Abu Dhabi Grand Prix peaks with nearly six million viewers

Yesterday’s live coverage for the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix peaked with nearly six million viewers across BBC One and Sky Sports F1, overnight figures show. According to James Allen, BBC One’s coverage peaked with 4.8 million, with Sky Sports F1’s coverage expected to add a further 0.8 million to 1.0 million to that figure, bringing the figure to near 6 million. When you put that into context with the remainder of this season against sporting competition at times, that is a very solid figure in my opinion.

The peak figure is up on last year’s 5.52 million five-minute peak figure recorded at 13:35, whilst it is in-line with a fifteen-minute peak of 5.9 million in 2009. It is, however, down on the mammoth peak of 7.35 million viewers from 2010, although that was thanks to the 2010 race being a title decider involving four different drivers.

On BBC One, ITV Media reports that the BBC coverage averaged 3.895 million viewers, with a 29 percent share from 12:10 to 15:30. Sky Sports F1’s coverage averaged under 574,000 viewers from 11:30 to 16:15, meaning a combined average around the 4.4 million mark, which would be the lowest average yet. If you were to compare like to like though, taking the Sky Sports F1 average from 12:10 to 15:30, you would probably find that rise slightly, albeit marginally below the 4.56 million from 2011 and below 4.8 million (2009) and 5.78 million (2010).

Admittedly there is not a plethora of information above, so I note that Sascha Mohr, who runs a German media blog posted the German ratings from yesterday over on his Twitter feed. In Germany, 7.18 million viewers watched on RTL, 430k on Sky Deutschland and 780k on ORF. Compared to the 85% to 15% or 80% to 20% we see here for BBC versus Sky, in Germany it is a similar split it seems between RTL and Sky/ORF if not slightly higher. The figures are very good for Germany, as this historical comparison shows figures over there peaked with 10.4 million viewers average in 2001 during Michael Schumacher’s third title defence.

Figures were always above 8 million during his title reigns with Ferrari, although as the graph shows they were not as high during his first two title reigns at Benetton. In any case, it appears that Sebastian Vettel is definitely popular in Germany, whether he is as popular as Schumacher was at his peak remains to be seen though. Nevertheless, I thought it would be good to include German figures seeing as I spotted though as we rarely get those figures.

Chris Evans rules himself out of BBC F1 presenter

Chris Evans has today ruled himself out the BBC Formula 1 presenter position, following the vacancy left by Jake Humphrey in September. Evans, in his Daily Mail column, said that he went to a meeting for the role, but said “it would be unfair on everyone involved for me to be given a job I don’t really have the time to do.” It is not particularly surprising to see him linked to the role in the first place being a big Formula 1 fan, but at the same point, not surprising to see him not taking it. The thing with Formula 1 is that it takes up a major proportion of the year, 20 races and four or five days at each weekend takes up a significant amount of time.

Whilst Evans has ruled himself out, he does suggest Clare Balding or Gabby Logan for the presenter position, the latter I suggested as a main possibility on the day of Humphrey’s departure. Being a BBC employee helps and Logan as far as I am aware does not do a lot of work currently with BBC. Balding, however, is unlikely to zero on the basis that she was unveiled as presenter of Channel 4’s racing coverage a few months ago.

The interesting thing about Evans blog on the Daily Mail website is that it also includes a list of suggestions for the BBC Formula 1 presenter’s job… directly from Jake Humphrey. Humphrey suggests, and I’ll go through this one by one:

