ITV Digital was driven out of business by choosing to pay £105 million a year for Football League rights and then pulling in just 200,000 subscribers paying £6.99/month. If they were still around, they would probably have paid £30 million for GP2 and GP3 rights.
I had ITV Digital or On Digital as it was known before. And yes it was a total failure. £105 million for FL footy? Awful decision. I know I have criticised BskyB but there business is totally brilliant and it really is stunning what they have done. Considering as well were they came from!
I still have the old On Digital box they gave me for free! And I also still have the stupid stickers they sent me when they rebranded to ITV Digital. We were supposed to put them over the On digital logos!
At that point I knew they were in the shit. I mean STICKERS! Do me a favour.
I have a problem with doomed Pay TV services I had BSB as well! And I still have the squarial. They looked like this for those of you who are to young to remember.
Not so much an F1 point but what fascinates me about HD is that, one day, HD channels will become the norm. If I don't pay for HD until that day, will I suddenly find my Sky bill whacking up by another tenner a month, or are all the current HD subscribers suddenly going to find their bills a tenner cheaper?
At some point the selling of ice to the Eskimos (HD is nice, but paying an extra ten pound a month - increasing my Sky bill by 25% - for a slightly nicer picture, I mean, come on!) will run out of legs..
Not so much an F1 point but what fascinates me about HD is that, one day, HD channels will become the norm. If I don't pay for HD until that day, will I suddenly find my Sky bill whacking up by another tenner a month, or are all the current HD subscribers suddenly going to find their bills a tenner cheaper?
At some point the selling of ice to the Eskimos (HD is nice, but paying an extra ten pound a month - increasing my Sky bill by 25% - for a slightly nicer picture, I mean, come on!) will run out of legs..
I am the same, could not care about HD, I just have the HD pack to get SS F1.
I still have the old On Digital box they gave me for free!
Didn't it always belong to On Digital, I had the Nokia which was on its last legs by the time the administrators for ITV Digital sent me a bill for £30 to keep the box.
I sent them a reply saying they could collect it whenever they like but they never got back to me.
BSB Squarial isn't that when we first saw Chris Evans, whatever happened to him.
That's how it's claimed, but for those who are actually in the know (as opposed to those who run a blog site in their spare time) will be aware of two Times articles published during the early 2011 season, seemingly based on their proprietor's wish list.
If you had seen those articles (which listed falsely low audience figures) you'd be able to understand why the BBC Management digested the contents and instructed BBC Sport to cut F1 expenditure, in light of the government's decision to throttle the BBC under instruction from Mr Murdoch.
How could the BBC make the biggest cut to their F1 expenses & rights fees? Go to a pay TV broadcaster with lots of money, of course.
Seeing as ITV Digital was driven out of business thanks to the activities of a dodgy company affiliated to BSkyB, there was only one other option... Sky Sports.
Sky Sports just had to sit back and wait for the BBC's call.
I know of those two Times articles because they were widely reported at the time - including in this thread.
BBC management though I'm pretty sure have access to all the audience figures and don't need to base their decision based on a few articles written in the Times.
So the statement "BBC went to Sky to get the deal we have now" is factually true, I left it there instead of going into detail about that because we have been through the subject many, many times on this thread. Of course there were other factors, but I didn't see the need to bring it up - the main response was into Sky "stealing", they didn't "steal" anything.
So are Sky UK and Italy sharing the on track production completely here or are Italy doing there own thing to some extent?
It's not specified in the press release. They said they "reached a deal with Sky UK", which could mean they're sharing the costs. That's why I said it's a SORT-OF co-production, I can't see Sky just taking the feed without giving Sky UK something
It's not specified in the press release. They said they "reached a deal with Sky UK", which could mean they're sharing the costs. That's why I said it's a SORT-OF co-production, I can't see Sky just taking the feed without giving Sky UK something
It would make sense to do it together, less equipment needed and less cost to both.
