BT Sport announces MotoGP line-up and programming

BT Sport have unveiled their MotoGP line-up that will cover the series for them throughout the 2014 season, in what it says will be the most extensive coverage of the sport that has ever been seen in the UK.

Melanie Sykes will present the coverage, with former World Superbike champions Neil Hodgson and James Toseland alongside her. Whilst Sykes comes to BT Sport having presented no live sports coverage, she has presented numerous live programmes on ITV such as Today with Des and Mel and Let’s do Lunch with Gino and Mel. The coverage will be presented on-site at each event, with additional analysis from BT Sport’s studios at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London. Keith Huewen will be the lead commentator in a three man booth alongside Julian Ryder, the partnership reuniting after a fifteen year separation. Motorcycle News chief grand prix correspondent Matt Birt is the third man in that booth, whilst Gavin Emmett, who can also be heard on MotoGP’s World Feed commentating, will be BT Sport’s reporter.

Coverage will formally launch with a preview show on Tuesday 18th March as the channel reflects on pre-season testing and looks to the season ahead. From that point forward, BT Sport will broadcast an hour long programme on Tuesday nights at 20:00. Entitled MotoGP Tonight, it will be presented by Craig Doyle and former Olympian and biker, Iwan Thomas, with guests each week. Each weekend coverage will begin on Friday mornings with five hours of coverage each day. The exception to this is Qatar, where coverage will begin on Thursday 20th March at 15:00, from the first minute of Moto3 practice 1 to ten minutes after Moto2 practice 2 has concluded. Aside from the details announced today, it was revealed yesterday that BT have created a MotoGP film, to air in the build-up to Qatar.

Simon Green, head of BT Sport, said: “It’s really exciting to be launching such a thrilling new sport on BT Sport, with a tremendous new team and what we believe will be a fresh approach to MotoGP and some fantastic new shows. MotoGP is the top, two-wheeled motorsport. It’s massive in the UK and we’re heading into it at full throttle and following every second of the action. We’re sure we’ll appeal to committed fans, but we also think we will win over and welcome new fans to the sport.”

Manel Arroyo, managing director, Dorna Sports, said: “I’m pleased that MotoGP is part of such a huge and exciting project as BT Sport. I’m sure that BT Sport will provide the in-depth coverage that MotoGP deserves so that British fans can follow the fortunes of British riders in the Championship.” As expected, there will be interactive options via the BT Sport app with eight views in total: the main coverage; helicopter; live timing; a tracking screen and 4 x onboard. Full races and highlights will also be available on the app.

The channel’s deal with Dorna Sports covers the period from 2014 through to the end of 2018 and will be produced by North One Television. As it stands, MotoGP will not have any terrestrial television coverage from this point going forward.

Sky Sports F1’s pre-Australia schedule takes shape

Whilst I won’t be publishing the full Australian Grand Prix weekend schedule for BBC and Sky until early March, provisional scheduling details are out for Sky Sports F1, showing all details from now until March 14th.

Below are the key details…

– The F1 Show is back on Friday 7th March at 20:00. The launch show, surprisingly in my view is only listed as a normal one hour episode, I was hoping it would be more like what they did in 2012 given that there is no testing live this year unlike in 2013. Natalie Pinkham and Ted Kravitz are back as presenters.

– Viewers are being given the chance to vote for their Race of the Century. The clue is in the title, presumably any race from 20th century can be chosen, although I imagine Sky will choose ten races and then the viewers narrow it down to three. The winning classic race will be shown on Friday 7th March at 21:00, second place on the Saturday and third place on the Sunday (same time). A novel take would be to have David Croft and Martin Brundle and A.N. Other, depending on race, re-voice it over ‘as live’, but not sure what the chances of that are.

– Classic F1 races are back! As an aside to the race of the century thing that Sky are doing, we are also getting the usual five races per weekend it appears. For Australia, we have 1985, 1986, 1987, 1989 and 1990.

– The Thursday and Friday press conferences are back, both live. Gear Up for Australia, which shows the Thursday interviews returns as well, albeit still in a 15 minute slot.

– There’s a two part, fifteen minutes each, series called Pinkham’s F1, where Natalie Pinkham introduces Formula 1 to novice fans. This is on several times.

– A programme called Horse Power which premières on ~~Friday 14th March at 10:30~~ Saturday 8th March at 21:00 on Sky2 (no idea why its first airing is not on Sky F1). The description says: “Exclusive access behind the scenes at Ferrari as they prepare for the biggest raft of rule changes in a generation ahead of the 2014 Formula 1 season.” – which to me sounds very promising and definitely worth a watch. The programme is a Whisper Films production, the company set up by Jake Humphrey and David Coulthard, who also produced the fantastic Red Bull documentary at the back end of 2012.

Nothing unexpected in the practice scheduling details for Australia, all as expected regarding programme lengths. Also, as an aside but worth noting, I’ve decided to update the coverage page with the Sky team added, although it has not been made official in a press release (for whatever reason), I think we can say with some certainty that no one is leaving. In previous years, we knew the team through Sky Media putting up a package online for prospective sponsors, which hasn’t happened this year, in turn I suspect that means Rolex and Shell and back as Sky Sports F1’s sponsors for 2014. I’ll update this blog post with more details as and when they are revealed, especially concerning race of the century.

