In the press release, Humphrey says “I am incredibly excited to be joining the team at BT not just because I get to fulfil a lifelong dream of presenting the Barclays Premier League but because of the fresh perspective that BT will bring to both sport and broadcasting in this country. To be a part of this young, vibrant team who are as passionate about sport, as I am, is a privilege.
“I’ve grown up at the BBC, and whilst I hope to work with them in the future, I’d also like to place on record my thanks to them. I am incredibly grateful to all colleagues, and of course the viewers, for their incredible support from CBBC all the way to Formula 1. My focus from the start of 2013 is on making BT’s coverage of football the best this country has ever seen.”
Marc Watson, chief executive of BT Vision, said: “We are absolutely delighted that Jake has chosen to join our new sports channel to anchor our Premier League programming.
“Jake is a tremendously experienced and popular sports broadcaster and a fresh, young and innovative talent. He impressed us with his willingness to get deeply involved in the development of our live football programming and we took into account his track record of excellent presenting across many sports. He fits our plans for the new channel perfectly and we are very excited to be working with him.”
With that news, BBC are looking for a new Formula 1 presenter. I don’t think they will be looking far though, as I imagine Lee McKenzie will step up to the presenters’ breach with Tom Clarkson taking over McKenzie’s role, like what happened earlier this year when Humphrey was presenting Euro 2012 and the Olympics.
1 – 723k – Live Italian Grand Prix (Sunday, 11:30)
2 – 404k – Live Italian Grand Prix: Qualifying (Saturday, 12:00)
3 – 110k – Live Italian Grand Prix: Practice 3 (Saturday, 09:45)
4 – 52k – Fast Track (Saturday, 11:29)
5 – 50k – Live Italian Grand Prix: Practice 2 (Friday, 12:45)
6 – 47k – The F1 Show (Friday, 17:00)
7 – 47k – Porsche Supercup: Europe (Saturday, 11:15)
8 – 43k – Live Italian GP2 Feature Race (Saturday, 14:35)
9 – 35k – Live Italian Grand Prix: Practice 1 (Friday, 08:45)
10 – 32k – Legends (Sunday, 16:05) (Sunday, 16:05)
The channel reached 2.522 million people, which is slightly higher than the Hungarian Grand Prix back in July, which reached 2.439 million people. Excluding Germany, which was open to all Sky and Virgin Media viewers, the channel had it’s highest reach for a European round since the Bahrain Grand Prix in April which reached 3.419 million people.
Outside of the Sky Sports F1 channel, the Italian Grand Prix highlights made BBC One’s top 30, the programme recording an official average figure of 3.67 million viewers, the 24th highest programme on BBC One that week. This compares with an overnight figure of 3.57 million viewers, so the programme timeshifted only 100,000 viewers which is unsurprising as sporting events rarely do timeshift in large proportions.
Back over to Sky, and the speedway made two of their top 10’s, with the Elite League Speedway being watched by 74,000 at 19:30 on Sky Sports 3 on Wednesday 4th September, while the Grand Prix Speedway was seen by 50,000 the following Saturday over on Sky Sports 4.
Updated on November 5th, 2012: Now that we have the top ten, the Friday practice figures are low, particularly first practice which is half the usual figure. For whatever reason, the Belgian and Italy double bounce did not do well for the Sky F1 channel, the Paralympics being one possible reason. It is also disappointing to see no GP3 figures here given the very exciting race two on Sunday morning.
Last week in this blog post, we seen two drivers’ jump over one million followers. Last weekend, on the race track, one of those drivers’ won the Italian Grand Prix. But how did that affect the Twitter outlook? It is time, to reveal all…
No change inside the top ten, Romain Grosjean moves ahead of Kamui Kobayashi thanks to the start-line accident at the Belgian Grand Prix, and the one race ban that followed it. As I noted last week, after that Grand Prix, the ban spread far and wide on Twitter. Although I don’t intend to follow his follower progress, Jerome d’Ambrosio has nearly 22,000 followers at the time of writing this, which would put him ahead of Charles Pic. He is not a regular tweeter, however, but as far as I know that is his real account.
In terms of smallest and largest increases, Sergio Perez had the fourth largest increase, thanks to his second place in the Italian Grand Prix. Status quo remains at the opposite end of the table.
Interestingly, Ferrari’s raw gain is lower than last week, somewhat oddly. Further down, Sauber recorded their highest gain since the Spanish Grand Prix week, I’m certain that Sauber will be jumping up to seventh within the next few weeks.
