Sky win all 4 Premiership LIVE rights until 2006-2007

I don't think that ITV will be fighting hard for the Formula One rights next time. I think they're more worried about their prescious Cornation Street. And with Formula One not exactly going through it's best patch, the viewing figures are quite dissapointing for ITV.

I'd LOVE to see Formula One back on the BBC though. I'm sure the British Grand Prix would have been interactive by now if was broadcast be the Beeb. Although I understand that ITV still use a BBC crew for Silverstone?

I would imagine that the Sunday programme will only be shown when there are a few decent games on the Sunday, and might be moved to Wednesday if there are better midweek games, or even Monday if the Monday night game is important.

As Package 1 is the Sunday match - and Package 1 is first choice match each week - there should be a good fixture almost every Sunday.

And of course you could have some other matches as well on Sundays. I presume Match Of The Day show Premiership highlights any day from next season?

Any idea of when the Sunday morning repeat will be shown? In its usual slot of 8.00 am or 7.30 am?

Ditto the cricket - Channel 4 are always cutting Test Match coverage off early to show some cheap gameshow or Hollyoaks. Plus they didn't cover any of the World Cup, and had poor highlights of the Ashes and aren't even showing the C&G Final (supposedly the FA Cup final of cricket) live. Cricket and Richie Benaud belong on the BBC!

You're right, ITV missed the end of one race recently due to a commercial break. They don't interrupt football with ads, they won't interrupt the rugby World Cup with ads, so why interrupt the Grand Prix with them!?! Therefore, I hope the BBC do get F1 back.

Will The Goal Rush survive? ITV had a similar service as part of World Of Sport in the 1970's and 1980's, so it would still work - after all, Grandstand still has Final Score...

Why do people always think the BBC do no wrong?

Re: Cricket - C4 have began cutting it this year at 6.30pm (initially 6pm) but for the last four years have allowed it to be screened to conclusion. The BBC used to cut away at the scheduled end of play, often shared coverage with racing and other sports and also cut away for other programmes during the breaks.

Re: The Premiership - it may have been flawed to begin with as features like the Tactics Truck were terrible, but they soon sorted it out, put the show in the old Match of the Day slot and then extended the coverage, as well as providing a repeat that is screened at a more reasonable time than 7.30am on a Sunday morning.

Re: F1 - does the BBC need another motorsport? They have British Superbikes and World Superbikes, while this year they've picked up MotoGP, where instead of screening live coverage like C5, they pack it into 30minutes of highlights. ITV show delayed and live qualifying, but they do need to improve the way they screen ads (see C4 cricket - they've got it sorted).

Re: Athletics - although the BBC do a great job at the World Championships / Olympics etc, they've coverage of athletics this year has been very poor. In the 90's you used to have live International Athletics from across Europe aswell as late night highlights and the Golden League meetings (on ITV I think). Now the BBC only screen the UK meetings and don't even show the highlights of the Golden League - the Premier league of Athletics.

Furthermore....(this from DigitalSpy)

The European Commission has said it now has "serious questions" for the Premier League to answer after it went ahead and awarded all of its live rights packages to Sky without getting final clearance.

The commission had earlier put pressure on the League to breakdown its previous one live rights packages into several smaller ones with the aim of allowing another broadcaster other than Sky to get hold of some live rights.

Having bowed to the pressure, the League broke down its rights into four tiered live rights packages, however has awarded all of them to Sky in a £1.024bn deal. Announcing the new contract In a press conference on Friday, League CEO Richard Scudamore stressed that Sky had won each of the packages on "an individual basis."

"I can look you straight in the eye and say these packages were won on an individual basis," he said. "We wouldn't be doing what we've done if we didn't believe it met the Commission's concerns."

A spokesman for the Commission said that they would be seeking assurances that the contract does not breach European regulations.

"They went ahead without waiting for final clearance from us," said the spokesman. "We will be asking the Premier League some serious questions and they have a legal obligation to respond."

Most people's arguments seem to be based around three things:
1) ITV showing adverts - how dare they, what ever next!
2) Well its ITV so it must be rubbish
3) Katherine's dislike for Jim Rosenthal

How BBC1/2 would fit F1 and cricket in as well as football, tennis, athletics, rugby, snooker etc and still show other shows I can't imagine

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Yes...good question and some good points made. There is a perception that whatever the BBC do, it's good. I agree they do some things well but credit must go to itv, C4, 5 and Sky for their contributions to coverage of sport as well as other programming.

(gets off soap box)

Looks like they'll have to redistribute them - don't be so happy MOTD fans, the BBC may yet lose the highlights but gain live matches. ITV needn't look so glum. Stupid PL! Serves them right if they're forced to take BBC and ITV's lower bids!

Channel Four show cricket in the same programme as horse racing! Yeah, at the expense of CITV! Non-footy lovers (mostly girls) turned off in their droves! Eh? What about ITV's British Motorsport programme shown after Racing Rivals yesterday? Never heard of the Golden League! The Olympics are only every four years, and how often are the World Championships? One, two, or four years? In any case, we're talking a couple of weeks each time, tops.