There’s a lot of talk in Formula 1 today about the likelihood or otherwise of News Corporation launching a bid for the sport. It’s healthy to be suspicious of News Corp – but don’t forget that Formula 1 has had its fair share of questionable dealings in the past.

Inevitably, all this has raised the prospect of Formula 1 coverage going to Sky Sports. Being a selfish Freeview watching sort, it’s the last thing I’d want. It’s also not terribly likely – I hope. Formula 1 with no presence on free-to-air TV would be a significantly less attractive prospect for pretty much everyone involved – fans, teams, sponsors, FIA.

MotoGP

MotoGP rights holders Dorna realised that a couple of years ago, and made a push for free-to-air coverage at the expense of subscription channels. That stripped Eurosport UK of its rights, which didn’t go down well at all – chiefly because of Toby Moody and Julian Ryder commentating on Eurosport, compared to Steve Parrish and Charlie Cox on the BBC.

A compromise was reached, with delayed coverage of the MotoGP race on Eurosport, but Dorna essentially stuck to their free-to-air guns.

WRC

World Rally Championship promoters North One Sport didn’t seem to share Dorna’s view when the WRC rights were awarded to subscription-only channel ESPN earlier this year, having been on free-to-air Dave previously. Google still shoves more traffic to this site on that subject than anything else, so it’s clearly not just an issue for me.

I genuinely believe that the WRC will suffer in the UK for not being on a free-to-air channel. Obviously I’m more than a casual motorsport fan, but I realised yesterday that I didn’t know who won last weekend’s Rally Jordan. Out of sight, out of mind.

North One Sport was acquired by CSI last month, and I’ve seen no mention of the ESPN deal being multi-year. So hopefully the new owners might give a little more priority to getting the WRC in front of a few more eyeballs in 2012. Fingers crossed.

WTCC

The World Touring Car Championship seems even less bothered about free-to-air. Given that the promoter is Eurosport, that’s perhaps not a surprise. Until this year, ITV4 had half-hour highlights from every round, but it looks like that hasn’t been renewed for 2011.

That’s a shame, obviously, but I’m not sure I’m that fussed. There’s a lot of uncertainly in touring cars at the moment – particularly around regulations – and the WTCC seems to have suffered the most. It could pick up again, but this year doesn’t look like it’ll be a classic. I think I can live without it.