Sky Sports F1 to screen live coverage of third test – and in 3D

Sky Sports F1 is to screen exclusive live coverage of the third test from Barcelona, The F1 Broadcasting Blog can confirm. The channel will be broadcasting two and a half hours live from each day of the third test, which takes place from Thursday 28th February to Sunday 3rd March. The broadcast will begin at 14:00 on each of the four days with Simon Lazenby presenting, David Croft and ‘guests’ will be commentating.

In another first, Sky will become the first broadcaster to show Formula 1 in 3D, as their coverage throughout the test will be shown on Sky 3D. Martin Brundle said: “This is a special moment for Formula 1 fans and exactly the kind of innovation and access that Sky Sports F1 promised. 3D will show us the real challenges of the race track with added depth and perspective. It will be a new, immersive experience for viewers and I can’t wait to see what F1 action in 3D will reveal.”

Whilst Sky Sports F1’s Executive Producer Martin Turner added: “This is groundbreaking.”We’re as excited as the next fan to see what Formula 1 will look like in 3D. It’s uncharted territory, but this is a big opportunity to experiment and innovate, and we’re grateful to Formula One Management for working with us on this. Sky is a world-leader in the field of 3D broadcasting, so in partnership with Formula 1 we’re in the best position to answer public appetite and take up the challenge of bringing live F1 in 3D for the first time.”

Quite simply put, this is brilliant news, and a Formula 1 first that testing will be broadcast live in this detail. It will also provide a significant boost to the Sky Sports F1 schedule with ’round 0′ being shown live. Two and a half hours a day is 10 hours across the entire weekend, so fantastic news for Formula 1 fans. I don’t think it is likely, but a nice gesture would be to make the channel available to all Sky and Virgin Media customers. The reason I say that is because it is difficult to gauge the exact interest of testing and just what viewing figures it would draw, by making it available to all Sky and Virgin Media customers, you could persuade a few customers to make the jump if they like what they see. Nevertheless, this is brilliant news, and more than what I was expecting a few weeks ago. Obviously it needs to be said that this will not have been all Sky Sports F1’s doing, as with the race weekends, all footage inside a race circuit at testing is controlled by Formula One Management, so no doubt co-operation was required by them as testing is generally covered with much less cameras than a proper race weekend, thanks therefore need to go out to them as well here I think.

As for 3D, I personally have little interest in it, the main news for me by far is that they will be screening testing live. And that, as a Formula 1 fan, makes me very pleased.

Important: You will be able to watch the coverage if
– you have access to Sky Sports F1 OR
– you have access to Sky 3D

You do not need to have 3D to watch it, it will also be screened in SD and HD on Sky Sports F1.

Update at 19:30 – As expected, the broadcast on all four days will be from 14:00 to 16:30, however there will be a repeat airing at 18:30 for those unable to watch it live. The F1 Show on Friday 1st March is also scheduled to air in 3D.

Sky Sports F1 – Top 10 ratings (week ending 27th January, 2013)

From BARB:

1 – 8k – Legends (Tuesday, 19:00)
2 – 5k – F1 2012: A Season to Remember (Saturday, 21:30)
3 – 4k – Malaysian Grand Prix Highlights (Wednesday, 20:00)
4 – 3k – Fast Track (Tuesday, 18:00)
5 – 3k – Fast Track (Friday, 18:00)
6 – 3k – Toro Rosso Season Review (Wednesday, 21:30)
7 – 3k – Bahrain Grand Prix Highlights (Friday, 20:00)
8 – 2k – Caterham Season Review (Tuesday, 21:30)
9 – 2k – Brazilian Grand Prix Highlights (Monday, 20:00)
10 – 2k – Legends (Friday, 19:00)

The ugly side of the 2013 car launches

This week has seen the 2013 Formula One season get under way in full force with the now traditional car launches, with each team inviting the worlds’ media along to make their launch stand out the most. Some go for glitz, whilst others go for the old fashioned, but still perfectly adequate method of launching their machinery in pit-lane. Unfortunately though, whilst some launches have been good, others have turned into a blatant PR stunt and one launch turned ugly.