– Julia Bradbury: I had to Google this, I knew she presents Countryfile currently, but did not realise that she presented Speedway on Channel 4 in the early 2000’s. I guess it is always possible, but she does a lot of work for BBC at the moment, and I don’t see her ditching that for Formula 1 around the world. I’d rate this as unlikely.
– Lee McKenzie: The lead candidate having been with BBC F1 since its inception in 2009. A safe pair of hands, a lot of experience means McKenzie is highly likely to get the position.
– Suzi Perry: Perry was ousted as MotoGP presenter on BBC at the end of 2010, so I don’t forsee her joining the Formula 1 team. I think this is unlikely to happen.
– Steve Rider: Like McKenzie, Rider would be a safe pair of hands. But would he want to exchange the BTCC and his F1 Legends commitments at Sky with presenting BBC F1 for a second time? Possibly, but I’m not so sure he would want to go travelling around the world with an ever demanding Formula 1 schedule.
– Phillip Schofield: No chance. One of ITV’s biggest presenters (This Morning, Dancing on Ice, Mr and Mrs to name three shows), and if BBC tried to get him, they’d have to offer him a lot of money to get him to do it.

As always, I may be completely wrong, but they are my thoughts looking at the suggestions. I still think McKenzie is the most likely. We’re in November now, so we should know in the next month or two for definite what is happening.

The F1 Show Season Review to air on Friday 30th November

The final edition of The F1 Show in 2012 will air on Friday 30th November, I can confirm. The show, presented by Georgie Thompson and Ted Kravitz will air live for the last time this year on that date at 20:00. Unlike the Season Preview, all the way back on Friday 9th March which aired for two hours, the Season Review will only air for one hour. Following on from extended hours through the first three quarters of November, the trend is continued in the final week of November:

Tuesday 27th November
12:00 to 19:30 – F1 Highlights (Australia, Malaysia, China, Bahrain and Spain)
19:30 – F1 Fast Track (Brazil)
20:00 to 23:00 – F1 Fast Track (Australia, Malaysia, China, Bahrain, Spain and Monaco)

Wednesday 28th November
12:00 to 19:30 – F1 Highlights (Monaco, Canada, Europe, Britain and Germany)
19:30 – Weekend in Stills (Brazil)
20:00 to 23:00 – F1 Fast Track (Canada, Europe, Britain, Germany, Hungary and Belgian)

Thursday 29th November
12:00 to 19:30 – F1 Highlights (Hungary, Belgian, Italy, Singapore, Japan)
19:30 to 22:30 – F1 Fast Track (Italy, Singapore, Japan, Korea, India, Abu Dhabi)

Friday 30th November
11:30 to 19:00 – F1 Highlights (Korea, India, Abu Dhabi, USA, Brazil)
19:00 to 20:00 – F1 Fast Track (USA and Brazil)
20:00 to 21:00 – The F1 Show Season Review
21:00 to 22:00 – F1 Fast Track (USA and Brazil)
22:00 to 23:00 – The F1 Show Season Review

With all programming bookended in before the beginning of December, it now looks increasingly likely that the Sky Sports F1 channel will indeed close for the Winter on Friday 30th November, as has been noted by myself in the past few weeks, and as was noted on the advertising document published by Sky Media before the start of the season (archived here by F1Fanatic.co.uk). As of posting, I have yet to have that 100 percent confirmed. And as always, I will update this post if there are any changes.

Update on November 8th – The above paragraph is now redundant, please see this post.

More on James Murdoch in Abu Dhabi

The story that the Daily Mirror ran last night and on the back page of today’s newspaper appears to have some accuracy to it, however, also appears to be wide of the mark.

The first thing to mention is that James Murdoch is in Abu Dhabi. That is a fact, and has been mentioned by Kevin Eason this afternoon who said at 17:16 UK time “Just spotted the boss. James Murdoch speeding away from Yas Marina hotel. Not on way to secret meeting but dinner date.”

Last night, the story that the Daily Mirror ran said that James Murdoch was having “top secret” talks with McLaren, Mercedes, Red Bull and Ferrari. From that moment, the story was in the public domain which would in turn mean that any other media organisation could quote ‘According to the Daily Mirror…..’. But none of reputable sites did. AUTOSPORT did not. BBC did not. F1Fanatic.co.uk did not. On the other hand, sites who tend to cut and paste stories did (or get them from tend-to-be inaccurate news agencies did), but none of the aforementioned did. I ran the story last night because I had received confirmation from a second source that Murdoch was in Abu Dhabi. As I said earlier, that bit is true. But if the “top secret” talks was true, surely anyone with a spine in the paddock would have put a microphone up to those four team bosses and asked if it was true. Or are the journalists scared of doing so in case they lose their paddock passes?

