F1 on SPEED blacked out in Canada
• TSN to be the exclusive provider of F1 content in Canada
by George Webster, Race Fan TV
Formula One fans in Canada who had become used to the luxury of being able to choose between the TSN version of the Formula One race broadcasts and SPEED's somewhat different version have lost that choice this year. The SPEED race broadcasts will be blacked out in Canada in 2009.
Norris MacDonald, writing on thestar.com quoted Speed vice-president of media relations, Erik Arneson.
"TSN has exclusive rights to air Formula One in the English language in Canada. In the past, TSN has kindly permitted Speed to telecast certain content non-exclusively. However, this year they have requested that we not do so.
" TSN has always been a good and fair partner of Speed and we respect their exclusivity. We look forward to working with TSN and F1 to perhaps share some of this programming space but until such arrangements are in place, Speed will continue to black out F1 racing in Canada."
This past weekend the implementation of this directive was spotty. I have heard reports that various pieces of the weekend's F1 programming on SPEED (practice, qualifying, race and reruns) were available via various television service providers in Canada -- and that some of the TSN F1 broadcasts were blacked out by some TSPs.
Presumably, once the TSPs get used to the intent of this black out order, things will settle down and there will be no more F1 from SPEED seen in Canada.
For my part, I think that TSN, having paid for the Canadian rights is justified in claiming exclusivity in this market. However, if you are upset about this, TSN is the organization that you should be sending your letters of protest to. Good luck!
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Here's some more comment from The Star's Chris Zelkovich (April 1/09)
TSN promises F1 broadcasts will improve
If there's one thing that gets an auto racing fan's heart beating faster than the sound of an engine revving, it's the thought of inferior or less-than-perfect televisioin coverage.
Last weekend's Formula One race on TSN certainly managed to raise blood pressure to catastrophic levels among gearheads. The big problem was that bits of the race were missed because of TSN commercials, though some fans were sputtering about the fact the race was shown on a slight delay.
Here's what happened.
BBC is now handling the English rights for F1 and is a commercial-free network. That means if a network wanted to insert commercials, it would run the risk of missing chunks of the race. Worse yet, BBC wouldn't be explaining to viewers what had happened during the break because it wouldn't be aware there was one.
So TSN decided to delay the broadcast so it could insert commercials and not miss any action. That plan didn't work perfectly and ended up with the finale of the race being about five minutes behind reality.
``There's no perfect solution for this," said TSN president Phil King, who says forgoing commercials isn't possible. ``We can't run it commercial-free because of what we pay for rights."
This week, TSN will try something different. It will go live and then monitor track action during commercial breaks.
``We'll go to commercial, but will cut right back if it looks like something is happening," King said. ``The most we'll be away is 30 seconds in that case."
TSN had another option: Using the Speed TV feed, which includes commercial breaks. But if there's one thing that gets Canadian F1 fans more upset than bad commercial breaks, it's the sound of American voices calling the races.
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