Could be a case of Sky UK doing the 3D productions and Sky Italy doing the 2D side.
Just to back DMN up here, wbm00 are you seriously suggesting that a company concluded a multi-million pound business deal based on something they read in a newspaper???
As mis-managed as the Beeb has proven to be at times, frankly that's ridiculous!
It would make sense to do it together, less equipment needed and less cost to both.
Could be a case of Sky UK doing the 3D productions and Sky Italy doing the 2D side.
I thought it was said that Sky were doing the 3D and FOM the 2D?
Of course there were other factors, but I didn't see the need to bring it up - the main response was into Sky "stealing", they didn't "steal" anything.
The "other factors" being the throttling of BSkyB's main rival, the BBC. But yeah, no point bringing it up, it's not like that caused them to rethink their sports rights or bring in DQF or anything. :rolleyes:
wbm00 are you seriously suggesting that a company concluded a multi-million pound business deal based on something they read in a newspaper???
The articles let them know that Sky were interested in the rights. In fact, not just interested, but eager. Sky Sports wanted Formula 1 - they weren't interested in 2007/8 but having seen the BBC's ratings, they figured a slice of that cake wouldn't be a bad thing.
At the time, Andrew Benson wrote an article on the subject, based on the consensus (at the time) that the Concorde terms would prevent it moving to pay-TV (LINK).
Is Ted the real star of the Sky F1 vehicle? Yes, I think he just might be. The Dutch swearing bit was funny!
Did they do a feature on that?
I've always sought out their commentary on certain incidents ("Mark Webber what the f**k was that????" after Valencia '10, etc") and of course the Stoddart interview during the Indy 05 farce (not a race, a farce ) has gone down in legend, but I would never have expected any broadcaster here acknowledge the... slightly different...way the Europeans react to the big events in the races...
Yes! Stealing stuff off National FTA broadcasters by either using Government influence to knobble them or cash incentives and the charging people top whack for things that should be or once were free!
Look around Europe, there is a clear policy at FOM to put F1 on pay tv, you can go on with conspiracy theories but you are wrong.
Look around Europe, there is a clear policy at FOM to put F1 on pay tv, you can go on with conspiracy theories but you are wrong.
So everything I post is a conspiracy theory, not based on what happened and wrong and your opinion is right.
And you are? :rolleyes:
So you are right based on your claim that everyone else is doing it? :rolleyes:
We have clearly seen ITV locking up its HD channels after being given cash incentives from Sky and we know about Murdock influencing the Government and then them freezing the licence fee. All obvious, no conspiracy.
I've always sought out their commentary on certain incidents ("Mark Webber what the f**k was that????" after Valencia '10, etc") and of course the Stoddart interview during the Indy 05 farce (not a race, a farce ) has gone down in legend, but I would never have expected any broadcaster here acknowledge the... slightly different...way the Europeans react to the big events in the races...
Would love to see this feature if possible.
No wasn't a feature, nothing so advanced, sorry...it was just van der Garde walking past around about the time Ted was starting to wrap up his notebook and they randomly got into a conversation based on the fact the only Dutch word Ted knew was a swear word...although he was pleased to find out that it wasn't as "bad" a swear word as he thought!
Was all beeped out for our benefit, but it was just the randomness of it all I liked! The segues into other unplanned stuff, the lets-do-this-in-one-take-no-matter-what attitude and the naturalness of the way Ted presents it all makes it very entertaining.
We have clearly seen ITV locking up its HD channels after being given cash incentives from Sky and we know about Murdock influencing the Government and then them freezing the licence fee. All obvious, no conspiracy.
What do we know? Everything seems to be based on a speech that James M made at the Edinburgh Festival in 2009.
I'm sorry, have I accidentally wandered into 2012 here? surely we're not arguing the BBC sale of the rights to Sky again are we?? I could've sworn this conversation's been done before.
