Sky Sports F1 – Top 10 ratings (week ending 26th August, 2012)

From BARB:

1 – 41k – The F1 Show (Friday, 20:00)
2 – 16k – Fast Track (Monday, 18:00)
3 – 16k – F1 Legends (Thursday, 22:15)
4 – 16k – 1988 Season Review (Thursday, 21:00)
5 – 14k – 1989 Season Review (Friday, 21:00)
6 – 13k – F1 Legends (Thursday, 23:15)
7 – 10k – Hungarian Grand Prix Replay (Sunday, 11:00)
8 – 9k – Fast Track (Tuesday, 18:00)
9 – 7k – Fast Track (Wednesday, 18:32)
10 – 7k – German Grand Prix Highlights (Wednesday, 19:31)

The F1 Show recorded its highest figure for a studio show since the edition on July 13th, when it had 45k. The two season reviews also performed respectably.

One thing I am going to do with this weekly blog post is that, while the title will stay the same, I am going to include any other motor sport figures that I spot in the BARB Top 10’s. With that in mind, the Speedway Grand Prix on August 25th had 96,000 viewers at 17:30 on Sky Sports 2.

Twitter goes retweeting crazy as F1 journalists break the Grosjean news

Romain Grosjean has been banned from the Italian Grand Prix as a result of the multiple car pile up at the start of the Belgian Grand Prix. Within seconds of the decision being announced, Twitter lighted up with a lot of Formula 1 journalists tweeting the news instantly, and others favouriting and retweeting it. The first on my particular timeline to break the news was Ian Parkes. The following is based on my timeline from 16:41 to 16:51, with the amount of times each tweet has been retweeted and favourited up to about 17:20/17:25 UK time.

16:41 – Ian Parkes (Press Association) – 210 retweets, 5 favourites
16:41 – Pete Gill (Sky Sports) – 214 retweets
16:42 – Simon Strang (AUTOSPORT) – 10 retweets
16:43 – Jonathan Noble (AUTOSPORT) – 197 retweets, 10 favourites
16:43 – Jennie Gow (BBC) – 31 retweets
16:43 – Andrew Benson (BBC) – 118 retweets, 2 favourites
16:44 – Will Buxton (SPEED) – 17 retweets, 1 favourite
16:44 – Adam Cooper – 92 retweets
16:45 – Tom Cary (Daily Telegraph) – 20 retweets, 1 favourite
16:46 – Joe Saward – 9 retweets
16:46 – Dimi Papadopoulos – 3 retweets
16:46 – Sky Sports F1 – 536 retweets, 14 favourites
16:47 – Jake Humphrey (BBC) – 727 retweets, 50 favourites
16:49 – F1Fanatic.co.uk – 23 retweets
16:50 – Natalie Pinkham (Sky) – 9 retweets, 1 favourite
16:51 – Lee McKenzie – 281 retweets, 17 favourites

From those 16 tweets, which all say the same thing in one way or another, the most retweeted tweet comes from Jake Humphrey, despite reporting the news six minutes later than the first tweet in the list, thanks to his large amount of followers, especially some with probably little interest in Formula 1. The 16 tweets were retweeted by a massive 2,497 users (you can probably minus 5 percent off that for those that retweeted multiple of the above), while if you include the favourites column, that number increases to 2,598 tweets, although favourites don’t appear on other people’s timelines while retweets do.

As I outline every week in my blog, half of the Formula 1 drivers currently have over 100,000 followers, but over in broadcasting, the Sky Sports F1 account has 154,434 followers which would place it sixth in that list, while Jake Humphrey has nearly 600,000 followers which would place him fourth in the drivers’ list!

Of course, most of the above 16 accounts are Formula 1 specific accounts, more general accounts tend to have a lot more followers, and therefore are likely to get retweeted more often. Either way, the above is just a look at how far and wide 16 tweets can go on the “Twitter universe”. If we didn’t have Twitter chances are you wouldn’t have found that out until a few hours later, or via some other medium, such as a news channel, but because of Twitter the news was found instantly and retweeted to thousands of other people.

Scheduling: The Italian Grand Prix

The best double header of the season, without question, continues next weekend with the Italian Grand Prix at the wonderful Monza circuit. This is one of the races that BBC TV will be providing highlights only for, meaning that Sky Sports have exclusive live coverage of the weekend’s action.

One minor point to note, for those that watch is, is that GP3 Qualifying is on earlier than usual on Saturday, with Qualifying starting at 08:00 UK time instead of 08:45 UK time. The same also applies for the GP3 Race on Sunday, with the race beginning at 08:00 UK time instead of 08:25 UK time. The Radio Times website has the normal times, I am basing the below from what the official Formula1.com website says.

Away from TV, I have listed the BBC Radio times below as I usually do for when BBC TV is not live. For Italy, however, none of the practice sessions are live on BBC Radio due to the Paralympic Games, with only Qualifying and Race live on BBC Radio 5 Live. I imagine a link will be put up on the BBC F1 website for those wanting to listen, however.

For those of you wishing to whet your appetite, the BBC Red Button will have Classic Italian Grand Prix’s from Wednesday night onwards. The races that will be re-shown in extended highlights form are 1987, 1988, 1990, 1994 and 1995, thanks to the BBC’s Tom Bowker on Twitter for the information.

Thursday 6th September
14:00 to 14:45 – F1: Driver Press Conference (Sky Sports F1)

Friday 7th September
08:45 to 10:50 – F1: Practice 1 (Sky Sports F1)
10:55 to 11:35 – GP2: Practice (Sky Sports F1)
12:45 to 14:50 – F1: Practice 2 (Sky Sports F1)
14:50 to 15:40 – GP2: Qualifying (Sky Sports F1)
16:00 to 16:45 – F1: Team Press Conference (Sky Sports F1)
17:00 to 18:00 – The F1 Show (Sky Sports F1)
18:45 to 19:00 – Inside F1 (BBC News Channel)

Saturday 8th September
07:55 to 08:35 – GP3: Qualifying (Sky Sports F1)
09:45 to 11:10 – F1: Practice 3 (Sky Sports F1)
12:00 to 14:35 – F1: Qualifying (Sky Sports F1)
13:00 to 14:00 – F1: Qualifying (BBC Radio 5 Live)
14:35 to 16:05 – GP2: Race 1 (Sky Sports F1)
16:15 to 17:05 – GP3: Race 1 (Sky Sports F1)
17:15 to 18:35 – F1: Qualifying Highlights (BBC One)
18:45 to 19:00 – Inside F1 (BBC News Channel)

Sunday 9th September
07:55 to 08:45 – GP3: Race 2 (Sky Sports F1)
09:30 to 10:35 – GP2: Race 2 (Sky Sports F1)
11:30 to 16:05 – F1: Race (Sky Sports F1)
13:00 to 14:30 – F1: Race (BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra)
17:35 to 19:05 – F1: Race Highlights (BBC One)
19:05 to 20:05 – F1: Forum (BBC Red Button)

As always, the timings are subject to slight alterations, so I shall update this blog if and when that happens.

Update on September 5th: As a result on Jerome d’Ambrosio replacing Romain Grosjean at Lotus for Monza, Dani Clos will be alongside Will Buxton for GP2.