The launches have, mostly, been good. The week started off with Lotus launching their E21 car at their headquarters in Enstone on Monday. Initially though the launch did not go according to plan, high winds thwarted their original plan, and the team were forced to relocate inside to the factory. Nevertheless, after a quick turnaround, the team were back on track, launching their car at 19:15 UK time with Craig Slater overseeing proceedings. McLaren, like Lotus, launched their car at their headquarters in Woking. Although the first half hour were filled with Vodafone related PR material, the last thirty minutes picked up significantly, with a touching tribute to Bruce McLaren, along with cars from the past 50 years being driven around the McLaren lake. Lotus and McLaren definitely, for me, fell into the good category.

Force India followed up on Friday morning and, like in 2012, took the old school route launching their car actually at a race circuit, a few minutes away from their base at Silverstone. Ferrari and Sauber launched at their bases’ respectively, although if you were a Formula 1 journalist wanting to go to every launch, you would have to pick between them given the close timescale and long distance between the launches. Not very handy, although it is understandable why a team like Ferrari would prefer launching at their base in Maranello in Italy than England, for example.

At the aforementioned launches, the journalists were invited, they got to ask questions and could take photographs. The fans could watch via some form, whether it was via that teams’ YouTube channel or Sky Sports News, so they too felt involved. Mercedes and Red Bull had different ideas. Mercedes took the route that involved the fans, possibly a little too much. Now, whether this was deliberate on their behalf though, and therefore a blatant PR stunt, is open to interpretation. On Saturday, Mercedes tweeted that they would “engage fans with a unique F1 W04 online reveal”. Basically, the name of the game is that fans tweet, the more they tweet, the more the garage door opens, leading to the reveal. Unfortunately, what the did not anticipate is that the fans would overload their servers’, crashing their website. Or did they? Because late yesterday evening, they tweeted “keep retweeting #F1W04Reveal and the car will be unveiled progressively between now and Monday”. So, in other words, there is little point of retweeting #F1W04Reveal, because the car will not be unveiled any earlier, the launch remains on Monday. Yes, there are grainy pictures out there as a result of the garage door opening more, but it won’t fully open until Monday. Which, I suspect was always going to happen. Unfortunately, for Mercedes, this goes under the category of ‘blatant PR stunt’, which a significant group of fans and journalists fell for. If anything, the egg is on our faces, and not Mercedes.

Thankfully, Mercedes’ launch did not resort to physical violence. Unlike Red Bull’s, which nearly did. The purpose of car launches is to invite the media to said launch, they take photographs, they ask questions, the fans get to watch online and the teams get a bit of PR out of it. That is a ‘win win’ situation for everyone. Red Bull, at the last moment or not, we don’t know decided to ban media from taking photographs, while the online launch never appeared. To prevent the media from taking photographs, G4S were assigned the role of security at the launch. Respected Formula 1 technical journalist Craig Scarborough tweeted “Red Bull are aggressively stopping photos being taken, threaten[ing] to take cameras away.”, whilst Keith Collantine on the F1Fanatic.co.uk website said “G4S nearly snatched my phone off me.” May someone need to remind Red Bull that this is a Formula 1 car launch event and not a press conference full of international delegates? Yes, Formula 1 cars may live in a top secret world from time to time, but threatening to take cameras off people, at an event that you expect them to give you good PR for, is absolutely ludicrous. It is even more ludicrous when you consider that the Red Bull car will be in the public eye from Tuesday around Jerez. What will they do if the car breaks down? Steal the cameras of anyone that has taken a picture? As a point of clarity, for what it is worth, this poster on AUTOSPORT Forum said that they had problems with the online launch and that no cameras were taken away – even if the first point is true, they could have explained that on their Twitter feed which made no mention of said problems.

