Sky Sports filming season long series with Max Chilton

Sky Sports are filming a season long documentary with Max Chilton, it has been confirmed. As noted by Marussia on their Twitter:

“Sky Sports F1 are also ‘filming the filming’ tonight for a season-long documentary behind the scenes with Max Chilton in his debut year”

Scheduling details have not yet been confirmed, but hopefully it will air in the off-season as part of a six or eight part documentary at the start of 2014 rather than parts airing ‘throughout the year’. In my view, it would be good content to put on air during the off-season and it is great to see Sky are planning out the year already, which they did not really do last year.

It may be that this is part of a wider series that they are doing on young drivers’, similar to the Britain’s Next F1 Star format last year, but nothing has been confirmed regarding other drivers yet if they take that approach.

Thanks to David Edwards on Twitter for the tip.

Where Sky Sports F1 goes from here

The news yesterday evening that Georgie Thompson has left Sky’s Formula 1 team came as a surprise to myself and also to those that read this blog. It would be wrong to speculate exactly why she has left, or whether she has been pushed from the position, as no details have yet been revealed by Sky or Thompson. One thing I said clearly at the end of 2012 was that Sky had to have stability heading into 2013. Last year was about building the foundations, and this year is about ironing out the weaknesses and making the product they put out even better. It looked like they were going to get stability, however a month before the start of the season, that is now not going to happen.

What questions must be asked though is where does the Sky Sports F1 team go from here. Normally the first question is, as was the case for example when Jake Humphrey announced his decision to leave the BBC F1 team, who will replace her. The problem here is that we are just four weeks away from the new season, which makes the probability of Sky finding someone to fill Thompson’s shoes highly unlikely. You’re asking them to find someone who not only is a competent sports’ presenter, but also has an in-depth knowledge of the sport so they could fill her position. Instead I think, for 2013 at least, we are just going to see her position dissolve – in that the current roles will just be re jigged with people taking on extra responsibilities. That is not uncommon within broadcasting. You may remember at the end of 2010, Jonathan Legard parted company with the BBC F1 team, instead of them bringing someone else in, they simply expanded David Coulthard’s role so he was pundit and commentator alongside Martin Brundle for the team. The problem with that though is that we now have less people doing more work.

So, how will that work for Sky? We already know one thing – Natalie Pinkham will be alongside Ted Kravitz as the new presenter of The F1 Show going forward. That was evident on last night’s show, whilst the Sky Sports F1 website references them both as hosts of the show. The F1 Show is live on Friday’s, so it should not be a major issue for Pinkham to present it then as well at the start of race weekends, but time will tell if they bring in either Rachel Brookes or Craig Slater for The F1 Show on some of the Friday’s depending on who is reporting the race for Sky Sports News.

On Friday’s, the workload more or less will be the same as 2012, as Thompson’s only on-air role was presenting The F1 Show. The problem comes with Saturday and Sunday during a race weekend. Normally in 2012, Thompson presented the Saturday morning practice session and was alongside Anthony Davidson on the Sky Pad. For the Saturday morning practice session, I can see either Pinkham or Simon Lazenby taking over duties, in this case however I hope it is Pinkham. In my opinion, Lazenby was presenting too much during 2012: two practice sessions, Qualifying and the four and a half hour race show. With 2012 being his first season, I felt too much emphasis was put on Lazenby and not enough on Thompson – as both were labelled as presenters’. With Thompson now out of the Sky team, it means that the imbalance is unlikely to be addressed, meaning that Lazenby will still be presenting too much. I think by presenting too much, it makes his job more difficult because of the amount of air-time he has to cover.

Moving onto the Sky Pad, and the logical option will be to have David Croft alongside Anthony Davidson before and after the races on the Sky Pad, which did happen on a few occasions in 2012. The other option would be to ditch the Sky Pad concept altogether, but considering the amount of resources Sky put into it last year, I cannot see it happening, and by making that move they are saying, in my opinion, “it didn’t work”, which I can’t see them doing. The absence of a replacement for Thompson means that other potential expansions to Sky’s coverage are highly unlikely to happen in my opinion, such as adding ‘colour’ to the GP2 and GP3 Series with a brief pre-race and post-race build-up. With one less member of the team, it would mean that resources will be stretched, making the above improbable.

It’s difficult to say at this stage whether Thompson will be a significant loss to the team, but it is definitely a set-back for the channel who would have been hoping to stabilise their line-up heading into this season.

Georgie Thompson leaves Sky’s F1 team

The F1 Show has just gone to air, however, the big news off-screen is that The F1 Broadcasting Blog can tonight confirm that Georgie Thompson has left the Sky Sports F1 team.

The website has removed mentions of her being the host of The F1 Show as well as her profile from their sub-site. I should note that this has not been officially confirmed by Sky themselves. Thompson’s Twitter profile still contains mention her being the Sky Sports F1 presenter, but her last tweet was on January 30th. At the end of last season on the day of the final F1 Show of 2012, Thompson tweeted: “So tonight is mine and Ted Kravitz’s final F1 show!” I took issue to the wording about what exactly ‘final’ meant. It appears we now have the answer.