The way people go on about Murdoch in here is like he's personally behind every decision, and is physically leaning over and taking cash from your back pocket (probably just to wipe his ar** with!), it's borderline obsessional the way some keep beating the same subject to death.
FTA is going, no amount of whining or lip biting is going to stop it. The UK fan has a sense of entitlement that goes beyond anything I've seen in other countries, be thankful you've still got some FTA left and enjoy it whilst it lasts. Harsh as it is to say....the harcore fan sat on the sofa at home who never spends a penny on F1 is dead weight to FOM, they're not going to waste their time trying to satisfy people who contribute very little to their bottom line. It's a business not a national right, I think some seem to be slow on working that one out.
It's frustrating you have to pay for things these days but that's the way it is, too many people wanting the best of everything with not enough resources to go around.
The "other factors" being the throttling of BSkyB's main rival, the BBC. But yeah, no point bringing it up, it's not like that caused them to rethink their sports rights or bring in DQF or anything. :rolleyes:
I didn't bring it up in detail because we've discussed it many, many times before. I'm not sure what is so difficult to understand there?
Back to 2013 - loved Ted's Notebook yesterday. Please do live Notebooks next week, Sky!
Didn't it always belong to On Digital, I had the Nokia which was on its last legs by the time the administrators for ITV Digital sent me a bill for £30 to keep the box.
I sent them a reply saying they could collect it whenever they like but they never got back to me.
BSB Squarial isn't that when we first saw Chris Evans, whatever happened to him.
It did and the administrators tried realaly hard to get them off us. There was quite a big thing made about it at the time and eventually they gave in and we kept them. I had a Pace Box and I always really liked the look of it and I still dop know. It's quite small but here is a picture.
It was a nice sized controller as well. If they wouldn't have gave in and took back all the boxes the new Freeview service that launched after it would have failed to get of the ground because no one would have had a box for it.
We take the piss about On Digital but I thought it was good value for money at the time and I very wrongly thought it was the next big thing. I still think it could have worked.
As for BSB I also really loved BSB. The best channel was Galaxy that showed some good stuff. All the BSB channels looked good and were branded very well. Picture quality was amazing and the sound I remember blew me away. They even broadcast extra coverage from Wimbledon shared with the BBC. That was on The Sports Channel which soon became Sky Sports. I never saw the change because they switched of the Marco polo satellite and I was back to good old analogue.
That was my brief encounter with satellite TV back in the 90's. I'll never do it again.
wow I didn't realise that happened to anyone! tough luck huh?
my father was always against getting satellite tv because he didn't want a dish on the house.
with digital tv through an aerial, he liked the idea of extra channels without too much fuss (he was a bit miffed when we discovered we needed an aerial upgrade)
Thanks to this move I discovered MotoGP & CART on Eurosport
To my surprise the old boy didn't take much persuading to get Sky after everything folded. I guess he caught the multichannel bug
that could bring the conversation full circle back to sky getting the refugees from itv digital…..
FTA is going, no amount of whining or lip biting is going to stop it. The UK fan has a sense of entitlement that goes beyond anything I've seen in other countries, be thankful you've still got some FTA left and enjoy it whilst it lasts. Harsh as it is to say....the harcore fan sat on the sofa at home who never spends a penny on F1 is dead weight to FOM, they're not going to waste their time trying to satisfy people who contribute very little to their bottom line. It's a business not a national right, I think some seem to be slow on working that one out.
It's frustrating you have to pay for things these days but that's the way it is, too many people wanting the best of everything with not enough resources to go around.
FTA was never free, we pay a license fee which then enables the BBC to show a selection of programmes to reflect license fee payers (i.e. us) interests. And the fact is sport is part of that, the BBC should try and show a selection of sports. and F1 was always rated the highest in terms of viewer appreciation out of all the sports BBC show.
"the harcore fan sat on the sofa at home who never spends a penny on F1 is dead weight to FOM" plenty of hardcore fans want to spend money on F1 but FOM is terrible at offering us products to buy. Give us paid access to the FOM archives.
