ESPN / Sky coverage (spoilers)

Good Job ESPN! Much better and it's what fans have wanted for years, uninterrupted coverage. Keep it up!!

I can't stand the pro hami and mercedes commentating but whatever. Seb complains on the radio about no blue flags and we hear from one of the commentators "I didn't miss seb in the offseason complaining about blue flags". Hami complains about the blue flags later in the race and Brundle says drivers need to pay more attention. A little tough to take.....

 

I would agree with you. But one race is only one race. I’m not convinced this is their final direction. I wish they would include sky’s post race and recap though.

 

Or the mandatory discussion with McLaren like NBC did also.

 

They are just Brits being homies. It's Sky, what do you expect? Tifosi? Haha

Sent from my XT1650 using Tapatalk

 

FWIW I watched the Bahrain race (ditto for Australia) completely on ESPN internet site - replays.
Practice 1 2 3 qual & race.

Picture quality was good, streaming was intermittent in qualifying but good over the rest, sound mix could be improved.
(Microsoft Edge and Firefox browsers equal streaming quality.)
Very few commercials.
Commentary team, no worse, no complaints.
Pre shows/ after shows, did not watch.
(Yet I did enjoy last years NBC after shows.)

So, ESPN, your site broadcasts are working well for me.
Thank you.

 

If ESPN doesn't have time to air Sky's postrace report on ESPN2, they ought to show it on one of their other channels, like ESPNEWS.

 

Coverage was better this weekend, agreed. Miss the post race interviews with all the teams, oh well

 

If you switched to another channel in Canada they had the driver interviews in the pen and Valtteri Bottas came by for a chat about his weekend later to. The MB manager always makes an appearance after the race to talk with the boys. The Ferrari boss won't talk and always looks like his feet hurt!
Ted wasn't there and no one else was brave enough to attempt doing Ted's Notebook. No sign as a result of all the teams packing up for China...

 

This weekend had MUCH better coverage. I am glad to see things moving in the right direction. Lets see what the next race brings. Maybe they heard the uproar after the first race?

 

Well said.

 

Overall, yes, great to have the full race with no interruptions, but an entire race is hard to cover and see everything, so there is always room for improvement. At one time (maybe qualifying or the race, I forget now) they were following a car on a lap and showing it's speed, but the speed readout was delayed a few seconds, so it was hard to watch the screen saying 300kph after braking and entering the corner. This only happened once, and after that they seemed to have it synced up much better.

The Sky broadcast alternates showing the standings 1-20 on the upper left screen (which is GREAT), but then they will show either all the drivers gaps (GREAT), but then switch to showing the tiny team logo (BAD) which doesn't show me the gaps. Irritating.

 

All of this is from the FOM world feed. I'm sure they'll get better as well, the info graphics have changed a bit this year.

 

I watched the replay just to see how they handled it and there were commercial interruptions.

Does anyone know if ESPN or Liberty has made any statement re: continuing the live coverage without commercials?

 

Commercial free the rest of the season:

http://www.racer.com/f1/item/148593-espn-s-f1-races-commercial-free-until-season-s-end

 

That's actually pretty awesome.

 

Ok, I now officially love ESPN!

 

Yeah, the title deserves to be reversed: ESPN does NOT suck

 

For the first time in our life times, F1 fans in the U.S. are finally not being treated like red-headed
step children by the networks.

For years, ESPN has broadcast soccer matches from around the world commercial free (although
sponsors like Heineken get big play from this) and so assuming they've worked out a similar arrangement
with Mothers.

Remember the days, friends, when we had to suffer through horrible commentary (and that wasn't too
very long ago now was it?), races tape delayed a week or more, etc. I even remember when ABC would
tape delay the Monaco Grand Prix along with track & field and cliff diving where they showed the first half
of the race one week and then the second half of the race the next on their "Wide World of Sports" show.

Through it all, we've begged for a situation such as this so lets be sure to let ESPN and Mothers know that it's appreciated.

BHW

 

God NO! ESPN REALLY SUCKS! Commentary is terrible. I have to watch with the sound down. Would prefer commercials and the old team to these twin twits. And don’t think the loss off the grid girls has nothing to do with ESPN.

 

Forgot to mention, F1 highlight are now playing on YouTube too.

This is a reversal of policy from Bernie wherein no videos from F1 races were to be put on
YouTube and if they were, they'd be immediately taken down.

Someone finally gets it.

BHW

 

Let's face it: ESPN is NOTHING like what they used to be, what made them great, but
neither is MTV, USA, Velocity (or whatever it is named this week), or most of the other
channels.
This is a large reason why folks are abandoning cable - 200 channels and 'nothing to watch'.

PS - have any of you noticed some cable channels that used to be 'free' with basic cable
are slowly being pushed into tiers that you have to pay extra for?
SMITHsonian is one, there are a couple others, I see more of this happening in the future.

 

By the next race? Are you serious?
ESPN practically invented motorsports on cable, ESPN started with F1 and NASCAR as
two of their main staples, so no, they should not need any time to 'be on top of this'.
ESPN's problem is they have either fired all the talent, or the talent has quit and gone elsewhere.

 

That post was from a few weeks ago. They made it right. Everyone else seems to be satisfied with the coverage during the Bahrain GP, and that it will be commercial-free the rest of the season. You're free to continue sulking.

 

It still sucks, just not as much as it did......