Casting an eye over the F1 media landscape

The Formula 1 community is filled with journalists from all corners of the globe, with the sport covered in a variety of languages, catering for a range of different audiences, from the hardcore aficionados to the person wanting a quick five-minute summary of everything that is going on.

From a United Kingdom perspective, there are eleven entities that make up the Formula 1 media landscape, covering both heavyweights and outlets further down the chain:

Official F1 website
BBC
Crash Media Group
ESPN Media Group
‘Fleet Street’
Motor Sport Magazine
Motorsport Media Services
Motorsport Network
Racefans
Reuters
Sky

Most entities above are primarily web-based, although some straddle into both television and print. So, how do the entities break down, and which groups splice off into sub-divisions?

The leading quartet
For most readers, four outlets are instantly recognisable, and hold control of the Formula 1 media landscape. Others will be unknown to the naked eye, until you look below the surface and see why they are listed.

The BBC and Sky are two of the UK’s biggest broadcasters, the latter now pan-European. Whilst the BBC no longer covers Formula 1 on television, its website, led by Andrew Benson as it has been for the past two decades, still produces insight and opinion.

Since their television coverage started in 2012, Sky’s UK arm have operated an expansive F1 website. As well as their news articles, the UK site provides a variety of columns, from behind the scenes paddock insight via Rachel Brookes, to technical analysis from commentary box director Mark Hughes. Although Sky’s UK and Italian television crews share content occasionally, this is more unusual online with a specific website for Sky Italia.

If you have purchased a copy of Autosport recently, or read an article via James Allen’s website, you might think that the two are owned by separate entities. Why would the passing punter think any different? That is where Motorsport Network, led by McLaren’s CEO Zak Brown, comes into the equation.

Initially consisting of just Motorsport.com, Motorsport Network have expanded their portfolio the past two years. First on the agenda was Haymarket Media Group’s motor racing outlets (including Autosport and F1 Racing), which moved under Motorsport Network’s ownership in late 2016.

Allen’s website and GPUpdate.net followed, with Motorsport Network closing GPUpdate.net’s English site, diverting resources towards their existing channels. Editorial resources covering Formula 1 across Autosport and Motorsport.com are becoming rationalised, with the same content, appearing on both platforms.

Autosport also runs an Academy for budding journalists, allowing them to exploit a wide range of opportunities across the Motorsport Network portfolio, both on print and television (Motorsport.tv, which was Motors TV, is also part of the Network).

Up until recently, the official Formula 1 website ran a skeleton news operation, reporting only information and not engaging in the rumour mill or analytical pieces. The frequency of news has increased since Liberty Media’s takeover of F1, with the likes of Lawrence Barretto (ex-BBC and Autosport) and Chris Medland joining the team.

Alongside the news articles, there are now regular features on the site, such as the F1 Inbox, and F1 Power Rankings with other FOM personnel such as Will Buxton contributing to these articles.

The mid-pack
The leading contingent above are significantly larger than some of the mid-pack runners, one might think of this as a ‘manufacturer’ versus ‘independent’ situation.

Previously known as F1 Fanatic from 2005 until the start of this year, Racefans is an independent website covering Formula 1, although it has started to branch out to cover other championships recently. Dieter Rencken, who was part of Autosport’s offering for 25 years, defected to Racefans at the start of 2018, bolstering their paddock presence.

Like Rencken, journalist Joe Saward has attached himself to an independent site. His musings are hosted on Motorsport Week, part of Motorsport Media Services’ outlets. Whilst the relationship is a little less formal than that between Rencken and Racefans, it goes to show that not every established journalist is within Motorsport Network’s portfolio. Motorsport Week has been around since 2008, historically known as The F1 Times and Grand Prix Times.

Another F1 rights holder with a website presence is ESPN. However, its Formula 1 website is largely independent of the US television coverage, having being around for several years. Laurence Edmondson and Nate Saunders lead the web output, with familiar faces to UK readers such as Mark Gallagher and Jennie Gow contributing to video content. Instead of giving their US coverage a distinctive voice, ESPN and FOM decided to give US viewers Sky’s UK coverage meaning that the ESPN website remained independent of the TV output.

