planetf1.com

I am hoping news and info about Channel 4's F1 coverage can go here

I am wondering if / when they'll get a dedicated website

When their first show is on

Who'll be presenting etc

Any news in general!

I would imagine most of BBC f1 crew will be brought in by channel 4 or be snapped up by sky.

I am also betting that channel 4 can't stay away from adverts every 15 mins which will ruin the show and personally will cement me watching it on skyf1

By F1 crew do you mean presenters? If so as far as I know David Coulthard is contributing to Top Gear would that limit his availability, would you want that group in bulk?

http://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/david-coulthard-joining-top-gear-7060889

I imagine a line up like this.

Lead presenter. Jon Desborough. (Former c4 presenter of the rally coverage)
Expert analysis. ????


The only other person I can see in the line up is penny mallory. The former presenter of driven on channel 4 and their reporter on the rallying coverage.

I don't see anyone else than just the 2/3 people for channel 4. Maybe. Just maybe channel 4 may strike a deal with ssf1 and use the world feed and the sky commentators.

I cant imagine anyone snapping up the remains of the BBC crew. anyone of any use is already at sky. the last year of bbc coverage was shocking.

I wonder if C4 would do race commentary like other countries buying the audio feed of sky? that must be a cheaper way of doing it.

it will be on T4 with Dermot O'Leary presenting it in a studio.

I'd agree that it was shocking. Ever since Jake Humphrey left it has gone downhill and you could feel the BBC had lost interest in it.
But Lee McKenzie is well worth nabbing and the Edwards/Coulthard commentary team are as well.

I hope they do not go for VBH, when she takes on a show it is all about her preferences rather than what is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicki_Butler-Henderson

Vbh could end up in the Tom Clarkson and Ted kravitz role.

If channel 4 take a commentary team what about Charlie Cox as lead commentator

I did read online from a less than reputable source (won't post the link as it's banned it rhymes with 'The Fudge Fur-team') that DC's in the top slot for the role due to Whisper Films, the production company that DC, Jake Humphreys. They've been involved in the BBC offering the past few years and their involvement has been a big part in transferring to C4, with C4 actually investing in Whisper back in August.

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/a ... sper-films

So not only will DC at least likely stay involved, it potentially suggests this move to C4 has been on the cards for a while now. Granted though that C4's investment initially was to help bolster their sports offering in general with Whisper working on bringing NFL coverage over.


On a side note, I wonder if the fact that Eddie's getting very vocal would suggest that he isn't involved in the new team...

http://www.grandprix247.com/2015/12/22/ ... -coverage/

Again, not the best site for reputability but the story has been echoed by a few other clickbait sites.

They have said that they won't have any adverts at all during the live races. They will be covering half of the races live. At least 10 anyway. From what they have said, it will only be the highlights that might have adverts.

What I am wanting to know is what races they will be covering live. I can't remeber the date the BBC anounced what races they would cover live last year. I will just have to wait.

Whenever channel 4 does something live, I have never noticed the adverts to be as frequent as every 15 minutes. With the tour de france was on channel 4, the adverts may have been on at irritating times but they were more like every 30 - 40 minutes, not every 15. So if they will do the live races of F1 without any adverts at all, that will be great.

the ones to keep from BBC would be lee mckensie, david coulthard, ben Edwards

There are quite a lot I would like to go to channel 4. Lee Mckensie, David Coulthard, Eddie Jordan, Alan McNish, Tom Clarkson and maybe others too. I don't mind Ben Edwards but he does make a few too many mistakes when commentating. He has once said this year "and off the track goes Maldonado" when it clearly didn't even look like a Lotus. I also find the way he always says the same "lights out and away we go" at the start every time. But them maybe other commentators do that too. I wouldn't mind if he came to channel 4 as I am used to his style not since he has been on the BBC for several years.

