards/pitlane team all still covered the race live even though it wasn't going to be shown on BBC
In my opinion, it would have been possible to make a more engaging highlights package if it wasn't just the full race coverage with some of the boring chunks cut out.

[R_Redding]

Here is a statement from Chairman taken from BBC Worldwide Annual report.

BBC Worldwide and BBC America are offshoots of the parent company "the BBC" , and as such they receive no taxpayer support and are run in private company fashion.

The BBC (parent) , is the UKs state funded broadcaster.
It does not show adverts or charge subscription and is not encrypted , it is paid for by a tax on those with televisions (even if they do not watch the BBC). The current TV license fee is £145.50 per annum and was collected by the government upto 1991 and BBC since, all monies first going to government.

http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/

Anyone caught watching an TV unlicensed can go to jail , even if they are not watching BBC output. Infact , the BBC has a shameful reputation for jailing women for this crime.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/10 ... 63939.html

Rob

[R_Redding]

I hope C4 doesn't resort to employing Jonathan Legard as its commentator. Imho he was terrible in 2009 for the beeb.

I actually hope they go for Ben Edwards .. I got to like him when he did CART with John Watson in the late 90s,early noughties on Eurosport.

Rob

[tinhouse]

DC has signed to C4
http://www.gpupdate.net/en/f1-news/3344 ... o-f1-team/

hmmm, funny, I thought he just signed a contract for the new Top Gear show on BBC...
to bad, would have been a nice TopGear - F1 integration somewhere

He could potentially do both? Although I'm not sure, Suzi Perry ruled out doing Top Gear because she said it wasn't possible to do both. The Top Gear thing hasn't officially been announced as far as I'm aware? So perhaps it was nothing more than a rumour.

Coulthard co-owns Whisper Films, who won the contract to produce the F1 coverage for C4, so he was a bit of a shoe-in really. Jake Humphrey is one of the other owners but there's nothing on whether he'll be joining the team, yet.

http://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/news/c4-a ... 05.article

[ScottB]

The BBC is in retreat as the current government turns the screws on it's funding; anything that can be vaguely thought of as not being 'unique' or not fitting its mandate has either been chopped; F1, half the Six Nations matches, Olympics, BBC3 and so on, or is under pressure; Government ministers have questioned the existence of shows like Strictly Come Dancing, The Voice, even it's News coverage. There's also pressure building to massively scale back it's website, as apparently it's 'unfair' competition for the coincidentally mostly Tory party affiliated owned newspapers...

I would imagine they'll be allowed to retain Wimbledon, as that's popular enough in the Government's voter demographic that they could get blowback for it being cut, but beyond that, I'd be surprised if the Beeb retains much of anything, the goal seems to be drive it down into being a pretty low rent channel filling the quota for regional coverage the private media channels ignore.


But yes, to echo the others, the BBC itself is public funded, it has commercial arms, like BBC America or Worldwide that generate revenue selling the rights to screen content, e.g. Doctor Who in other markets, or to licence for the creation of new versions of BBC properties in other markets; e.g. Top Gear. But the bulk of its income comes through the licence fee. It would be preferable to allow them to integrate advertising than trying to grind it down, but cest la vie.


ITV, Channel 4 and others also receive income from the licence fee by the way, it doesn't all just go to the BBC.

[Just_a_fan]

Here is a statement from Chairman taken from BBC Worldwide Annual report.

BBC Worldwide is not the BBC. It is an off shoot of the BBC that exists solely to sell programmes to other countries. The Royal Charter was altered to allow for the formation and operation of BBC Worldwide. The BBC itself is funded by the TV licence which is collected from the viewing public. Any profit from Worldwide is allowed to be used to help fund the BBC itself which nicely reduces the need to increase the TV licence fee.

I can only assume that you are not British or you would be well aware of the role and status of the BBC in the UK.

Don't know why people are down voting you. Wasn't me I hasten to add.