I’ve been an F1 fan since the early 80s – think the first time I went to F1 was in 81 at Silverstone, back when Woodcote had recently turned from a corner into a chicane. TV coverage then was laughably poor with 40 minute (if we were lucky) highlights shoehorned into the BBC2 schedule at midnight on a Sunday and no coverage of practice, and any ‘live’ race interrupted by them switching to pro-celebrity tiddlywinks from Bognor.
I was gutted when the Beeb announced their deal with Sky as I cannot justify spending that much (extra) on watching TV, so I’m back to watching the highlights. It’s not the end of the world – I can avoid the result without too much bother and can do stuff on Sunday afternoons rather than sit in front of the telly. If you’re a proper technical fan of the sport then the in depth coverage available from the web these days is far more than the janet & john explanations that the TV shows can give, and all that punditry is just hot air.
IMO the only real thing you miss from a live show is the spontaneous interview moments if anyone actually manages to nail down a key person to say something interesting, but once again most of the drivers & team bosses are tuned to PR speak rather than give real responses.
So in short – nope, not lost a bit of interest because the TV coverage of the race is just one small part of my overall interest in F1.