As F1 moves away from FTA coverage it moves away from the mainstream. Now you can argue for and against it, but to be so dismissive of FTA broadcasting is pretty arrogant of you to be honest.
FTA was never free, we pay a license fee which then enables the BBC to show a selection of programmes to reflect license fee payers (i.e. us) interests. And the fact is sport is part of that, the BBC should try and show a selection of sports. and F1 was always rated the highest in terms of viewer appreciation out of all the sports BBC show.
"the harcore fan sat on the sofa at home who never spends a penny on F1 is dead weight to FOM" plenty of hardcore fans want to spend money on F1 but FOM is terrible at offering us products to buy. Give us paid access to the FOM archives.
As F1 moves away from FTA coverage it moves away from the mainstream. Now you can argue for and against it, but to be so dismissive of FTA broadcasting is pretty arrogant of you to be honest.
FTA was never free???....we'll leave the free aspect in relation to ITV and how that is covered by the tv licence fee for another day then. I wasn't actually being dismissive of FTA at all, I'm being dismissive that YET again this thread has descended into a debate about the BBC and their loss of coverage. It's like this forum wants to be stuck in 2011/2012 all over again. It would help if you understood what I was saying rather then jump in and try and attack me for something I wasn't actually bringing up. I've made it perfectly clear in previous posts I'm sad at the demise of FTA but fully understand the reasons why's it's going.
Yes I'm fully aware how the licence fee works thank you (paying for it myself and all). But the fact remains that many people on here expect all the sessions live in HD, all the spin off programmes, plus live coverage from all 20 races for their part of a licence fee. When you total up the demands of what people want vs the cost of actually providing that then something had to give. The BBC can't afford to provide the service that people want. Unfortunately the licence fee is designed to cater for all markets, I'm sure we'd all love to devote our fee directly to F1 coverage to ensure quality FTA transmission, but it doesn't work like that.
Even if FOM opened up access to archives people would still find fault and reason to whinge, no doubt saying their licence fee paid for it in the past so why don't they get it free now etc etc. The typical 'BBC Bertie' style F1 fan in this country comes across so entitled at times. I'd rather pay for good quality access/coverage then maintain some mediocre from of FTA programming.
Irrespective of all the vitriol, F1 is a form of entertainment, it's not a god given national right to get free tv coverage.
Comments
I had ITV Digital or On Digital as it was known before. And yes it was a total failure. £105 million for FL footy? Awful decision. I know I have criticised BskyB but there business is totally brilliant and it really is stunning what they have done. Considering as well were they came from!
I still have the old On Digital box they gave me for free! And I also still have the stupid stickers they sent me when they rebranded to ITV Digital. We were supposed to put them over the On digital logos!
At that point I knew they were in the shit. I mean STICKERS! Do me a favour.
I have a problem with doomed Pay TV services I had BSB as well!
Ken
At some point the selling of ice to the Eskimos (HD is nice, but paying an extra ten pound a month - increasing my Sky bill by 25% - for a slightly nicer picture, I mean, come on!) will run out of legs..
Didn't it always belong to On Digital, I had the Nokia which was on its last legs by the time the administrators for ITV Digital sent me a bill for £30 to keep the box.
I sent them a reply saying they could collect it whenever they like but they never got back to me.
BSB Squarial isn't that when we first saw Chris Evans, whatever happened to him.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wu1xXaNN51g
I know of those two Times articles because they were widely reported at the time - including in this thread.
BBC management though I'm pretty sure have access to all the audience figures and don't need to base their decision based on a few articles written in the Times.
So the statement "BBC went to Sky to get the deal we have now" is factually true, I left it there instead of going into detail about that because we have been through the subject many, many times on this thread. Of course there were other factors, but I didn't see the need to bring it up - the main response was into Sky "stealing", they didn't "steal" anything.
