I was sad to see in Charlie Sale’s column in the Daily Mail today that Niall Sloane, the executive producer of the BBC’s F1 coverage has quit. Sloane is a football man, a former player in fact, who took charge of the F1 brief when the BBC won back the rights last March. He spent most of 2008 setting up the presentation team and the coverage schedule, which was announced earlier this week.
According to Sale, Sloane lost out on the job of BBC Head of Sport to his colleague Barbara Slater and is leaving the corporation after 27 years.
allenonf1.wordpress.com 
will i be slated for expression apprehension about a woman being in charge of F1 broadcasting…?
Not by me. Who is this Woman anyway? what does she got to do with it? If Sloane set-up the presentation team, and did most of the work, why is he sacked in favour of this woman? Will we be subjected to “Female F1” where there is official chat show in “Loose Women” fashion? will the BBC’s ratings fall or rise because of this? Will ITV snatch the rights back and JA will be back on the box?…
Probably not but anything can happen in Formula 1…and It usually does … 😉
John g: Yes you will.
I hope Babs is a JA fan and brings him back.
Ed H: It seems to me that Sloane was working on the F1 project, then both he and Slater went for the job of Head of Sport.
We won’t know whether Sloane did a good job for a few weeks now, and we’ll have to wait longer still to see what impact Slater has on things.
As for the F1 coverage, well, unless I’m misreading things we don’t know who’s to replace the departing Sloane yet, do we?
Surely James, a job set up for you as Head of F1 on the Beeb.
I’m sure the outgoing BBC Sports Director is wondering what’s gone wrong.
Sloane was looking like he was doing a good job and set a decent-ish team, Legard being what I think the missing link when 2 fabulous commentators were available…a Mr Allen and Mr Ben Edwards, yet he’s had a mady and walked off…surely a right hand man of the guy who destroyed Grandstand is surely a no-no.
But this woman seems to know her stuff, head of TV production at BBC Sport, Im sure you should go for Head of F1 James, it would be interesting, however you are probably very busy.
I’m sure Ms Slater will do an excellent job!
Position as Head of F1 is available… 😉
John g & Ed H : I’m quite shocked!
I’m surprised you guys have managed to post a response. As your hands have been cut by the flint you’ve been wielding all day to try and discover fire!
You do also realise that most of the drivers don’t have blonde hair, blue eyes under those helmets?
C’mon guys, this is 2009 not 1809. Have a think about it while you get back to your caves!
You misunderstand me. My thinking upon reading the inital information was:
Never heard of this Woman before, why does she get the job in favour of the guy who slaved away with the presentation team and timetables? seems like little reward to me, being sacked in favour of your Colleague.
And I was Worried we would have to face those terrible sort of fill in programs like “Strictly Come Dancing: It takes two” which the BBC is well known for. (well, the main show anyway) or ITV’s “Loose Women” where a bunch of Women go on about whatever pleases them. and when I say whatever, I mean ANYTHING. My mother made me watch that awful show…
My point is: Women can’t realy see into F1, besides Swimsuit models and Grid girls. I would so love to be proved wrong by, I don’t know, Danica Patrick, but She said that she would think very carefully before accepting any offer of an F1 test as her US career remained her priority.
“The first thing I think of is does it even fit?” Patrick told reporters during a media event in Texas this week.
“Is it going to get in the way of my IndyCar season? Is it going to get in the way of my prior obligations? Is it going to make me tired? Is it going to be something that’s not going to just really work into the schedule and then also is it something that I really want to do?”
Patrick acknowledged that trying F1 would be a gamble and that she would need to be absolutely convinced that she and her team would be competitive.
“I don’t believe that it’s very productive to lead people on if it’s not something that I’m interested in because you’re really opening yourself up then,” she said.
“What if you go and do it and it doesn’t go ideally or perfect and you don’t set the world on fire? Then all of a sudden all you did was just open yourself up to criticism.
If you listen to that it sounds just so typical of a Woman.
Jenson Button Ploughs on with his awful car with no hope at all, while Patrick is obessed with her own image, she seems pretty vain and selfish to me.
If you care to read the article properly, you will notice he has resigned not been sacked. He probably couldn’t face
being bossed by a former underling, men are funny about
such situations. but if he’s as good has he thinks he is, then he should find a similar post with another channel.
JA for head of F1.
That’s actually a really good idea, a guy who knows F1 and F1 broadcasting in general having done it for 12 years but who’s on broadcast presence can be divisive and who (as far as we know) has the respect and friendship of a good number of the BBC team through having worked with them during that time.
Sounds perfect.
@JA for head of F1
I second that… it’s a great idea actually.
Mark Wilkin is already in charge of F1 and has been since September. [ Shucks! My dream to be “moderator to the stars” has been dashed! — Moderator ]
lee grant: with all due respect, i think you might want to take your ‘pc’ blinkers off for a minute.
this isn’t my opinion, the fact is that the majority of fans, designers, engineers and those involved many other aspects of f1 are men. F1 is a male orientated sport. that’s just the way things are. i welcome the day when half the grandstand seats are filled with girls and women engineers sit in F1 teams but that day isn’t going to come in 2009.