  Which is the most believable version? BBC 23/2/04 The BBC has announced it will no longer televise the University Boat Race after this year's event in March. A statement said the BBC was sad to end its 66-year association with the event but it planned to make the 2004 race a "fitting finale" to its coverage. It said the decision was "in light of the organisers' desire to pursue a highly commercial agenda" for the race. The Times 24/2/04 FOR nearly 50 years the BBC has filmed every stroke, sweat and sinking of the university Boat Race — an event it could rightly call its own. But yesterday the Beeb was overtaken in the final lengths of negotiations as ITV pulled ahead to land one of sport’s most prestigious events. Next month’s will be the 50th filmed by the BBC, but will now also be the last as ITV has landed the filming rights for £1.75million, denting the Beeb’s already fragile sporting pride in the process. It emerged yesterday that ITV had been secretly negotiating to poach the race from the under the noses of the BBC for five and a half months.
ITV, which beat the BBC to the rugby World Cup rights, had been negotiating with Julia Lindsey, a former Saatchi and Saatchi executive who has been brought in to turn the Boat Race into a £75 million global brand.
A-MOL 24/2/04 Who gives a flying fuck? Rowers are a bunch of tossers, Oxbridge rowers are a bunch of twatty foreign tossers who get into the university on the basis that they can row a bit and the boat race is only watched by pathetic cunts who's only achievemen in life was having a father rich enough to get them into a decent university. It's the shittiest sports event in the calender and I'm fucking glad none of my hard earned license fee is going towards it, so the Beeb can concentrate on quality like Jamie Theakston sitcoms and Dom Joly chatshows. 
