31st July, 2011
F1 on the BBC and Sky
The BBC has decided to cut it's funding for F1 from £50M down to £25M per year and this means we only get 50% of the races live and the rest only highlights. I must have a moan here - as I have a website and I am an F1 fan.
Please have a look at this e-petition.
We need 100,000 votes to get it heard in the House:
http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/57
I have been watching motor sport free to air for 45 years now. I have had Sky, Sky+ and eventually SkyHD for a number of years but recently, because of the cost, lack of income and difficulties with reception, I have had it switched off. I have found that Digital Freeview is a lot more stable in bad weather conditions and my next door neighbour's tree doesn't block free to air as it does the Sky dish.
Viewing figures have been around the 5 million mark for the last couple of years. A TV license costs £145.50. If 5 million viewers cancel their TV license next March that would be a loss of revenue for the government of £727,500,000 per year - big number, 0.75 billion. Over the six year contract that would be £4,365,000,000 or just over £4 billion loss of revenue for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport.
There are other ways of watching motorsport - you can get feeds from various places on the net. Over the coming months I will be investigating the various sources and publishing them here.
Two options from Nik on F1Fanatic:
1) Lidl Satellite kit for £60 pointed at Astra 1 to get German RTL on mute with R5Live.
2) Internet streaming. As its FTA in other parts of the world this is easy to find.
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If all the viewers who agree that 50% coverage is not an option stop paying their license the government would have to step in and do something. The BBC save £25M a year and the government lose £0.75 billion a year if 5 million viewers pack up their aerials and send them to DCMS.
Can you imagine what 5 millions boxed aerials being delivered outside Downing Street some time in March 2012 would look like?
And here are the original BBC excuses....
bbc.co.uk/blogs/sporteditors/2011/07/f1_coverage_to_be_shared
Click on my Formula 1 page for more news
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