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Nbc Picks Up F1 Coverage In The Us For 2013

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All this jumping around between channels. I tried to set the first race to record, but was told I can't set up anything until 10 days before the event. But round 1 is March 17, and it's the 9th, so that's 8 days. Hmmmm...

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Ooohh...sounds a bit risky. Maybe they meant 10 minutes before the race..?

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I was able to set my recording up with Comcast problem-free. Then again, Comcast owns NBC Sports, so maybe they've retained exclusive rights to DVR the races. :P

Here's a look at the race schedule from NBC Sports' new, dedicated "MotorSportsTalk" site.

All 19 races are live. Monaco, Canada, United States, and Brazil on NBC. Britain and Germany on CNBC. All others on NBCSN.

NBC invented a new word, dissatisfied with or unaware of the correct "Grands Prix:" "Grand Prixes." As if the world needed another Americanism. :P

Live streaming will happen eventually, but not yet. That's a real shame, as they promised they'd have it for all 19 rounds. Apparently not. Their streaming platform is very reliable.

Every race has a reair on NBCSN. Most are pretty reasonable.

The surprises:

F1 Extra, a 30-minute post-race show live after every race. This will air on NBCSN following the race for all races but Monaco, where it will air on NBC.

F1 36, a concept that they use for their other sports. Basically, they follow a driver around for 36 hours on a race weekend to provide an "all-access" look. The first episode will feature Sebastian Vettel, airing on March 29 at 7:00 PM Eastern.

Full race schedule and info here:

http://motorsportstalk.nbcsports.com/2013/03/11/full-schedule-for-formula-1-on-nbc-sports/

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For what it's worth:

Bob Varsha will call the Malaysian, Belgian, and Korean Grands Prix with David Hobbs and Steve Matchett on NBCSN. Leigh Diffey has IndyCar duties. There are other F1/IndyCar conflicts, but on those dates, Brian Till and Bob Jenkins will cover Indy so Diffey will still do F1. Hobbs, Matchett, and Buxton will all cover IndyCar a bit this year, too, as Wally Dallenbach, Jr. and Marty Snider cover NASCAR this summer.

Happy to have Varsha around for a few races.

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Yeah so far no complaints here. I was finally able to schedule my recordings, and despite some growing pains (Bottas listed twice on the list of drivers making it to Q2), I'm pleased. It'll be nice to finally be able to watch F1 in HD. My big TV is only 720, but it's more than adequate for me.

I'm wondering if the postpones quali will get picked up by the DVR, or if it'll air at all.

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Agreed on the HD. The picture looks great.

Qualifying will air at 12:30 AM Eastern prior to the race coverage at 1:30 AM, which is followed by F1 Extra at 4:00 AM. Not sure if your DVR will automatically record that, or if you'll have to change it manually. I think they had planned to re-air qualifying in the time slot anyway, so it'll be listed correctly as F1 qualifying.

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It turns out I won't need to see quali as I just stumbled across a spoiler while web surfing. Plus, with another snoozefest RB front row, I probably wouldn't be able to keep my eyes open for it. :P

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Excellent coverage today from NBCSN.

Formula One Non-Stop is a great feature, and one I had hoped to get. The race picture is quite small, but it's such a good idea. It's enough to keep me from fast forwarding the commercials, so I still hear/see them, while I also get to see the race.

Plus, there were fewer ad breaks than a SPEED race, and the final 13 laps were shown ad-free (SPEED always had one in the final 10 of any race).

I was very impressed. They all did a great job. F1 has found a wonderful home in the United States. :)

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Excellent coverage today from NBCSN.

Formula One Non-Stop is a great feature, and one I had hoped to get. The race picture is quite small, but it's such a good idea. It's enough to keep me from fast forwarding the commercials, so I still hear/see them, while I also get to see the race.

Plus, there were fewer ad breaks than a SPEED race, and the final 13 laps were shown ad-free (SPEED always had one in the final 10 of any race).

I was very impressed. They all did a great job. F1 has found a wonderful home in the United States. smile.png

I agree, I was pleasantly surprised with the coverage. Still too many commercials for my taste (but in all honesty, I did get used to no commercials while living in Vienna), but it was great to have the race being covered in a small screen even during the commercials.

