^I think chances are high that Brundle and Coulthard will remain as commentators for Sky. Sky would be insane to pass up on Brundle now he has become such an icon for F1 coverage in the UK.
Jake Humphrey is a BBC man and will move on to the Olympics. Ted Kravitz effectively becomes available though, he could end up going back to ITV to do BTCC or Sky might pick him up.
Not sure on Lee McKenzie - I think she is a BBC person too.
As for Eddie Jordan...well we shall see, Eddie really only works bouncing off Coulthard and Jake. Although lately Jake has become pretty much a bully on EJ which isn't nice to see, he almost appears to have no respect for any of EJ's opinions anymore - which ok I can see why but its not nice and sometimes EJ does have valid points or relevant opinions, he's not always a bumbling fool.
After having a day to think it over, I still remain adamant that I'm not going to subscribe to Sky just for F1, there are no other (especially Sports channels) programmes or events I particularly wish to see. Although Indycars would be nice.
To those pointing out the TV license fee - this is an irrelevant point, because it is a mandatory fee to watch any TV. I of course already pay the license to watch many other programmes, so its not something which directly affects this particular argument. Its just now I have to pay more to view F1 with the downside of paying for a large amount of other channels which I have little to no interest in viewing.
I'm perfectly happy to pay the license fee because I watch a lot of various things that crop up on various channels. I'm happy to pay for what I feel I will watch. That F1 is a part of that is/was a bonus.
I'm not happy to pay for Sky and in particular Sky Sports because I don't feel I will watch much of the other programming at all and I don't feel that future programming will be much better. Its nothing to do with the quality of Sky and more to do with what I feel is value for my money. To pay for this just to view F1 is too much for me.
If Sky Sports suddenly picked up a fair bit more of motorsports, I might re-consider. But this is very unlikely when they are going to pay big fees to Bernie. I doubt they will spend more money on lesser motorsports because none of them will get anywhere near the same kind of viewing audience, especially not sports cars/endurance racing.
I hope one day F1 returns to "free-to-air" TV, if not for me but for also the casual fans who will miss out. The biggest thing I think I will miss is being able to chat to the odd person who just happened to flick the F1 on during the weekend even though they don't really follow it. In other words, I think I will have less people to talk to about F1.
I'll be interested to see who of the BBC team tomorrow has got the guts to say what they really think of this deal, and who is fishing for a contract with Sky and keeping their mouth shut.
Of course I suspect the brief will be to mention as little as possible about it, and certainly not to find Whitmarsh and ask him why as a representative of FOTA he has been such a bare-faced liar when it comes to the apparently sudden turnaround in their stance towards paid-for TV.
Er, well straight away all the BBC people (Humphrey mostly) won't say anything stupid. But generally, (as with most BBC stuff) they are mostly quite frank about stuff like this. I'm very sure Brundle, EJ and Coulthard will happily air their view though they will almost certainly tread carefully with their words.