If Thompson has left Sky Sports then it ends her 12 year career with the broadcaster. In the past decade, Thompson has been best known for her role on the Sky Sports News channel, which she left at the end of 2011 to join the Sky Sports F1 channel. Aside from presenting the sports news, Thompson was also a presenter on the regular Sky Sports channels, motor sport fans may remember her presenting the now defunct A1 Grand Prix series. One would speculate that if she has left Sky, then her destination may well be BT Sport, but that is speculation on my behalf as I do not see any other logical broadcasting move for her at the moment.

Going forward, Natalie Pinkham will replace Thompson as presenter of the magazine programme The F1 Show. I will update this blog post as soon as this is officially confirmed (or denied).

Thanks to Ashley James on Twitter for the tip.

Chasing the money, but not the viewers

In a story that seems to be repeating itself over across Europe, today saw another deal being announced between Formula One Management and a pay TV operator. This time it was the French audience that was the victim. It was announced that their Formula 1 action would be moving from TF1 to Canal+.

Ignoring the money influenced issues for a moment, the move itself probably is not too surprising. I assume that audiences in France have been declining as a result of no French drivers’ coming through the ranks, and no French Grand Prix probably added to the lack of interest. Below is a summary of the moves that I have covered since beginning the blog:

– Italy
– Netherlands

There have been more, the UK one being the first of its kind. My personal opinion is that Formula 1 should be available to the widest possible audience in front of the biggest audiences. That has always been my perception. Yes, as good as the Sky Sports product here is in the UK, due to its position on the EPG among other reasons, it will never be able to grab the public’s attention like the BBC (or the ITV product) did.

Of course, there is multiple reasons beyond FOM why we have the BBC and Sky deal, we must not forget that the BBC went to Sky and that is how the deal came about (they could have gone to Channel 4, but Channel 4 could not commit to 2012). The other options for BBC would have been to try and reduce the rights or exit the contract, the problem with that is that they would have got a quite significant money penalty as a result.

In any case, that is an aside. The deal happened, at a reported £60 million (although this is disputed in some quarters), and the end result was a significant viewership drop (again, disputed). Those who read my ratings pieces last year that I was more often than not reporting viewership drops despite the championship race being exciting. The first thought is that a ratings drop is not good. As a fan, I want Formula 1 to be accessible to everyone and not hidden away on channel 406. If the ratings are going down as a result of the deal, then why is the deal being replicated across Europe?

Money. There is a balance here between the amount of viewers and the amount of money, and the balance needs to be correct and stable. The problem is that teams’ are money hungry, quite understandably because that is what makes them go racing. If the money disappears, then you don’t go racing, it is that simple. What interests me here is the sponsorship money. Logically, a lower audience equals less sponsorship money. Right? So less sponsorship money equals less money for the teams. And less money for the teams equals teams struggling financially. Which means that the gap has to be plugged from somewhere. Which is where the TV rights deals that run far more into eight figures than ever before come in and offsets the problem and brings teams back into the green. The worldwide recession will not have helped, either.

That is at least my theory. I won’t claim to be right, but everything in Formula 1 is intrinsically linked: TV deals, circuit contracts, even down to the revised driver deals that forced Timo Glock out of Marussia. It is quite a frightening prospect when there are more pay drivers’ on the grid than ever before. But unfortunately, it looks like for some teams’ in the field, that this season will be a fight for survival. Will all 11 teams survive 2013? I don’t think so. As much as I don’t like it, nor approve of it, the teams’ have got into the mindset as a result of the recession where the audience at home is an afterthought. Deliberately? I don’t know. To me, at the moment, it feels like Formula 1 is walking a thin tightrope. If a team does collapse this year, I fear that a domino effect might start. And who knows where that domino will end…

Hyberbole? Partially, I suspect so. But time and time, Formula 1 is told ‘reduce costs, reduce costs’. Time and time again, the teams’ disagree which leads to a ‘breakaway’ suggestion. It is about time Formula 1 teams are all on the same page and head in the right direction for the sake of this sport. Will they? We shall see.

Poll: Who do you want to be the new 5 Live F1 co-commentator?

It is a bit of a quiet week F1 Broadcasting wise with the week and a half gap between test one and two. With that in mind, I thought I would throw the opinions over to you.

Earlier today, the 5 Live F1 account tweeted “Putting the BBC 5 Live F1 team together for 2013. Finishing touches. Full line-up in place by March 6th.”

So my question to you is: Who do you want to be the new 5 Live F1 commentator?

The poll includes a few current generation drivers’ who have been in the commentary box at various times such as Bruno Senna, Jerome d’Ambrosio and the ultimate F1 dictionary man Karun Chandhok. Also included in the list are Formula 1 legends who have been part of the 5 Live team in the past at various stages – Sir Jackie Stewart and John Watson. The final few are those who have not yet found a drive for 2013, they are Heikki Kovalainen and Kamui Kobayashi.

My personal preference is John Watson for the role due to his vast amount of commentary experience in the past spanning multiple decades. He is also, in my opinion, easy to listen to and good for discussion based conversations which 5 Live’s practice coverage is famous for.

That’s my opinion. Who do you think should be the new 5 Live F1 co-commentator? Have your say in the comments below. I’ll announce the results on the same day as the new commentator is announced, whether it is March 6th or before.