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I was very impressed. They all did a great job. F1 has found a wonderful home in the United States. smile.png

Yeah I was pretty impressed too. In fact the only thing I could find to criticize (and it's a small one) was that they didn't take us on a full in-car lap for the circuit overview in the beginning. That was something I liked. And a couple of times, the sound was out of sync (the sound we heard was not from the car we were sitting in).

But overall, better than Speed, and I still have my fav announcers :)

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For what it's worth, Spanish-language broadcasts are on Univisión. This could be an option for people who do not have the NBC Sports Network, which doesn't seem to be any registered member, but perhaps some lurkers are in that category. Their schedule, unfortunately, is identical to the one on NBCSN. That is to say their re-airs are at the same time as the NBCSN re-airs, so it doesn't really provide a great option if you can't catch any of the NBCSN broadcasts due to timing. (Of course, there's also the issue of not understanding Spanish, which might come up for some). :P

Thought I'd share it anyway. Saw the race on there yesterday afternoon and realized some people might get that channel but not NBCSN.

http://www.sportspromedia.com/news/univision_deportes_snaps_up_us_spanish_language_f1_rights

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Both overtakes for the lead (Webber on Button, and more importantly, Vettel on Webber) took place while NBCSN was on a commercial break. That's really disappointing to me. The commercials, like on SPEED, are pre-planned and rigid. They can't say "okay, nothing's happening, break." Likewise, they can't say, "oh, wait, Vettel's about to overtaking, wait on the break." They just roll into it. Same as it always was. I'm sure all 138,000 of us who watch were angry. :P

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Both overtakes for the lead (Webber on Button, and more importantly, Vettel on Webber) took place while NBCSN was on a commercial break. That's really disappointing to me. The commercials, like on SPEED, are pre-planned and rigid. They can't say "okay, nothing's happening, break." Likewise, they can't say, "oh, wait, Vettel's about to overtaking, wait on the break." They just roll into it. Same as it always was. I'm sure all 138,000 of us who watch were angry. tongue.png

Especially since the small race window was taken away for the last few commercials (it was there in the beginning of the race), wonder why. Also, I noticed that the program guide spelled Alonso "Alonzo"! I hope that's not a sign of NBC just glossing over details. The amigos are good, but if the suits at NBC don't care what kind of F1 coverage is produced, things could go south from here.

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I wonder if UDN (the Spanish coverage) has their ad breaks at the same time NBCSN does? I've recorded these first two, and will record China, but once I am back to live viewing, I will probably switch over to UDN when NBC goes to commercial and see if I can piece together a complete broadcast.

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Was liking the coverage until NBC printed the spoiler results of the F1 Malaysia at the bottom of the screen just as the St.Pete race was ending! Not cool...

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Welcome to the forum, murphious.

That's a good point. The Grand Prix was on right after F1, so you think they would have realized the danger in showing the results. Especially considering this:

The afternoon re-air of Melbourne drew 138,000 viewers, while the live showing only drew 124,000 (free practice got 148,000, which is interesting, too). So, a lot of people do rely on the afternoon re-broadcast to see the races, especially when they are in Asia. It's too bad they didn't think to not show the results.

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I watched the first two races on NBC but I have to say I will be going back to my old system of getting them online. Getting the BBC or the German Sky or the Austrian ORF feeds makes it ten times better. I have actually always liked the Speed/NBC crew of Hobbs and steve and so on but in an hour and a half race they showed 25 minutes of comercials, WTF, that's almost 1/3 of the race....

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Yeah, the ad breaks are awful, especially because they aren't timed based on the flow of the race. They're just pre-planned (okay, that's an assumption, but I really don't believe any live person would say "LEAD CHANGE COMING, GIVE 'EM THE GENERAL!"), so it's doubly unfortunate.

They televise international soccer without breaks in the U.S. by getting a presenting sponsor or presenting sponsors to bring the coverage break-free. The logo stays at the top of the screen, in the corner, and they mention it from-time-to-time. I guess that's not possible with F1, because it doesn't reach enough people to justify that. I think a good compromise would be using F1 non-stop at every break, and eliminating that generic background to make the full screen occupied by actual content. I know there are aesthetic reasons they do what they do, but that doesn't mean those reasons are right. I remember reading once about what Derek Daly did for IndyCar broadcasting decades ago when he first got into it. He came in and told all the producers to stop doing things the way all producers always do them because they didn't make sense (i.e displaying average speed instead of lap time on non-oval races, even though the average speed makes it seem slower than it is. Daly got that changed). TV guys can be wrong, and I think whatever they use to justify split-screen that divides the picture into five spaces (empty space, banners, advertisement, race, running order) is probably silly.