As well as writing and contributing to Sky’s F1 coverage, Mark Hughes also writes regular columns for Motor Sport Magazine. Now in its 94th year, if you are after a more in-depth outlook on current affairs, as well as a reflection on yesteryear, Motor Sport Magazine is the place for you. Best of all, their entire magazine archive has been digitalised, putting many classic moments at your fingertips, written by those who were there on the day.

Slightly younger than Motor Sport Magazine at 18 years, Crash Media Group (CMG) is now an established name in the motor racing media circles (one can only guess if this group is on Motorsport Network’s radar or not). CMG goes beyond Crash.net, as the group also owns a motorcycling website (Visordown) and a golf website (GolfMagic). Crash has a working relationship with Bike Sport News, but does not currently own the entity.

News agencies and foreign outlets
Reuters is primarily a news agency, meaning that it is unlikely that fans go to Reuters’ directly for their news. Instead, news from Reuters’ resident Formula 1 correspondent Alan Baldwin will more than likely make its way through to other sites, such as the BBC for example.

The ‘Fleet Street‘ contingent has reduced over the years, but there are still some UK newspapers reporting on Formula 1 from the races. Bec Clancy leads the way for The Times, having succeeded Kevin Eason as their motor racing reporter. Other sites, such as The Independent and The Guardian, but very few have someone dedicated to F1 like in yesteryear. As one might expect, the expense of sending someone on site outweighs the amount of readers likely to view or read the following article.

The main non-English website to mention is German website Auto Motor und Sport, which regularly reports F1 stories before its English counterparts through its main reporter Tobi Gruner.

There are countless more websites that I could mention, but I have tried to avoid including sites that regurgitate content already out there. The further down the motor racing pyramid you go, the more sites you see that specialise in a specific series, as accreditation is more straightforward than at the top.

Plus, you have a higher probability of speaking to contacts, breaking an exclusive Formula E story for example, and getting your foot in the door than an equivalent in F1, , increasing your reputation. As the saying goes, you must start somewhere…

Are there any major websites that I have missed out? Do the sites listed cover everything you look for in Formula 1 reporting? Have your say in the comments below.

Scheduling: The 2018 Spanish Grand Prix

Off the back of a thrilling start to the season, Formula 1 heads back to Europe for the Spanish Grand Prix!

The race weekend is the first time F1’s full revised offering is on offer this season. F1’s on-track sessions start an hour later than in 2017, with the race starting a further ten minutes later at 14:10 instead of 13:00. The changes do not stop there: GP3 qualifying moves to Friday evening, allowing the feeder series’ first race to take place on Saturday morning.

Formula Two retains its existing post-F1 slot on Friday and Saturday, but like F1 takes place an hour later than last year. Sky are taking advantage of the changes FOM and Liberty Media have made, staying live on-air from 13:00 to 17:25 on Saturday, in a block consisting of F1 qualifying, Formula Two’s first race and The F1 Show. I am hopeful the block of programming will flow from one to another without an unnatural break in proceedings to better retain viewers throughout the afternoon.

In addition, Sky’s build-up for both practice one and three will be 30 minutes long, for Spain at least. Channel 4’s highlights programming airs slightly earlier than year. Of course, Spain also sees the long-awaited launch of Formula 1’s new over-the-top service. UK viewers may get access to the basic, non-live tier but no further than that due to the existing and future television rights agreements.

Elsewhere, Quest have picked up live coverage of the Historic Monaco Grand Prix weekend from Motorsport.tv, who previously aired the event under their previous Motors TV guise in 2016. On two wheels, Eurosport are giving World Superbikes additional treatment in 2018, with live coverage of practice on Fridays, which I am adding to the scheduling pieces from this race onwards.

Not specifically related to this weekend, but it looks like no one has grabbed highlights of the World Endurance Championship super-season, perhaps surprisingly considering highlights aired on Channel 4 in 2016, and ITV4 last year.