Compare the Red Bull launch to the McLaren one, where we were treated to a fantastic video with Gary Anderson and Suzi Perry intrinsically looking at the 2013 machine on the BBC Sport website. The problem is, whilst the McLaren launch is fantastic for the fans, the Red Bull one is not as fantastic with their secrecy. Another problem with all, but one, of these launches is the time of day the launches happen. Maybe it is about time that all the launches took place all in one evening, with every team getting a 20 minute slot to showcase their cars. Unfortunately, each team has their own political and sponsorship agenda that would let such an idea ever taking place as they like to be the spotlight, an event like that would mean everyone is on a level playing field, which teams would not like. It is a nice idea though. Hire out a big arena such as the O2 Arena or the NEC in Birmingham, have the worldwide media there along with 200 or so fans being invited, an FOM World Feed to stream to the likes of Sky Sports F1 and BBC online so that it is accessible to everyone, all in one place meaning Formula 1 is forefront of the spotlight. You could go one step further, and make Birmingham (or whichever city in Europe), the ‘host city’ for the weekend where Formula 1 activities take place during that weekend, from car demonstrations to driver signings. With the focus on that city and the world’s motor sport media descending on that location, it may be a small money spinner. It also would reduce travel costs, all the media would travel to one launch instead of having to take flights to multiple launches at different locations.

At least, then, you wouldn’t have certain teams’ threatening journalists for simply doing their job…

BBC announce changes to multi-platform F1 coverage

The BBC have announced some changes to their multi-platform Formula 1 coverage as a result of the Delivering Quality First changes concerning the Red Button.

Their 2013 coverage page has been updated to rectify the fact that the Red Button service has been reduced from five streams to one stream. The first sign of change is previously the page said that you could “customise their viewing experience through the BBC’s multi-platform offering”, this has been adjusted to say that the audience can “customise their viewing experience online”, meaning that it appears you will not be able to watch the races on-board through the Red Button because of the Delivering Quality First cuts.

Furthermore, this paragraph was previously in the Red Button section of that webpage: “On race day, viewers will be able to choose from three different video streams: the main network feed with a choice of commentary from BBC One and BBC Radio 5 live; a split screen comprising the main network feed, an in-car camera feed and leaderboard; or rolling highlights.”

That paragraph has now been removed entirely, whilst only “selected on-track sessions” from BBC’s live ten races will be broadcast behind the Red Button, instead of “all on-track sessions” from those races as it was previously. I’m not sure which sessions, but I suspect the odd practice session that BBC have the rights to show live will be online only depending on clashes with other events. In those circumstances, it would be nice if practice was shown on BBC Two as I suggested at the end of 2012, but I don’t think that is highly likely, nor is it suggested in the updated version of the BBC coverage page.

One final thing that page has removed is mentions of Jaime Alguersuari, who is unlikely to return to his 5 Live commentary role this season. The BBC team for 2013 has not yet been officially confirmed, but aside from the presenter change, everything else is likely to remain the same.

Sky applaud success of Sky Sports F1’s debut season

Sky have revealed their financial results for the second half of 2012 from June 30th, 2012 to December 30th, 2012. In it contains the following parts touting the success of Sky Sports F1:

“In its debut season, the Sky Sports F1 channel reached more than nine million viewers while Sky Sports on Sky Go, our mobile TV service, continues to grow in popularity, registering a record 234,000 unique users for live coverage of the Manchester derby in December.”

“Sports [programming costs] accounted for £48 million of the increase which was predominantly due to the inclusion of Formula 1 and Ryder Cup rights not in the prior year together with the England and Sri Lankan cricket tours to India and Australia respectively.”

With regards the first point, nine million viewers is the amount of the viewers that have watched the channel for three consecutive increase. This is an increase from the 7.3 million viewers it reached for the first 10 races last year, meaning that the channel reached 1.7 million new viewers in the second half of 2012. As noted previously, the reach figure is simply that, a ‘roof’ figure and should not be taken as nine million viewers watching each race as that, in my opinion, is PR spin when the average figures are significantly lower.

The second point concerns the record unique number of users for the football Manchester derby on Sky Go. That statement is unclear in nature because it says ‘mobile TV service’, therefore I don’t know if it includes every possible method of watching via Sky Go. If it does, I find that figure low myself, and given that Formula 1 is less popular than football, I would be interested to see how many watched the United States Grand Prix via this method. The football figure suggests it is not a lot, probably around ~150k or 200k at most – which would not bump the overall Formula 1 ratings significantly.