Since Jake Humphrey left and Suzi perry joined, I just don't feel like it is as good as it used to be. Coulthard, Jordan and Humphrey seemed to get along very well together but now with Suzi Perry, they seems to be more mistakes and when reading out the results, she sometimes can't keep up with what is on the screen. I am sure this didn't happen as often when Jake Humphry was the presenter. I think that Lee McKensie does a great job at this in the practice sessions so it would be good if she did some more on the day of qualifying and the race as well as the practice if she goes to channel 4.

I have heard that BBC radio 5 live will still be covering it live so I somehow assume Alan McNish will stay doing what he did last year. I don't know about any of the others. I think it will be a real shame if David Coulthard doesn't do the commentating though. Other people may not like him but he doesn't seem to make the mistakes that Ben Edwards sometimes does as often. I also think he is quite good at predicting what might happen. I remember the British GP this year when the Williams had an excellent start, he said when the Mercedes pit crew got ready for one of their drivers that it could well be a dummy run and he was right. This was before either of the Mercedes drivers went past the pit entry too.

Lots of people will prefer different people to move from the BBC to channel 4 but this is just what I think.

Anyone but him.

Seriously.

I hope we'll have some special shows around the British GP, 8 out of 10 cats does F1, and expert opinion from the Goggleboxers.

On second thoughts...

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Yes please, can it include Eddie Jordan?

I don't know how I feel about Suzi Perry being in a lead role, I liked her though.

I really hope that they don't sign a couple of people mentioned in this thread.

However then again C4 will bring in some fresh blood so that they can put their own mark on the coverage this year, however the BBC F1 team were good and I can't really imagine them upsetting the apple cart too much.

The entire crew, believe it or not what you see is not the entire employment list of BBC F1 Staff. You got article writers, the technical team, camera/sound crew and of course those in charge of everything including producers/writers/directors.

I think it's around 60 Staff in total.

Will the BBC continue with anything or will it simply have nothing to do with F1 other than the news side of things. Which may mean keeping 1 BBC Journo on board just for the occasional website article or news appearance (like they keep their political correspondents).

The sooner people say enough is enough with the BBC the better. Making hefty cut backs and losing viewers as well surely means the end of the road isn't far off.

I'd be happy to see Lee McKenzie get a lead role.

Does anyone know whether Gary Imlach likes Formula 1?

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I heard that BBC radio 5 Live will still be covering it. It obviously isn't TV though. This will probably mean Alan McNIsh will stay part of the BBC team since he was the commentator for this last year.

So apparently C4's coverage will be done by a company called Whisper Films, who list a certain David Coulthard and Jake Humphrey as their directors. Between those two, their clients and some of the films on their website, they seem like they could do a good job with it. I'm sure I'll stick with Sky but at least check out their coverage at some point.

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I'd love to see Jake come back to the F1 fold. He was 1000 times better than Suzi Perry. Can anyone shed any light on how his stint on BT Sport has gone?

I'm looking forward to it.

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#KeepFightingMichael

In my opinion he's doing ok on BT Sport, I think he has always been more of a football fan than an F1 fan so fronting the football on BT Sport is more of a natural fit for him, saying that I thought he did well when doing the F1 on the BBC, I guess he knew that they were slowly winding down their coverage so got out at his earliest opportunity. I'd personally rather see him replace Simon Lazenby at Sky but I guess that's unlikely with the company he's a director of being involved with the Channel 4 coverage.

Not bad but I don't see him returning to F1 as he left so he could be at home more to start a family.

Coulthard confirmed as one of the presenters:

http://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/coult ... up-667100/

Are you surprised. He part owns the production company who is producing the coverage for channel 4

No I'm not surprised, just confirming the news.

Glad to see Coulthard continuing

The races covered by channel 4 live have been announced in the past few hours:


http://www.channel4.com/info/press/news ... la-1-races

Great to see there will be no ad breaks during the live races. Also delighted that the Belgian and Italian GP's on the list as well as the British GP.

