FORUMula1.com

[LewEngBridewell]

Free to air coverage of F1 will be on Channel 4 as of next season, as the BBC still battles with budget restraints (I just did an ident with them for their FA Cup coverage, so all their money went on me, sorry).

Anyway, Channel 4 have said that no advert breaks will take place in their live coverage, unlike the old ITV days. Also, Sky will continue broadcasting the Grands Prix as normal.

I personally don't mind the change of channel, and it's good to know that UK viewers will still have free access to the coverage. It'd be nice if the same commentators were kept (I think Ben Edwards and David Coulthard do an excellent job), and it'll be fascinating to see how it is all handled. The deal, as of yet, is short term (3 years I think).

Any thoughts on this from anyone else?

Happy Christmas everyone, BTW

[stonemonkey]

Since it was leaving BBC1 I wasn't planning on paying £28 a month for the sky sports package just to watch F1 (theres a local pub that shows the races so theres something better to spend that £28 on) so it's good news for me and I don't see it making much difference to the viewing of the races if they're omitting advert breaks, I guess some of the current crew will be moving over to ch4 too.

[darwin dali]

A switch to a different broadcaster can be unsettling. We had a change from Speed Channel to NBCSN a couple years ago with most of the commentator crew following. Turned out to be for the better with more coverage, etc.

[sagi58]

TSN carries the feed for pretty well all the races, around these parts!
I'm hoping that won't change!

[rob91]

I look foward to see what they do with the coverage, glad to hear that they won't have breaks during the races themselves. Here are the race schedules for Channel 4:

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Round	Race                    	Date                    	Live or Highlights
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1    	Australian Grand Prix	   March 18 – 20           	Highlights
2    	Bahrain Grand Prix	      April 1 – 3             	Live
3    	Chinese Grand Prix	      April 15 – 17           	Highlights
4    	Russian Grand Prix	      April 29 – May 1        	Highlights
5    	Spanish Grand Prix	      May 13 – 15             	Live
6    	Monaco Grand Prix	       May 26 – 29             	Highlights
7    	Canadian Grand Prix	     June 10 – 12            	Highlights
8    	European Grand Prix	     June 17 – 19            	Live
9    	Austrian Grand Prix	     July 1 – 3              	Highlights
10   	British Grand Prix	      July 8 – 10             	Live
11   	Hungarian Grand Prix	    July 22 – 24            	Live
12   	German Grand Prix	       July 29 – 31            	Highlights
13   	Belgian Grand Prix	      August 26 – 28          	Live
14   	Italian Grand Prix	      September 2 – 4         	Live
15   	Singapore Grand Prix	    September 16 – 18       	Highlights
16   	Malaysian Grand Prix	    September 30 – October 2	Live
17   	Japanese Grand Prix	     October 7 – 9           	Highlights
18   	United States Grand Prix	October 21 – 23         	Highlights
19   	Mexican Grand Prix	      October 28 – 30         	Live
20   	Brazilian Grand Prix	    November 11 – 13        	Highlights
21   	Abu Dhabi Grand Prix	    November 25 – 27        	Live