Greed.

MediaCorp gearing up its F1 coverage

IF YOU can't get a ticket for September's SingTel Singapore Grand Prix, you won't have to shell out extra to witness the historic event, for it will be shown live on MediaCorp TV Channel 5.

The station has secured the rights to be the official free-to-air TV broadcaster for the first-ever night race around the civic district — and the first street race in Asia — featuring the likes of defending world champion Kimi Raikkonen, Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso.

Announcing this yesterday, Singapore's leading media company said it is revving up its coverage of the 2008 FIA Formula One World Championship — which flags off this Sunday with the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne — across all its media platforms.

From tomorrow, Channel NewsAsia (CNA) will begin airing the first of an 18-part Inside Grand Prix series, which will preview every race of the 2008 season, going behind the scenes to showcase the teams, players and newsmakers.

Other programmes are also planned for both CNA and Channel 5.

Today will get the adrenaline pumping with a 14-page supplement in this Saturday's Weekend Edition, driven by Mr Ian De Cotta, 48, the newspaper's F1 correspondent.

MediaCorp Radio's 987FM and Class 95 stations will also get in on the act, organising the first racing challenge in August, as a prelude to September's big event.

FHM and Arena magazines will be producing racing-themed supplements and organising parties for clients, featuring the lovely FHM girls, while MediaCorp's news and entertainment websites will start offering the latest information on the races from this weekend onwards.

"We're glad to bring the excitement of the sport to our viewers, readers, and clients, offering coverage across the whole gamut of our media platforms," said MediaCorp chief executive officer Lucas Chow during yesterday's press conference, after signing the free-to-air agreement with Singapore GP.

It wonderful that they are reviving the FREE airing of the Formula 1 race on TV.

Why I said revive?

Well about 20 years ago I first saw what is Formula 1 on TV. I believe it was a Malaysian Channels and I was hooked on it then.

During the same time, there are also weekly English football update and matches in program like “Road to Wembly” on TV which got me interested in football as well.

But alias, with every greedy broadcaster trying to secure exclusive rights for sporting events and selling them at astronomical price to Television stations. We begin to see less and less of sporting program on TV.

Event important events like The World cups and European cups are suffering from these people greed. (I wonder why RTM are showing more live matches then Mediacorp in the last world cup.)

I am happy that somehow Mediacorp got the rights to televise this year Singapore Grandprix but I wonder how long will it last.

I suspect it is an attempt to get Singaporean to be interested in Formula 1 racing and therefore they will PAY for it either buying tickets for the race itself of subscribe to cable TV show live races.

Hope I am wrong about this but I doubt so. We shall see what happen next year.

For those who are interested, you actually can catch “delayed” telecast of Formula1 races on RTM on race day itself.