One year ago, I launched The F1 Broadcasting Blog. The first blog was your standard ‘Welcome‘ piece. From there, the site grew. Bigger and better than I ever could have imaged. 345 posts later and today marks the first birthday for The F1 Broadcasting Blog. I couldn’t be more proud of how far the site has come. Here are a few statistics on how far the site has come:
– Total of 155,000 hits
– Over 1,500 followers on Twitter
– Amassed over 800 comments since inception
– Average of 500 views per day
– Visitors from 134 countries
– Connections with members of the BBC and Sky F1 team
To all of those that have visited, praised, criticised, commented and liked, thank you for making it the success that it has been. And as a milestone has been passed, here is the regular review of the most read articles since the site began:
10. Doing the sums: the cost of viewing Sky Sports F1 this year – January 31st, 2013
Unsurprisingly, a popular article so far in 2013 has been people looking for the cheapest way to view Sky Sports F1 legally this season.
9. BBC axe 2012 opening titles – March 1st, 2013
Formula 1 opening titles tend to last three years, or at least they did throughout the ITV era. BBC had other ideas though and decided to dump their 2012 titles after only one season.
8. Tom Clarkson doing Lee McKenzie’s job this weekend – June 9th, 2012
With Jake Humphrey elsewhere, Lee McKenzie was promoted to the presenter role for the 2012 Canadian Grand Prix. In her place was Tom Clarkson, which led to the birth of the above blog article. For me, this was the first time I noticed that the blog was going to properly take off.
7. Dissecting Georgie Thompson’s decision to leave Sky F1 – February 25th, 2013
I attempt to look at the decision by Georgie Thompson to leave the Sky Sports F1 team. Two months on, and neither has made an official comment on the matter.
6. Tom Clarkson added to BBC F1 TV team – March 6th, 2013
The news in early March that Tom Clarkson had been added as a permanent member of the BBC F1 team, featuring in their coverage of every race.
5. The status of the IndyCar’s UK broadcasting rights – January 8th, 2013
The confusion surrounding the IndyCar rights concerned fans on the back-drop of a great year of racing in 2012. Unfortunately, it would turn out that Sky Sports opted to not renew the rights, with the series moving to ESPN. What happens from August 1st onwards though, is anyone’s guess.
4. Predicting the 2013 calendar pick order – September 21st, 2012
As the 2013 calendar was announced, I took a gamble, stepped into the BBC’s and Sky’s shoes and predicted what actions they would take in determining which races would be live on BBC, and which would be exclusively live on Sky. Whilst I was right some of the time, I was not right all of the time as we found out on December 21st.
3. A few thoughts on Jake Humphrey leaving the BBC – September 18th, 2012
As a follow on to number nine, later in the day on September 18th, I published my reaction to Jake Humphrey’s BBC F1 departure and speculated about who would replace him. In all cases though, I was wide of the mark.
2. Italian Grand Prix records highest rating since 1998 – September 10th, 2012
Before Jake Humphrey announced his BBC F1 departure, all was going swimmingly well. Until on the Monday after Monza it turned out that there were a few famous faces reading this blog. Cue a influx of hits sending the web traffic up many notches!
1. Georgie Thompson leaves Sky’s F1 team – February 15th, 2013
The story that I exclusively broke earlier back in February, that Georgie Thompson had left the Sky Sports F1 team after only a year in the role, with Natalie Pinkham taking over her duties.
As always, thanks for reading!
Dave,
Owner of The F1 Broadcasting Blog