Channel 4 F1
Sessions
12/05 – 17:00 to 18:30 – Qualifying Highlights
13/05 – 18:00 to 20:00 – Race Highlights

Sky Sports F1
Sessions
11/05 – 09:30 to 11:55 – Practice 1 (also Sky Sports Main Event)
11/05 – 13:45 to 15:50 – Practice 2
12/05 – 10:30 to 12:15 – Practice 3 (also Sky Sports Main Event)
12/05 – 13:00 to 15:40 – Qualifying
=> 13:00 – Pre-Show
=> 13:55 – Qualifying
13/05 – 12:30 to 17:10 – Race
=> 12:30 – Pit Lane Live
=> 13:30 – On the Grid
=> 14:05 – Race
=> 16:30 – Paddock Live

Supplementary Programming
09/05 – 20:30 to 21:00 – The F1 Report: Preview
10/05 – 14:00 to 14:30 – Driver Press Conference
10/05 – 20:45 to 21:00 – Paddock Uncut
12/05 – 16:50 to 17:25 – The F1 Show
16/05 – 20:30 to 21:00 – The F1 Report: Review

BBC Radio F1
11/05 – 09:55 to 11:35 – Practice 1 (BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra)
11/05 – 13:55 to 15:35 – Practice 2 (BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra)
12/05 – 10:55 to 12:05 – Practice 3 (BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra)
12/05 – 14:00 to 15:00 – Qualifying (BBC Radio 5 Live)
13/05 – 14:00 to 16:30 – Race (BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra)

Formula Two – Spain (Sky Sports F1)
11/05 – 11:55 to 12:50 – Practice
11/05 – 15:50 to 16:30 – Qualifying
12/05 – 15:40 to 16:50 – Race 1
13/05 – 10:25 to 11:25 – Race 2

GP3 Series – Spain (Sky Sports F1)
11/05 – 16:45 to 17:25 – Qualifying
12/05 – 09:10 to 10:05 – Race 1
13/05 – 09:20 to 10:05 – Race 2

Historic Grand Prix of Monaco (Quest)
12/05 – 13:00 to 17:00 – Day 1
13/05 – 12:30 to 16:30 – Day 2

IndyCar Series – Grand Prix of Indianapolis (BT Sport/ESPN)
12/05 – 20:30 to 23:00 – Race

Porsche Supercup – Spain (Sky Sports F1)
13/05 – 11:40 to 12:25 – Race

Speedway Grand Prix – Poland (BT Sport 3)
12/05 – 17:45 to 21:15 – Races

World Superbikes – Imola
11/05 – 08:40 onwards (Eurosport 2)
=> 08:40 to 09:30 – SBK: Practice 1
=> 11:25 to 12:20 – SBK: Practice 2
=> 13:55 to 14:55 – SSP: Practice 2
=> 14:55 to 15:55 – SBK: Practice 3
12/05 – 09:00 to 14:00 – Qualifying and Race 1 (Eurosport 2)
13/05 – 10:00 to 15:00 – Support and Race 2 (Eurosport 2)
15/05 – 20:00 to 21:00 – Highlights (ITV4)

World Touring Car Cup – Nurburgring
11/05 – 16:30 to 17:30 – Qualifying (Eurosport 2)
12/05 – 10:00 to 11:00 – Race 2 (Eurosport)
12/05 – 14:00 to 15:00 – Race 3 (Eurosport)

As always, if anything changes, I will update the schedule.

Formula 1 continues to spark in Baku

The 2018 Formula One season continued to perform well over the weekend in the UK, overnight viewing figures show.

Race
As a prelude to the analysis below, bear in mind that last year’s race was red-flagged and restarted a short while later, skewing the average audience figures slightly as a result.

Channel 4’s live coverage, covering both the build-up and the race itself, averaged 2.38m (22.7%) from 12:00 to 15:40, an increase on last year’s average audience of 2.26m (21.6%).

Unlike last year, where coverage aired across both Sky Sports F1 and Sky Sports 1, Sky’s coverage aired only on their F1 channel, and their audience reflects this fact. Sky’s programme from 12:00 to 15:30 averaged 499k (4.7%), a steep decrease on last year’s combined figure of 730k (7.0%), but a slight increase on 2016’s audience of 465k (4.4%).

The combined average audience of 2.87 million viewers is slightly down on last year’s audience of 2.99 million viewers. Last year’s red flag period meant that the race from start to chequered flag took up a larger proportion of the overall programme (two and a quarter hours), inflating the average. The average is up on 2016’s number of 2.64 million viewers.

Arguably, a race in April should be able to attract a larger audience than in June, but there are other factors to account for, such as the weather and sporting opposition, including football and beyond.