F1 just isn't built for ad breaks because it doesn't have regular safety car periods like U.S. racing. They have to think of a way to air F1 that isn't just a copy of how you air NASCAR or IndyCar, because they really are different sports. There are no TV timeouts in F1, and no natural spots to throw in a break with there being so few periods in which nothing is happening. It just can't be broadcast like a "normal" sport, and I hope NBC will address that. They can't think about F1 the same way they think about everything else, and I'm not sure that really dawned on them when they picked it up.

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I think it boils down to "change is always hard" which is a mindset that many people have these days. First you start doing business the old way and then think of what doesn't work. I guess they will take the example of other TVs. With that said, we also get a huge empty space on screen whenever the double window is displayed. Maybe they'll come up with a revolutionary way of getting rid of it.

In any case they should have viewers in order to attempt anything, because if nobody's watching who is going to care?

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Yeah, that makes sense.

At the same time, viewership is down a literal 50% from SPEED, so maybe they should have experimented with new things while they had no one to upset. :P

Oh, well. I'm too negative. There are a lot of nice things about NBC's coverage, and I'll have to try out my plan of using the Spanish-language broadcast on Univisión during NBC's ad breaks.

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For those who obsess (me):

There will be an airing of the Chinese Grand Prix in Spanish at 6:00 AM Eastern time on a channel listed as "TELE." This is not Telemundo. It could be TeleFutura, which is owned by Univisión, the Spanish-language rights holders. If you search your guide for "Automovilsmo," it should show up (as will the live Spanish broadcast on UDN).

I wonder if I have "TELE." I wonder if it has commercials...

(This is a serious passion of mine).

But then I checked...

TeleFutura is now UniMás and Galavisión. According to the Unvisión, the Grand Prix is airing at 9:00 AM Eastern on UniMás, and no channel is airing it at 6:00 AM. UDN will have it live at 3:00 AM. UDN will also have it on at 4:00 PM.

NBCSN has it live at 3:00 AM, re-airing at 1:00 PM and then 1:00 AM on Monday. Gaah! Why can't the replays line up? If they could just put the Grand Prix on at 9:00 AM or 4:00 PM on both channels...

Also, F1 36 with Sebastian Vettel never aired.

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This is important:

The Chinese Grand Prix will mark the first ever Grand Prix to be streamed live in the United States! NBC Sports Extra will carry live streaming of all sessions moving forward, including both those on TV and those not on TV.

http://motorsportsta...eam-chinese-gp/

The service is available to those with Comcast, Cablevision, Sudden Link, and Verizon FiOs. It is free for those people. You don't even need to get NBCSN in your package to use it.

http://www.sbnation....ey-cup-playoffs

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How does one watch Formula One in the United States this weekend? Let's find out. All times Eastern. Note that GP2 is now on NBCSN, for the first time ever.

April 19

Second Free Practice: 7:00 AM (NBCSN) (Live)

April 20

Qualifying: 7:00 AM (NBCSN) (Live)

Qualifying: 7:00 AM (Univisión Deportes Network) (Live)

Qualifying: 1:00 PM (NBCSN) (Replay)

GP2 Saturday Race: 4:30 PM (NBCSN) (SDD)

April 21

Qualifying: 6:30 AM (Univisión Deportes Network) (Replay)

Bahrain Grand Prix: 8:00 AM (NBCSN) (Live)

Bahrain Grand Prix: 8:00 AM (UniMás) (Live)

Bahrain Grand Prix: 8:00 AM (Univisión Deportes Network) (Live)

Bahrain Grand Prix: 12:30 PM (NBCSN) (Replay)

Bahrain Grand Prix: 4:00 PM (Univisión Deportes Network) (Replay)

So, there you go. The race is live on three channels. UniMás is an over-the-air channel, so everyone in the U.S. should have it. Find your affiliate here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_UniM%C3%A1s_affiliates

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For what it's worth, the Spanish-language coverage on UniMás is 100% commercial-free. Just something to consider. I enjoyed it, though I think the commentators are literally Sergio Pérez' brother (NASCAR legend Antonio Pérez) and father.

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