Mark Thompson Defends the BBC's Decision Over F1 Coverage

Rachel_Sandford

News Hound
Joined
Mar 16, 2011
Messages
198
Reaction score
0
Points
0
At the Hungarian Grand Prix, the BBC announced that it would be sharing F1 coverage with pat-TV provider, Sky. At a recent hearing in front of MPs at the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, BBC director general Mark Thompson was forced to defend that decision as many fans were generally upset over the deal which stipulates that BBC can only show 10 races live and the other 10 as highlights while Sky will have a dedicated channel for all races.

According to Thompson, there was a real danger of F1 disappearing from BBC completely and being handed over to a pay channel, and any other deal they made would have been worse for fans. In their deal with Sky, they will be able to save £150 million over a seven year period.

A transcript of Thompson's answers to MPs was recently published.


“The idea of sharing the rights under the remainder of the current contract and of potentially extending that contract was our idea," said Thompson. "There was a negotiation that led to all the parties involved in the conversation being happy with the idea. The effect will be to save the BBC well over £150 million between now and the end of the contract-money that obviously means that only half of grand prix will be live on the BBC, but it has enabled us to keep a very good position in Formula One, and to make savings that otherwise might have meant deeper cuts in other services.”


Thompson seemed apologetic to F1 fans when he explained that the BBC did not mean for F1 to be shared, but they did what they could in order to try and keep most of the sport on free TV.


“We know that Formula One has only fairly recently come back to the BBC; it has been very popular on the BBC. Secondly, we know that Formula One fans ideally do not want Formula One to be interrupted by advertising, because of the character of the sport. Nor, of course-for the subset of Formula One fans who do not have Sky subscriptions-would they, ideally, like Formula One to go entirely behind a paywall. I believe that the arrangements that we have reached offer very good value to the licence payer, and the experience of Formula One on the BBC will still be very rich. The first grand prix next season, when this new arrangement starts-the Australian Grand Prix-will be live on Sky in the very early hours of the morning. There will be a 75-minute highlights package in peak time on the BBC, which we would expect to reach many more people than the live coverage.


“Talking about changing the arrangements in the existing contract and the extension of that contract, all I would say - and I have of course heard the arguments that perhaps this could have been picked up by another free-to-air broadcaster - is that what we have done has guaranteed that a very large amount of Formula 1 will still to be free-to-air to the British public for many years to come. Had we simply stopped the contract and decided to walk away from Formula 1 after that, there was a real danger that all of Formula 1 would have gone behind a pay wall.”


With regard to their decision to go with a pay-TV provider, Thompson said:


“We were quite clear that, to get the economics to work for us, it was going to have to be a pay partner, and this was the only pay partner, credibly, whom we thought we could involve in it - indeed, a pay partner who had expressed interest in this very topic of conversation previously. It was an example of a free-to-air pay partnership, which is not by any means unknown in the market.”


And why not Channel 4?


“It seems to me that it was not required of us, and given that, in a sense, what we were trying to achieve on behalf of the licence fee payer was a significant saving, actually keeping the confidentiality of the process until it was clear whether the thing was viable and whether all parties to it-including, of course, the rights-holder-were happy, militated in terms of doing it the way we did it.”
 
Top