r/F1Technical • u/tuss11agee • Apr 21 '22
Historic F1/Analysis F1 TV old races - limited archive
I consider this technical - hopefully mods agree! It’s not about cars, it’s about historical media rights to full races.
Why is the F1 TV archive of races so patchy in terms of what races they have?
It can’t just be lost footage. Many races are missing, yet I’ve seen highlight clips of them elsewhere on the Internet.
And it appears around 2003 or so, all the races are there. Was there a change in media rights holders that would give F1 TV their full library?
For instance, 1996 has just Spain and Monaco. There has to be a reason, no? Did each country negotiate their own media licenses and those can’t carry over to F1 TV?
Sure, I’d love more races in the library but I’m actually more curious for the technical answer as to why there isn’t.
Thanks!
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u/hankscorpio83 Apr 22 '22
When it first launched, the archive had very limited content and it has steadily increased since, which is what this page says.
I assume it's more a question of the time and money it takes to properly convert, index, etc. the content than any technical issue preventing them from doing it. And I have no basis for this other than my own assumptions, but I'd also wager there is less demand the further back you go. I can't imagine they'll get a lot of extra subscribers when they can say the entire 1987 or whatever season is available. ;)
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u/tuss11agee Apr 22 '22
Do you have any recommendations for some business hammocks?
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u/hankscorpio83 Apr 22 '22
Well, there's Hammock Hut, Hammocks-R-Us, Put-Your-Butt-There, and Swing Low, Sweet Chariot. They're all in the hammock complex on Third.
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u/AdrianInLimbo Apr 22 '22
Back in the 80s and up to the mid 90s or so, TV and Radio rights were, in fact, negotiated with most of the individual promotors. Each country's "host broadcaster" (Fuji TV in Japan, ABC in the US, BBC in UK, etc) provided the cameras and producers. This was then beamed out worldwide, and whatever networks carried it in the rest of the world provided commentary, either with live talent at the race or remotely from a studio back home.
CBC in Canada did lead in, and lead out commentary with a local Canadian anchor from Toronto, but used BBC commentary.
ESPN sent two commentators to the race to do commentary up till the late 90s, then did commentary from a studio in Connecticut (Later Charlotte).
BBC even did some Murray Walker commentary remotely, rather than at the track.
In the late 90s, Formula One brought the production in house as each race promoter came up for a contract renewal. Bernie sent cameras and a production center from race to race and controlled the world feed, with each broadcaster that carried F1 providing their own commentary or, using someone else's. This was also the time that Bernie had Paddy McNally put in charge of selling all of the advertising space around the tracks on behalf of FOM, rather than the tracks having it to sell.
Monaco was the last promoter to give up broadcast rights, iirc.
The 80s and early 90s F1 coverage is pretty readily available on YouTube as people have uploaded almost all of the races there, and certain file sharing sites used to have complete season packs available for download. I'm guessing F1 is slowly trying to buy whatever old coverage they can, and as was said above, many of the master tapes are just gone.
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u/perfectviking Apr 22 '22
Monaco still controls the rights to the race tv direction. TMC is responsible for it.
It wasn’t until 2012 when FOM took over for Fuji Television.
As always, there’s a wiki article containing current and former producers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Formula_One_broadcasters
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u/AdrianInLimbo Apr 22 '22
Thanks, much appreciated
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u/perfectviking Apr 22 '22
It’s truly a fascinating topic in one of our favorite sports!
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u/AdrianInLimbo Apr 22 '22
Yep, to think, in the 60s and even 70s, organizationally, it was like going to a club race. Hell, in the 80s garage passes at Detroit cost $25, iirc, and photo passes (trackside, cold pits, garage and a couple of photo platforms) was about $150 for the weekend there.
Now, you can't see the paddock at many tracks from the spectator areas.
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u/UhhmericanJoe Dec 04 '22
Unless it’s rights, there’s no excuse. II have been able to go back to the early ‘80s and watch all the races on a single website with maybe 2-3 holes over a 35+ year period. The quality of their archive uploads is already not good. Little known fact, but many of the races were shot into a totally uncompressed format. So, I’ve seen races in which the only limit to clarity was your TV. That really surprised me.
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u/Ianthin1 Apr 22 '22
Could be rights. Could be the original recordings aren’t available anymore, or aren’t in a format that would be conducive to replay ie:no commentary or no timing/scoring.
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