Get rid of racing, F1, Bowls, Tiddy-winks and whatever else the BBC waste my license fee on and buy back the England football games off that awful channel Setanta!

Jac
This would be just the type of excuse that some big-wig from Channel 4 needs to justify pulling the plug on racing. It’s a shame that racing coverage depends on the whim of one or two executives at the Beeb and C4.
The BBC must not get their hands on Newmarket and Doncaster. It would be like rewarding a spoilt child for being bold! What will happen to all the other Newmarket fixtures that C4 usually cover throughout the season? They’re not going to accept the scraps from the BBC’s table. The same with Donny.
And I’m fully in agreement with you about them cutting into the racing with other sports. Remember when the Beeb used to show Test Match cricket in between the racing? We’d be lucky to see the horses before they were put into the starting stalls.
They can’t get away with this. At the end of the day at least Channel 4 have shown some level of commitment towards racing. It would be grossly unfair if the BBC got their hands on something that Channel 4 have done a lot to build up.

Edit:
NetImp: You obviously know nothing about racing. The races we’re talking about such as the 1000 Guineas, 2000 Guineas and St Leger are not handicaps!
And by your hypothesis then the BBC shouldn’t cover football either because that attracts almost as much betting as horse racing does these days. And what about rugby, boxing, darts, snooker and tennis? These are all sports which attract large amounts of gambling as well.
Maybe they should just show Songs Of Praise and endless repeats of Last of the Summer Wine all day long?

The BBC should drop horse racing altogether it is not a sport. Its sole purpose is gambling, a sport doesn’t handicap the best competitors to artificially make the result closer . As public service broadcaster the BBC should not be encouraging gambling.

Dun it Jac. but guess the Brown jobbie will be too busy hiding from his CxxK up of the economy to do anything about it.

Already done it!

Sir Alan has stated the vast majority of the facts, but the one thing that really gets me about BBC racing is it is so downmarket considering the prestige events they already cover. Perhaps getting the Guineas- god forbid!- will give them an opportunity to stage a 2 day fashion show just like Ascot.

the culling by the bbc would be sad to see really,but channel 4 losing the guineas and champions day,which in turn gives them a reason to cull there racing would be a greater travesty to racing.i cant believe newmarket would even consider this

channel 4 are there every saturday giving us dedicated racing.even when there main meeting gets abandoned,they show extra racing from elsewhere instead of putting a old black and white film on.

f.a.o netimp,maybe the bbc shouldnt show the lottery then as that is gambling,wouldnt you agree?

No, the BBC has no commitment to racing and should give the whole thing up. They offer poor coverage, and can’t even give the high profile races they cover any commitment!Get shut of it!

Channel 4 has done much more for racing than the BBC, I really hate the stupid items on fashion etc. they think they need to put on in the intervals. They should put more emphasis on the real stars of the show (horses and jockeys). Channel 4 Racing is a much better show than the Beebs it is less snobbish, light-hearted and you can tell the people involved really love horse-racing as a sport in its own right. LONG LIVE McCRIRRICK :))

if only to get rid of advertisements)

Tis signed.

it would be sad if the beeb pulled the plug on racing but to be honest the coverage is garbage. and always will be and i honestly dont think racing would suffer as a result. we are in the 21st century we can watch racing all day long on satellite TV . good riddance that’s what i say