Downside yes indeed. No thankyou

Downside yes indeed. No thankyou

Can someone confirm that they will also cover the other meetings that BBC covered like Arc day. Also was Chester and Glorious Goodwood BBC? I genuinely don't remember but will we still see these on Channel 4 though?

I agree with someone that mentioned the adverts for the Grand National and Derby that you'd see between programmes building up to the event. Hopefully they'll do something similar on Channel 4 although they won't get paid for it!

I prefer the entire BBC crew except Willie (who doesn't remember horses names and goes off point), Darley, Balding, Persad. I also like the way they show you how the race panned out afterwards, that was always good.

pllecornu1982    -

Blimey - Where have you been - SINCE  - the BBC covered Chester and Glorious Goodwood?

this year's aintree and royal ascot meetings are going to be dire on the bbc.....expect the chav presenters to be in their element at the national and we'll be lucky to see the races at ascot as they'll spend the whole time fawning over the fashionistas.Not something i'm looking forward to.

Indeed - Pinhooker.

Somebody posted earlier ...

Randle      19 Mar 12 13:49 
why are the bbc so interested in F1 these days?
---------------------------------

Barbara no doubt thinks that Lewis Hamilton having a girlfriend from The ****cat Dolls -

Will be worth more viewer ratings - than Frankel tearing up the turf at Royal Ascot.

A whale v a prop forward...

Clare Balding hints at leaving the BBC after they relinquish horse racing coverage to Channel 4

By J J Anisiobi http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz
PUBLISHED: 16:07 GMT, 19 March 2012

After 16 years as the BBC's top horse racing presenter, Clare Balding has suggested she may leave the corporation.
The 41-year-old has said she will not be 'rushing into any decisions' after the BBC decided not to continue their televised interest in the sport.
Channel 4, who use popular pundit John McCririck, will take over full coverage on terrestrial television from 2013.
Balding has become the person of choice for BBC horse racing, but hinted today via her Twitter account that she would have to move on to continue her work with the sport.
She said: 'Desperately sad that BBC TV has lost all rights to cover horse racing. I've worked with some wonderful & talented folk over the last 16 yrs.
'I am immensely proud of everything we have done on BBC TV & of the team I have worked with at BBC Sport. I've given it my life & soul. I'm not rushing into any decisions about what I will do in the future. 2012 is a busy enough year to keep me on my toes & then we'll see.'
Channel 4 have now signed a four year deal that will mean they get to show events including the Grand National, Royal Ascot and the Epsom Derby, from next year.

Former champion jockey and BBC co-presenter Willie Carson said he was extremely sad to learn that the sport had been lost.
He said: 'The BBC have been involved in racing since the year dot. BBC is a national broadcaster throughout the world - unfortunately racing is going to lose. BBC giving up racing is sad.'
Sir Peter O'Sullevan, who was nicknamed the voice of racing, was the BBC's commentator for 50 years until he retired in 1997.
He described the loss of the channel's coverage of the sport as a 'sad development' for everyone concerned.
He said: 'It's very poor. It's been on the cards for a while and the BBC's lack of enthusiasm has crystallised into this decision.'
He added: 'I think it is very regrettable for a national broadcaster to want to opt out of one of our traditional premier sports. It appears to me to be fairly unacceptable.'
Channle 4's John McCririck has spoken glowingly about Balding and said that if he was to work with her, he would be very happy to.
He told the Mail Online: 'Clare is one of the great all round broadcasters that this country has ever produced.'

Does C4 have a gay "front man" for ASCOT ?

The BBC has been finished for years in sporting terms,nothing will change until the Liberal Lefties go!

Let's hope they finish off in a professional manner , great memories of years gone by ......and don't let the sandal wearing liberals with an agenda to poison joe public's perception of the sport dominate this years renewal, before passing the baton to Channel 4.

Just one thought comes to mind ......

Hasn't the Grand National been taking place later in the afternoon well after 4 pm in recent times......what about that ridiculous cooking programme that they have too rush off for if the last race is 2 minutes late off .
Might they have too leave it as they go to Bechers second time round ?

six..for years in wales we have missed the  racing on s4c for the rugby ...once i was watching a race at sandown coming to the 2nd last and they finished coverage for the  rugger...the sports head  of s4c(former welsh internatinal) said he hated horse racing...always used to miss bank holiday sandown(temple stakes meeting) every year for the urdd eistedfod

Oh! i do hope James Sherwood and Suzi Perry are the fashion correspondents for Channel four at Royal Ascot...Though it'll probably Nike Cattermole & John Francome

No advertising AD.

The beeb is broke this move to Salford has back fired is costing them millions will be over a billion when added up. Who the hell wants to go there no one. The current chairman is leaving before the .... hits the fan. They are all a load of liberal chattering classes that have decimated a national asset.  Any other business would love a guaranteed income that they have had for years from the licence fee.
C4 must ensure that the BBC do not have access to any coverage of racehorse casualties. The BBC coverage of last years National was ammunition for the Animal rights brigade.  So please C4 shut them out completely.