It's not specified in the press release. They said they "reached a deal with Sky UK", which could mean they're sharing the costs. That's why I said it's a SORT-OF co-production, I can't see Sky just taking the feed without giving Sky UK something
Could be a case of Sky UK doing the 3D productions and Sky Italy doing the 2D side.
As mis-managed as the Beeb has proven to be at times, frankly that's ridiculous!
I thought it was said that Sky were doing the 3D and FOM the 2D?
The articles let them know that Sky were interested in the rights. In fact, not just interested, but eager. Sky Sports wanted Formula 1 - they weren't interested in 2007/8 but having seen the BBC's ratings, they figured a slice of that cake wouldn't be a bad thing.
At the time, Andrew Benson wrote an article on the subject, based on the consensus (at the time) that the Concorde terms would prevent it moving to pay-TV (LINK).
Did they do a feature on that?
I've always sought out their commentary on certain incidents ("Mark Webber what the f**k was that????" after Valencia '10, etc") and of course the Stoddart interview during the Indy 05 farce (not a race, a farce
Would love to see this feature if possible.
Look around Europe, there is a clear policy at FOM to put F1 on pay tv, you can go on with conspiracy theories but you are wrong.
SSN Reports:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xxmuql_barcelona-test-1-day-1-ssn-reports_auto
SSF1 15min review (Kimi's response to Craig Slater's question at the end
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xxmv8o_barcelona-test-1-day-1_auto
Ted's Notebook (Ted's dutch swearing with Van Der Garde
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xxmvr7_ted-s-notebook-barcelona-test-1-day-1_auto
So everything I post is a conspiracy theory, not based on what happened and wrong and your opinion is right.
And you are? :rolleyes:
So you are right based on your claim that everyone else is doing it? :rolleyes:
We have clearly seen ITV locking up its HD channels after being given cash incentives from Sky and we know about Murdock influencing the Government and then them freezing the licence fee. All obvious, no conspiracy.
Frack me, that was funny.
Also, i know that we slate that Slater bloke, but he asked some good questions today. Credit where its due.
No wasn't a feature, nothing so advanced, sorry...it was just van der Garde walking past around about the time Ted was starting to wrap up his notebook and they randomly got into a conversation based on the fact the only Dutch word Ted knew was a swear word...although he was pleased to find out that it wasn't as "bad" a swear word as he thought!
Was all beeped out for our benefit, but it was just the randomness of it all I liked! The segues into other unplanned stuff, the lets-do-this-in-one-take-no-matter-what attitude and the naturalness of the way Ted presents it all makes it very entertaining.
What do we know? Everything seems to be based on a speech that James M made at the Edinburgh Festival in 2009.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/aug/28/james-murdoch-bbc-mactaggart-edinburgh-tv-festival
C4 have done the same, 'locking up' its HD with Virgin, or is that OK because a Murdoch isn't involved?
Can we thank Murdoch for the Government freezing our Council Tax too?
Sorry, off topic.
The way people go on about Murdoch in here is like he's personally behind every decision, and is physically leaning over and taking cash from your back pocket (probably just to wipe his ar** with!), it's borderline obsessional the way some keep beating the same subject to death.
FTA is going, no amount of whining or lip biting is going to stop it. The UK fan has a sense of entitlement that goes beyond anything I've seen in other countries, be thankful you've still got some FTA left and enjoy it whilst it lasts. Harsh as it is to say....the harcore fan sat on the sofa at home who never spends a penny on F1 is dead weight to FOM, they're not going to waste their time trying to satisfy people who contribute very little to their bottom line. It's a business not a national right, I think some seem to be slow on working that one out.
It's frustrating you have to pay for things these days but that's the way it is, too many people wanting the best of everything with not enough resources to go around.
I didn't bring it up in detail because we've discussed it many, many times before. I'm not sure what is so difficult to understand there?
Back to 2013 - loved Ted's Notebook yesterday. Please do live Notebooks next week, Sky!
