A new report in the Sunday Times claims the BBC is looking to drop its coverage of Formula One in the UK in 2013.
According to the report, senior sources in the organisation said that the £60 million the BBC spends on broadcasting the sport each year could go towards keeping one of its digital channels on air, such as BBC4. However, it's not the first time that dropping F1 has been mentioned as a way for the BBC to cope with the freeze in licence fees until 2017, as the Guardian published a similar story in March this year.
The Sunday Times - owned by News Corporation - added: "It has emerged that F1 costs £1 a head for every viewer, compared with the average 7p an hour broadcast cost for BBC1 and BBC2. Apart from the British Grand Prix, most races attract only between 2 million and 4 million viewers."
But those statistics appear to be open to interpretation as GPUpdate recently reported that the Monaco and Spanish Grands Prix both had 15-minute peak audience figures of over 6 million on the BBC.
The BBC Trust is expected to meet in early autumn to discuss its options.
© ESPN EMEA Ltd.
Feeds: ESPNF1 Staff - Feedback
No comments:
Post a Comment