Even better on ITV

Boxing Day 1970 - Saturday 26th December 1970 - ITV - London Weekend Television (LWT)
9:05am RAC Road Report
9:10am The Wind in the Willows
9:20am A Christmas Carol (b-w)
10:10am Stewpot
10:55am Tarzan and the Amazons (film) starring Johnny Weissmuller
12:15pm Shari's Show
12:45pm News
12:50-5:10pm World of Sport
5:10pm News
5:15pm The Beverly Hillbillies
5:45pm Pippa: film of Joy Adamson's cheetah
6:45pm Holiday Startime
8:00pm Petula: Petula Clark
9:00pm It's Tarbuck
9:30pm News
9:45pm The Hound of the Baskervilles (film) starring Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee
11:15pm Aquarius
12:00pm Church and Fashion

What’s the BBC for, if not the Grand National?

The Corporation’s withdrawal from sport undermines the case for the licence fee.

By Stephen Pollard TELEGRAPH.CO.UK


According to BBC News yesterday, the rights to screen the Grand National – and every other big race – have been “poached” by Channel 4, after the commercial station outbid the BBC.

Technically, that is true. If I submit a bid of 50p for a house worth a few million, and lose out, then I have indeed been outbid. But strip the news of the spin, and it’s clear what really happened. The BBC apparatchiks decided a while ago that they have no real interest in racing and have effectively ducked out, leaving the field open to Channel 4.

For racing fanatics such as myself, this is not necessarily a bad thing. The BBC’s coverage has been awful for years. But for the Corporation, it is much more important. It is a sign of just how lamentable its situation now is as a sports broadcaster.

For decades, the BBC was the home of horse racing: the voice of Sir Peter O’Sullevan remains the sound most closely associated with the sport, even though he retired in 1997. But in recent years, the BBC’s commitment has been paltry, showing no noticeable interest in the sport beyond the Grand National and Royal Ascot.

Fine. If the powers that be don’t want their digital channels sullied with one of the nation’s most popular sports, that’s their business. Except, of course, it isn’t. The BBC is not just any old broadcaster. If you and I don’t pay our annual tax to it, we go to prison. That special status is justified by its defenders precisely because, they say, the BBC is different from all other broadcasters. It is the national broadcaster – an organisation dedicated to rising above commercial and ratings considerations, and so entitled to special treatment.

This has been nonsense for years. There are few things that tie a nation together more than sport. Yet if the BBC’s status is to be judged on its live sports coverage, it would be more appropriate as a national broadcaster for Luxembourg.

Only the likes of Remembrance Sunday, royal weddings or state funerals stand above the great sporting spectacles as moments that glue the nation together. Traditionally, no one would ever have thought of watching such an occasion on another channel. Yet even these are no longer the automatic domain of the BBC. ITV’s coverage last year of the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge was thought by almost every television critic to be far superior.

As for sport, what few significant events the BBC does still broadcast are outshone by other channels. Take the biggest of them all, football. When Sky bought the rights to live broadcasts of the Premier League, its coverage showed how moribund the BBC’s had been. New camera angles, serious analysis and constant innovation put the BBC to shame. And it has either refused or been unable to catch up: Match of the Day, for example, remains a predictable highlights programme.

The same is true of cricket. When the BBC lost the rights to domestic internationals to Channel 4 in 1999, many fans worried that a commercial broadcaster would produce dumbed-down, superficial coverage. The opposite turned out to be true. In terms of golf, the Corporation’s coverage amounts to the Open, the Masters and little else of any significance. This weekend saw the latest example of a sport the BBC has given up on – Formula 1. It broke the bank to snatch the rights away from ITV. But now, after three years, it has itself lost most of the races to Sky.

It is all very well the BBC proclaiming its commitment to drama, to news and to regional broadcasting. But day by day the quality of “the offering” – what the BBC actually delivers to viewers – is diminishing. In terms of sport, in a bygone age, when organising bodies had little alternative to BBC coverage and were thrilled simply to get the national status it implied, it might have made sense to have a national broadcaster funded by a compulsory licence fee. But in an age when there are bidding wars for the few events that the BBC does want, and much better alternatives for those it doesn’t, the licence fee is an anachronism.

Ah, but what about the behemoth of the Olympics – the national event to end all national events? For nearly three weeks this summer, there will indeed be wall-to-wall sport on the BBC. And then, on August 13, the day after the closing ceremony, it will be back to normal. No cricket, no golf, no racing, and tired old Match of the Day.

If the Corporation wants to continue to make the case for a compulsory licence fee then it has to go back to its roots and refocus on broadcasting high-calibre, iconic, national events. If it can’t, or won’t, then the appropriate conclusion has to be drawn: that the BBC’s time has passed.

RUK is a country mile ahead in the way that it covers racing compared to the BBC and Ch4.