Update on February 25th – Sky have confirmed the ‘Race of the Century’ programming. They’ve narrowed it down to ten: 2000 Germany, 2000 Belgian, 2003 British, 2005 Japanese, 2008 Brazilian, 2010 Abu Dhabi, 2011 Chinese, 2011 Canadian, 2012 European and 2012 Brazilian GP. As noted above, I would have liked to have seen a novel take on proceedings (i.e. new commentary, for example) given that the majority of those chosen were shown last year, but still a nice idea anyway. I don’t know whether they got Lewis Hamilton to tweet this or not, but a very good way for Sky to promote things.

Update on March 5th – Two new programmes have been added to the schedules, which I’ve added to the above list. Any updates beyond Friday I will put on the Australia schedule piece instead of here.

Statement from BBC’s Head of F1 following Gary Anderson’s departure

Following a request for comment from this blog last night to the BBC concerning Gary Anderson’s departure from the team and subsequent comments made by Anderson, the blog has today received the following statement from BBC’s Head of Formula 1, Ben Gallop.

Ben Gallop, BBC’s Head of F1 said: “We’ve adjusted our line-up for 2014 to bring what we feel is the best package for audiences across TV, radio and online. We’ve enjoyed working with Gary and thank him for his valued contribution to the BBC’s Formula 1 coverage across all platforms over the last two years and we wish him all the best for the future.”

Anderson: BBC believe that “viewers not interested” in technical analysis

Gary Anderson has revealed the reasons behind him and the BBC parting ways in the close season. Whilst he noted the reasons at a Cass Business School event last week, he has expanded on the reasoning today.

In the first of his ‘Ask Gary Anderson’ pieces on the AUTOSPORT website (subscription required), Anderson said that his intention was to make the technical aspect a bigger part of the BBC’s coverage. Speaking to AUTOSPORT, Anderson commented “Ever since I started work with them, I’ve been pushing them to do more on the technical side, and during the second half of 2013 it appeared to me that they were wanting to do less. For example, I set up an open-house visit to Renault to cover the engine package for 2014 in detail and twice on the day before we were due to go it was cancelled by the BBC. The reasoning was that as far as they were concerned, the viewers were not that interested.”

Anderson, who will have an expanded AUTOSPORT role in 2014, was not happy with the impression that BBC were leaving him. “I believed that with the enormous technical changes for 2014, we should be doing more, not less.” Anderson commented. Whilst it appears that Anderson wanted to leave the BBC, BBC made the decision moments before he informed them. “I was in the midst of writing a resignation email when I got the call from them to meet up for a chat, which is when [..] they got rid of me!”, Anderson said. Nearly 95 percent of you, or over 2,500 blog readers believe Anderson leaving will be bad for BBC in the long run.

An interesting turn of events that Anderson and BBC appeared to have been thinking along the same wavelengths: BBC wanted to get rid of Anderson and in the end Anderson wanted to leave. The question I have to ask is whether there was always the intention from the start of 2013 to phase out Anderson from their coverage. I don’t disagree with Anderson, but I’m not sure I agree either regarding the latter half of 2013 sentence. With Sebastian Vettel dominating, the whole of the broadcasting scene in terms of features dried up, on both sides of the fence. The evidence that Anderson gives though about the Renault visit is immensely disappointing and disheartening to read.

I have reached out to the BBC for comment.

BT Sport expected to unveil MotoGP team this week

This week is expected to be one of the biggest of the motor sport broadcasting year, from an announcements stand-point as BT Sport are set to unveil their MotoGP line-up. Bennetts last week reported that an announcement was expected at the ExCel Arena, home to the MCN London Motorcycle Show, on 14th February. Whilst that is highly likely to be the date, Shannon Kent, the brother of Moto3 rider Danny Kent tweeted, noting that there is a BT Sport event concerning MotoGP on Thursday (13th February). Either way, it appears this week is the week.

So, who is expected to be part of the team? The rumour mill, as one would expect, has been out in force, however, we can gauge a good idea of who will be part of the team already. Toby Moody’s confirmation a few weeks ago that he would not be part of the team left us with a commentary pairing of Keith Huewen and Julian Ryder, the two expected to rekindle their relationship from the mid 1990s. Despite not mentioning BT Sport recently, his tweets quite clearly show that he is back within the MotoGP paddock circles.

As for the punditry, Bennetts are also reporting that James Toseland and Neil Hodgson, both former World Superbike champions, will be on-board. They note that Toseland “isn’t doing a full season, choosing to do occasional rounds instead, but we believe he will be alongside Hodgson at the first round in Qatar”. This bit is interesting, because a regular insider over on Digital Spy claims that BT will only be on site for seven or eight races. Which, linking back to the above, makes me wonder if Toseland is only going to play a part in proceedings when BT Sport are on-site. I won’t speculate on rumours too much here, as all of this could be wide of the mark.

Which brings me onto my final part. Bike Sport News are reporting that Melanie Sykes is set to front their coverage, with Craig Doyle (current presenter of BT’s Rugby coverage and presenter of ITV’s Isle of Man coverage) fronting a magazine show two days a week. The Sykes rumour sounds incredibly far-fetched, considering Sykes has never presented live sport before and would be a new foray for her. However, it is not as strange as you may expect, when you see this:

ROAR Sport ‏@RoarSport1 Feb 6
Looking forward to announcing some amazing @MsMelanieSykes news next week #2014 #SPORT
3:39 PM – 6 Feb 2014

Again, I don’t want to read too much into this, she could be a lifestyle reporter like Beverley Turner was back in ITV’s Formula 1 coverage back in the mid 2000’s (alas, that role was quickly dropped). Or it could be a red herring, someone has done 2 + 2 and come out with 5. By the end of the week we will find out. And as always, there will be some happy with the line-up, and some unhappy with the moment. For the next few days at least, let the speculation continue…