Driver and Team statistics as of Monday 10th September 2012.
The European leg of the 2012 Formula One season is over, now it is time for the flyaways, starting with the Singapore Grand Prix night race and the good news is that both BBC and Sky are live. As expected, the time difference means that the schedule is slightly different, with Practice happening later on Friday, and Qualifying an hour later on Saturday (although coincidentally, it is an hour earlier than in previous years). Both broadcasters’ have an identical build-up length for Qualifying, so if you wish, you can make direct comparisons as Sky will not be running adverts.
The GP2 season also comes to a fascinating climax in Singapore with Davide Valsecchi and Luiz Razia fighting for the championship title. As always, every GP2 session during the weekend is live on Sky Sports F1 with commentary from Will Buxton and Jerome d’Ambrosio, who returns to the commentary box after his Lotus F1 drive in Monza. While on the subject of GP2, I should note that it is unclear whether Sky Sports will continue airing GP2 and GP3 next season. The press release at the start of the year did not specify a length for the contract (after all, Sky did not have to take up the option to air the support races live) and the races have not set the ratings alight. I suspect GP2 and GP3 will continue next year live on Sky Sports if the Sky Sports F1 channel remains in its current vein.
Thursday 20th September
11:00 to 11:45 – F1: Driver Press Conference (Sky Sports F1)
Friday 21st September
08:40 to 09:20 – GP2: Practice (Sky Sports F1)
10:45 to 12:55 – F1: Practice 1 (Sky Sports F1)
10:55 to 12:35 – F1: Practice 1 (BBC Red Button)
12:55 to 13:45 – GP2: Qualifying (Sky Sports F1)
14:15 to 16:15 – F1: Practice 2 (Sky Sports F1)
14:25 to 16:05 – F1: Practice 2 (BBC Red Button)
16:15 to 17:00 – F1: Team Press Conference (Sky Sports F1)
18:30 to 19:30 – The F1 Show (Sky Sports F1)
18:45 to 19:00 – Inside F1 (BBC News Channel)
Saturday 22nd September
08:55 to 10:25 – GP2: Race 1 (Sky Sports F1)
10:45 to 12:10 – F1: Practice 3 (Sky Sports F1)
10:55 to 12:05 – F1: Practice 3 (BBC Red Button)
13:00 to 15:30 – F1: Qualifying (BBC One)
13:00 to 15:45 – F1: Qualifying (Sky Sports F1)
18:45 to 19:00 – Inside F1 (BBC News Channel)
Sunday 23rd September
09:05 to 10:10 – GP2: Race 2 (Sky Sports F1)
11:30 to 16:15 – F1: Race (Sky Sports F1)
12:10 to 15:20 – F1: Race (BBC One)
15:20 to 16:20 – F1: Forum (BBC Red Button)
Update on September 14th, 20:35, as noted on The F1 Show, Georgie Thompson is staying in London for the Singapore Grand Prix weekend, so expect her along with Anthony Davidson on the Sky Pad from the Sky studios.
Next weekend, the 2012 GP2 Series season comes to a conclusion in Singapore, with Davide Valsecchi and Luiz Razia aiming to win the championship. The series runs alongside the GP3 Series as Formula 1’s support package during race weekends, that particular championship concluding with a fantastic series finale last Sunday as Mitch Evans clinched the championship in the final laps.
While both championships have, for the most part, provided fantastic racing this season, there is a sad reality here in the UK. The reality is, that despite having three British drivers in GP2 and a further three drivers in GP3, the viewing figures on Sky Sports F1 have been embarrassingly low. Practice and Qualifying figures, understandably, are very low because I would not expect casual fans to watch that, but the race figures have been nothing to shout about. Here are the race figures that I have to hand for the season so far:
Bahrain
– 21/04/12 – GP2 Race 1: 56,000 (0.58%) average from 13:40 to 15:05; peak: 91,000 (0.98%) at 13:40
– 22/04/12 – GP2 Race 2: 46,000 (0.57%) average from 08:45 to 09:50; peak: 68,000 (0.86%) at 09:05
Spain
– 12/05/12 – GP2 Race 1: 62,000 (0.74%) average from 14:35 to 16:00; peak: 106,000 (1.30%) at 14:35
– 12/05/12 – GP3 Race 1: 42,000 (0.39%) average from 16:15 to 17:10; peak: 57,000 (0.57%) at 16:20
– 13/05/12 – GP3 Race 2: 32,000 (0.53%) average from 08:20 to 09:15; peak: 51,000 (0.84%) at 08:40
– 13/05/12 – GP2 Race 2: 35,000 (0.45%) average from 09:30 to 10:35; peak: 46,000 (0.59%) at 09:45
Monaco – all support race figures under 55,000
Europe – all support race figures under 42,000
Britain
– 08/07/12 – GP2 Race 2: 54,000 average from 09:35 to 10:40
– all other figures under 54,000
Germany
– 21/07/12 – GP2 Race 1: 100,000 average from 14:35 to 16:00
– all other figures under 72,000
Hungary – all support race figures under 24,000
Belgium
– 01/09/12 – GP2 Race 1: 29,000 average from 14:35 to 16:00
Only once this season has the GP2 Series hit 100,000 viewers. When you consider that Formula 1 regularly attracts audiences of over 4 million viewers, surely it is not right that the series’ one tier down attracts only 2.5 percent of the Formula 1 viewership?