Or, it is not true. Well no one else has run the story, only Bryon Young of the Daily Mirror. Twenty four hours on nearly, no one else has followed. When Eddie Jordan revealed that Lewis Hamilton was joining Mercedes before everyone else, the whole F1 media jumped on it. No jumping this time. It is within the realms of possibility that a meeting is taking place tomorrow, but if so, I would be questioning the fact that no F1 journalist has asked questions today. But does that make it a ‘non-story’ because half of the story is false? Not particularly. The fact that a media mogul at that is in the Formula 1 paddock is enough to raise questions about why he is there and is enough of a story in itself.

The more likely scenario, and something a F1 paddock member has mentioned to me today as being far nearer the truth is that Murdoch is there to look at the Sky Sports F1 operation. There are plenty of reasons why Murdoch could be there to look at the operation, some to do with Formula 1, some probably not to do with Formula 1. The first one that comes to mind is the F1 channel model. Does Murdoch believe that the F1 channel model is financially successful in the United Kingdom and therefore can be replicated in other countries, where the broadcasting rights structure is similar? Back in June, it was revealed that in Italy, Sky Italia were going to screen eleven races live. In Germany, F1 is broadcast on Sky Deutschland. It may be in Murdoch’s interests to replicate the Sky Sports model in the United Kingdom and have ‘Sky Italia F1’ and ‘Sky Deutschland F1’ if Murdoch believes that ‘Sky Sports F1′ has been successful so far, after all we must remember that this is the first year the channel has existed. If you were to have three Sky F1 channels, in theory you could run the same programming on the three channels with voiceover in English, Italy and Germany, thus saving costs across the board. I may be far wide of the mark there, but it is just a theory.

Another line of thought is that Murdoch is looking at changes in the Sky Sports F1 line-up for 2013, however I would rate that as highly unlikely. If anything, that decision would either be Martin Turner’s (Executive Producer of Sky Sports F1) or Barney Francis’ (Managing Director of Sky Sports). I would be extremely surprised if James Murdoch had a say in the decision making process at Sky Sports.

They’re just my initial thoughts, although unless you are Murdoch yourself, it is unlikely for a little while that we will know his full intentions by visiting the Formula 1 paddock this weekend. I do not claim to be a major expert in this area, whilst I do like to talk broadcasting, some of the wider talk does confuse me from time to time (such as the agenda’s of Murdoch) but those are my initial thoughts. If it is anything significant, and if the Daily Mirror article does turn out to be accurate, then I expect AUTOSPORT and the such like to be reporting it soon.

James Murdoch expected in Abu Dhabi paddock on Saturday

The F1 Broadcasting Blog has tonight received confirmation that a member of the Murdoch family is expected in the Abu Dhabi paddock tomorrow, for what is, according to the Daily Mirror “top secret talks”.

The member of the Murdoch family is believed to be James Murdoch, with The Mirror stating that he is expected to meet McLaren, Ferrari, Mercedes and Red Bull. At this stage what exactly will be talked about is speculation, The Mirror making suggestions that it could spell the end of BBC F1. To be honest, I think the talks will be much more wider than that, and not limited to one country and definitely not specifically one set of broadcasting rights.

Earlier this evening, F1 Racing magazine journalist James Roberts tweeted here and here: “I must admit, much more was happening in the paddock today than it was on track, and despite you wanting to know all the gossip, I couldn’t possibly print something unless I knew it was absolutely true… Sorry!” – I think we now know what Roberts was on about, and it appears that this was the paddock speculation. I can’t see Sky or BBC mentioning it on-air, but nevertheless, tomorrow may be an interesting day…