Yesterday before The FA Cup action began, I was watching an episode of PL 100 Club on Sky Sports.
The idea behind PL 100 Club is simple. It is “a celebration of some of the finest goalscorers in Barclays Premier League history”, those that have scored over one hundred goals have an episode dedicated to them, hence the programme title. The episode that I watched featured Robbie Keane. At thirty minutes in length, it showed some of his best goals from his time in the Premier League. I did not count the number of goals, but I’d estimate that about 25 to 30 goals were shown, this was interspersed with mini VT’s as Keane moved between clubs.
As I say, its an incredibly simple programme, making great use of the Premier League archive. You don’t need to know a lot about Keane to watch the programme, it can be background viewing at times. I also think that you can apply programming of this nature to Formula 1. I’ve suggested before about how Sky could utilise the Summer break where Classic F1 races are concerned so that viewers can follow a single season, or potentially create retrospective documentaries of a race weekend.
I suggest a programme called F1 20 Overtakes if you’re to use the same style as the Premier League programme. To continue along those lines, the programme would be a celebration of some of the finest overtakers in Formula 1 history. Making sure that a programme like that would actually be possible, I went on YouTube, typed in “schumacher overtake” and listed the first twenty below.
Schumacher overtakes
1. Alain Prost (1993 Belgium Grand Prix)
2. Jean Alesi (1995 European Grand Prix)
3. Jean Alesi (1996 Spanish Grand Prix)
4. Jacques Villeneuve (1996 Spanish Grand Prix)
5. Alex Wurz (1998 Monaco Grand Prix)
6. Damon Hill (1998 Canadian Grand Prix)
7. Mika Hakkinen (1998 British Grand Prix)
8. Mika Hakkinen (1998 Italian Grand Prix)
9. Jenson Button and Jarno Trulli (2000 Belgium Grand Prix)
10. David Coulthard (2000 US Grand Prix)
11. Kimi Raikkonen (2003 Austrian Grand Prix)
12. Jarno Trulli (2003 German Grand Prix)
13. Fernando Alonso (2006 Chinese Grand Prix)
14. Kimi Raikkonen (2006 Canadian Grand Prix)
15. Giancarlo Fisichella (2006 Brazilian Grand Prix)
16. Nick Heidfeld (2006 Brazilian Grand Prix)
17. Kimi Raikkonen (2006 Brazilian Grand Prix)
18. Fernando Alonso (2010 Monaco Grand Prix)
– the illegal overtake
19. Kamui Kobayashi and Felipe Massa (2011 Canadian Grand Prix)
20. Kamui Kobayashi (2012 Italian Grand Prix)
Whilst it is great to have Classic F1 races and Legends shows on the channel, you have to appreciate that there is a portion of the audience who want something to ‘dip in and out’ of during non-race weekends, I question whether any of Sky F1’s programming achieved that during 2014. Plus, many can put 30 minutes aside to watch a programme of the nature described, whereas two hours for classic races is more difficult. You could have a lot of different episodes in an overtaking strand: Schumacher as mentioned, Lewis Hamilton, Fernando Alonso, Juan Montoya and Ayrton Senna to name a few. In the case of the latter two, it would be a nice companion programme to their respective Legends of F1 programming already aired.
As always, the issue is getting access to the footage. Sky have been broadcasting the Premier League since its inception, but only Formula 1 since 2012. This means that Sky would need to get the footage for the races mentioned from Formula One Management (FOM), BBC or ITV if they wanted to screen programmes of that nature. Or better still, FOM could produce programmes such as F1 20 themselves, and distribute it to broadcasters.
Motorsport Broadcasting 
I was under the impression that FOM owns the rights to all the races and supplies the feed from whoever is the host broadcaster. (Or does FOM do the broadcast itself now?)
However I do think that your idea is a good one.
FOM produce the World Feed for broadcasters to take. The only race which is still hosted by the local broadcaster is Monaco.
Love that idea. When is the annual f1 survey out?! Maybe it’s worth an email or tweet or two to FOM or similar. FOM own the footage for everything from the mid 80s if I remember so it should be possible.
How about a series called ’20 GP wins’? It would focus on the wins of a driver with 20 or more victories in F1. That’s 15 shows right there.
Surely though Sky already have access to the archive races anyway? (So they can broadcast their classic races in the 1st place?) I don’t see why they can’t put such a compilation together themselves, FOM would just have to say yes. I don’t see why they’d say no either, if Sky have already paid to show archive content.
Have you seen the archive programs WRC sometimes put out – about a subject or a great champion? Would be an ideal model for fom to follow but I doubt Bernie would be so proactive 🙂
Can think of four fabulous mansell classics (Mexico 1990, Spain 1991, Hungary 1989, Britain 1987) already!
Great blog by the way, enjoy it!