If you look at any other sport, the gap between two tiers is not as large as that, where one attracts 4 million viewers, and the others only attract 100,000 viewers. The first problem has to be the lack of promotion given to it by Sky Sports. Throughout the months of promotion it gave to Formula 1, the only promotion they gave to GP2 and GP3 was a thirty second trailer to put on their website before the start of the season. No on-air trailers with dates and times to alert people, nothing of that sort has aired once this season on any Sky Sports channel promoting GP2. And I think that’s pretty poor myself. I have only ever seen GP2 and GP3 mentioned on Sky Sports News once, and that was when Conor Daly had his horrific accident at Monaco. They’ve never had a brief summary of the results with one or two clips summarising events and a quick interview with the winner, after all I lose count of how many times goals from the second and third tiers of English football are replayed constantly on Sky Sports News.
The fact here is that GP2 and GP3 deserve to have viewing figures so much higher than what they currently are getting and it is a sad indictment that not many people will be watching the GP2 Series conclude next weekend. Had James Calado had a good weekend in Italy, he would have been in the championship name, but how many people know of the name “James Calado”? Not many. Someone on another blog post of mine said “James who? Max who? Oh, I’m sorry. You can only see them at work behind a paywall. Disgraceful.” It is hard to disagree with him.
But is it all Sky Sports’ fault that GP2 and GP3 are doing badly? Some of it is, I’ve outlined promotion issues above. In my opinion though, no it isn’t. In fact, I would argue that the BBC have some proportion of blame here as well. Let us go back to 2007. ITV were screening International Motor Sport, which summarised the events of GP2 (and before that Formula 3000), with commentary from James Allen (previously Simon Taylor). From 1997 to 2007, ITV had that commitment to screening a half an hour highlights show on ITV1 on Saturday afternoons irrespective of viewing figures, the will to screen it always existed so viewers recognised future talent. It is where I watched on occasions Lewis Hamilton’s GP2 races in 2006 alongside Eurosport’s live coverage. Whilst the ITV1 ratings may have been low for the slot, they were multiple times higher than the 100,000 viewers that the live races attract at their peak on Sky Sports F1. In 2008, the coverage extended so that races were covered live on ITV4 with Charlie Webster presenting, which re-affirmed their commitment to showing GP2. It turned out to be their last year covering Formula 1 and GP2 as they gave up the rights to concentrate on the UEFA Champions League.
From 2009, Formula 1 coverage moved to the BBC. Whilst Formula 1 coverage got better on the BBC, what happened with the GP2 Series? The terrestrial commitment stopped. The BBC passed on showing the GP2 Series in any form, and instead Setanta Sports were left to pick up the live rights. As it turns out, that only lasted for half a year, Setanta went bust, and the live rights reverted to Eurosport, until Sky Sports won the F1 rights, taking with it GP2 and GP3. My point here is that had BBC decided “you know what, we will screen highlights in some form”, the conclusion may well be very different. It may not have been a ratings hit, it may have been under their slot average, but it would show their commitment to future Formula 1 stars. Place it neatly in the schedules, maybe directly after F1 Qualifying at 14:30. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, they did not take GP2 up.
I’ll finish this piece by linking to a video. It is an interview Steve Rider did at this year’s AUTOSPORT International show.
I know that the GP2 Series is worldwide rather than British based, but in my opinion, the point still remains. It is in GP2 and GP3 where the first glimpses of future world champions can be seen, where the next Schumacher, Raikkonen and Alonso can be found.
And how much coverage can terrestrial television viewers see? Nothing. And that, for me, is sad.
Motorsport Broadcasting 