It did and the administrators tried realaly hard to get them off us. There was quite a big thing made about it at the time and eventually they gave in and we kept them. I had a Pace Box and I always really liked the look of it and I still dop know. It's quite small but here is a picture.
http://i.ebayimg.com/t/PACE-ON-DIGITAL-SET-TOP-BOX-MODEL-DTR730-1M-/00/s/MTIwMFgxNjAw/$(KGrHqJ,!lwF!emOQJBEBQQkPspq8w~~60_35.JPG
It was a nice sized controller as well. If they wouldn't have gave in and took back all the boxes the new Freeview service that launched after it would have failed to get of the ground because no one would have had a box for it.
We take the piss about On Digital but I thought it was good value for money at the time and I very wrongly thought it was the next big thing. I still think it could have worked.
As for BSB I also really loved BSB. The best channel was Galaxy that showed some good stuff. All the BSB channels looked good and were branded very well. Picture quality was amazing and the sound I remember blew me away. They even broadcast extra coverage from Wimbledon shared with the BBC. That was on The Sports Channel which soon became Sky Sports. I never saw the change because they switched of the Marco polo satellite and I was back to good old analogue.
That was my brief encounter with satellite TV back in the 90's. I'll never do it again.
Anyway that was totally irrelevant.
Ken
wow I didn't realise that happened to anyone! tough luck huh?
my father was always against getting satellite tv because he didn't want a dish on the house.
with digital tv through an aerial, he liked the idea of extra channels without too much fuss (he was a bit miffed when we discovered we needed an aerial upgrade)
Thanks to this move I discovered MotoGP & CART on Eurosport
To my surprise the old boy didn't take much persuading to get Sky after everything folded. I guess he caught the multichannel bug
that could bring the conversation full circle back to sky getting the refugees from itv digital…..
FTA was never free, we pay a license fee which then enables the BBC to show a selection of programmes to reflect license fee payers (i.e. us) interests. And the fact is sport is part of that, the BBC should try and show a selection of sports. and F1 was always rated the highest in terms of viewer appreciation out of all the sports BBC show.
"the harcore fan sat on the sofa at home who never spends a penny on F1 is dead weight to FOM" plenty of hardcore fans want to spend money on F1 but FOM is terrible at offering us products to buy. Give us paid access to the FOM archives.
As F1 moves away from FTA coverage it moves away from the mainstream. Now you can argue for and against it, but to be so dismissive of FTA broadcasting is pretty arrogant of you to be honest.
FTA was never free???....we'll leave the free aspect in relation to ITV and how that is covered by the tv licence fee for another day then. I wasn't actually being dismissive of FTA at all, I'm being dismissive that YET again this thread has descended into a debate about the BBC and their loss of coverage. It's like this forum wants to be stuck in 2011/2012 all over again. It would help if you understood what I was saying rather then jump in and try and attack me for something I wasn't actually bringing up. I've made it perfectly clear in previous posts I'm sad at the demise of FTA but fully understand the reasons why's it's going.
Yes I'm fully aware how the licence fee works thank you (paying for it myself and all). But the fact remains that many people on here expect all the sessions live in HD, all the spin off programmes, plus live coverage from all 20 races for their part of a licence fee. When you total up the demands of what people want vs the cost of actually providing that then something had to give. The BBC can't afford to provide the service that people want. Unfortunately the licence fee is designed to cater for all markets, I'm sure we'd all love to devote our fee directly to F1 coverage to ensure quality FTA transmission, but it doesn't work like that.
Even if FOM opened up access to archives people would still find fault and reason to whinge, no doubt saying their licence fee paid for it in the past so why don't they get it free now etc etc. The typical 'BBC Bertie' style F1 fan in this country comes across so entitled at times. I'd rather pay for good quality access/coverage then maintain some mediocre from of FTA programming.
Irrespective of all the vitriol, F1 is a form of entertainment, it's not a god given national right to get free tv coverage.