F1 Comes Home

From 2009, coverage of the Formula 1 season will return to the BBC.

This is fantastic news.

No more advert breaks to ruin the action. There have been numerous occasions when vital action has been missed. “While you were away this happened….” and a replay of the incident is shown. Last season there were over 4 hours of adverts during the season according to Jon McKnight. This works out to be around 15 minutes during each race. Imagine if there was 15 minutes missing from the coverage of a football match!

Could this also spell the return of the original F1 theme tune? Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain” is still associated with F1 racing, even 12 years after it disappeared from our screens when ITV got the rights to F1 coverage. In that time ITV have had four different theme tunes! The BBC got it right first time!

The next question is, who will be the commentator? Murray Walker will always be the No1, but he has said that he’s getting too old to be doing a lot of races each year. James Allen from ITV, in my opinion, is not going to move across, as he is not very popular amongst fans. I do hope that Martin Brundle is signed up by the BBC, as his invaluable additions to the commentary are superb.

In addition to the TV rights, the BBC will also be broadcasting on all platforms, TV, radio and online. Perhaps we’ll even get the coverage in HD too.

Might have to start saving the pennies to invest in an HD TV!