To clear up the Melanie Sykes situation regarding her presenting BT Sport’s MotoGP coverage.
I e-mailed BT Sport’s press office yesterday asking about her status, and I quote: “Can you confirm whether Melanie Sykes has been dropped as BT Sport’s MotoGP presenter?” Their response to this blog was: “Mel isn’t presenting this weekend due to personal circumstances. Chris [Hollins] is presenting [yesterday] and Craig Doyle [today].”
After a few tweets, I read nothing into it, ‘personal circumstances’ being the key phrase. Which is why I didn’t blog about it, it has no place for discussion in the public domain. I don’t do tabloid reporting, it is not for me to start discussing what ‘personal circumstances’ may or may not mean. It has no place on this blog. The other key phrase was ‘this weekend’, in other words she will be back presenting for them.
This morning, Mat Oxley has tweeted saying “Anyone noticed that Melanie Sykes ain’t there in the BT Sport studio? Parting of the ways, apparently.” That changes things substantially. I also cannot remember a previous occasion where a presenter has decided to leave a quarter of the way through the season. BT did not elaborate on their comment yesterday when I put Oxley’s tweet to them.
I’ll update this post if I hear anything more.
Update on May 28th – Craig Doyle tweeted yesterday with an image to the Isle of Man TT schedule for the week. The image had some hand writing next to the side of Sunday stating ‘Mugello GP’, which clearly indicates that he is (at least as of that tweet) presenting BT’s coverage this Sunday. Whilst Jon in the comments picked it up, the tweet has since been deleted.
Update on May 30th – It’s official. Sykes and BT have parted company.
Motorsport Broadcasting 
Frankly it was great today to see a decent presenter on MotoGP, I gave Melanie a chance, as I don’t think she’s ever done anything like this, but I found her presentation wooden and unengaging. It was a pleasure to watch a decently presented show this week.
as moto gp still lost 85% of its uk viewers from last year?
Please please BT sport get some of the BBC team involved as their set up was well balanced. I know Matt Roberts is doing other things but he would be great as a presenter on the current show. Let’s keep the eye candy on the umbrellas and only have petrol heads in the studio. I agree with the other post that last week’s show was a vast improvement.
Found the following status via Craig Doyle’s Twitter account:
Notice he will miss this weekend’s TT races as he will be doing the Premiership rugby final on Saturday, but more interestingly, it looks like he will also be doing the Italian MotoGP at Mugello.
The plot thickens!
Does the plot thicken more when you find that he has since deleted that tweet?
the image is still visible on ITV’s IoM landing page: http://www.itv.com/isleofmantt