He's doing great, he's popular among fans and fellow pundits. He's also a Norwich Supporter so has some love for the EPL/Championship.

I will be surprised if he does return to F1 though because although he is a fan, he is more of a football fan. Unless he is being sacked or given a hefty pay rise I personally don't see him coming to F1.

Ouch only 1 of the first 4 races, then Spain

At least they have some good races towards the end

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Does anyone know if channel 4 on their live race dates will have an equivalent to the BBCs red button? After every live race last year, there was the BBC f1 forum for at least an hour after each race. It will be a shame if Channel 4 don't have something similar that is available on freeview. I always find it a pain having to use websites for streaming things if that happens to be what they have instead. If they just cover the race and then the podium and hardly anything else after, that will be a shame. At least like I said, the BBC did extend all their live races quite a lot by having extra stuff about it afterwards.

Steve Jones a likely candidate?

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With car launches starting to happen and testing only a few weeks away it's a bit disappointing that C4 don't have a F1 website up yet.
Surely they could get a bare bones site and bring in some freelance F1 writers to do articles on the major stories.

I know the contract landed on them at the last minute and they said that the on-air team would be announced in February, but they could at least some sort of web presence by now, even if it was only a transitional one with the structure / layout copied from their horse racing site.

And if they'd done that people would be saying "look how little C4 cars about F1, they've put up a basic template of a site copied from their Horse racing one". Give them time, this is the first time they've done F1, I imagine they'll want to do it right first time. First impressions and all that.

That said.. not sure about Steve Jones

Steve Jones? That could be either really good or... not so good. I'm optimistic though.

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Pleased that Coulthard is going to be in it. After his initial years as a mouthpiece for Red Bull he's matured immensely as a presenter and is as good as Brundle now.

Disappointed that Jake Humphrey will be behind the camera rather than in front of it. He was oodles better than Suzy P, although to be fair she was sometimes easy on the eye when the wardrobe choice was optimized.

Overjoyed that there's no sign of that eeyjit Jordan being in the crew. I heard a rumour that Rupert Murdoch is going to pay them to employ Eddie because it could be the only thing that pushes me to buy a Sky Sports subscription.

Bring back another good technical man like Gary. I know that McNish won LeMans a few times but he didn't add much to the equation, so to speak. It was good to have someone who understood the nuts and bolts.


.

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I dont think Humphrey was ever realistic - his BT Sport contract is highly likely to be an exclusive one.

Wouldn't totally rule out EJ - even if he doesn't make the main presenting team he could still be involve with the documentaries and additional content that NorthOne are doing for C4.

Graham Lowdon would be a good choice if they want a recent team principle figure, or Suzy Wolff if they want someone with recent experience of these cars.
Though I suspect that whoever they get for the first year might just be there to fill up the numbers - I'm sure they'll want to grab Button for '17 if he retires at the end of '16.

Gary Anderson worked well as the tech features - but was absolutely horrible at the pit reporting stuff. You could barely make him out.

The BBC never found a good replacement for Ted Kravits when he was nabbed by Sky. Tom Clarkson was unobjectionable, but bland.
Hoping that C4 can find someone decent in that role - ITV struck gold twice with James Allen and Ted Kravits.
I know some don't like Allen as commentator but as the pit reporter he was excellent and set the model for what Kravits did after taking over (and continues to do today).

Steve Jones is a bit meh, but I'd happily give him a shot. Jake was mostly known as a Children’s TV presenter before he got the BBC F1 gig, so you cant pre-judge too much.
At least Steve Jones is used to high profile live TV (from X-Factor USA), Suzy always looked like a rabbit in the headlights whenever they were live

I think they should get Simon Amstell to relive his Popworld days

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A lot of the first races are on early morning UK time though, which isn't great for pulling in big TV numbers, makes more sense (for Channel 4 anyway...) to have their highlights at a decent hour and attract bigger numbers.