The race started at 13:15 with 3.74m (36.0%), the same starting point as last year’s race. Following the start, the audience hovered around 3.9 million viewers for most of the race. As the two Red Bull’s hit each other, the audience in the UK hit four million, 4.17m (36.9%) to be exact, at 14:30.

A small dip followed during the Safety Car period, but once racing resumed, the race peaked with 4.47m (37.7%) at 14:50 as Lewis Hamilton claimed a surprise victory. At the time of the peak, 3.66m (30.8%) were watching on free-to-air with Channel 4, with a further 812k (6.8%) watching via Sky’s F1 channel, a split of 82:18.

The combined peak audience of 4.47 million viewers is an increase of 159,000 viewers on last year’s 5-minute peak audience of 4.31m (35.4%), and an increase of over half a million viewers compared with 2016’s peak of 3.85m (32.2%).

The peak is higher than all but one peak from last year (USA) and higher than all but three peak figures from 2016 (Britain, Mexico, and Abu Dhabi). Channel 4 can take most of the credit for that given Sky’s year-on-year decreases.

Qualifying
Live coverage of qualifying aired on Channel 4 to an audience of 1.20m (13.1%), with a further 268k (2.8%) watching via Sky Sports F1.

The combined average audience of 1.47 million viewers is down slightly on last year’s audience of 1.59 million. However, the combined peak audience increased by over 200,000 viewers, from 2.21m (25.9%) in 2017 to 2.43m (24.4%) this year.

The 2017 Azerbaijan Grand Prix ratings report can be found here.

Brundle to step away from Sky F1 microphone for three races this season

Martin Brundle is to reduce his commitments with Sky Sports this year and will be absent from three Formula 1 race weekends.

Writing on his Twitter, Brundle said “I’m not in Azerbaijan this weekend (or Sochi and Suzuka later in the year) but my great and very talented friends at SkyF1 are of course. Because only Sky invest in bringing you every single minute and lap of F1 live, on various platforms.”

Brundle has been commentating on Formula 1 for UK viewers since 1997 with ITV, BBC and more recently Sky Sports. During his early ITV days, Brundle missed several races due to his sportscar commitments, as well as missing the Hungarian Grand Prix on occasion. Brundle called every race from 2009 until the 2016 Monaco Grand Prix.

Immediately after the chequered flag waved in Monaco, the former Jordan and Benetton racer suffered a small heart attack, resulting in him missing the Canadian Grand Prix that season. One week later, Brundle also skipped the Baku race weekend, which clashed with his Le Mans commitments.

> Behind the scenes: The evolution of the grid walk

Fast-forward to 2017, and Brundle was taken ill prior to the British Grand Prix race, having been caught up in a sickness bug that affected a portion of the Formula 1 paddock. The bug caused him to miss the Hungarian Grand Prix as well. On three of the four occasions, Paul di Resta replaced Brundle in the commentary box. Anthony Davidson was the super-sub in Hungary 2017 when di Resta was himself replacing then-Williams driver Felipe Massa in the cockpit.

It is unclear if Brundle’s absence from this weekend’s proceedings, or Russia and Japan later this season, is on health grounds, or whether there is a scheduling conflict that prevents him from attending, although it is slightly odd that Brundle’s absence was unreferenced during Sky’s Chinese Grand Prix coverage.

Nevertheless, his reduced schedule gives him around a three week break between China and Spain, and a further four weeks between Singapore and USA.

Analysis
First and foremost, from the outset the thing of utmost importance is Brundle’s health, and I absolutely hope that everything is okay with him. His tweet leaves open room for interpretation as the tweet does not say why he is missing the races, but this is not the forum for speculation about his health.

The Formula 1 calendar this season is 21 races, the joint longest it has been, and may only increase in size moving forward. This length takes its toll on those working in the sport, travelling the world, away from home.

Brundle has been part of the paddock for over thirty years. At some point, in the same way others have, he may want to reduce his Formula 1 broadcasting commitments partially, or fully. It is unknown if this is part of that wider picture.

BT Sport’s MotoGP commentator Julian Ryder retired from his MotoGP duties at the end of 2017, citing the ever increasing travel as one of his key reasons. For Sky, their key on-air personnel will be, or have been, going through a contract renewal process ahead of new contracts kicking in ready for 2019.

I hope we see Brundle around for the medium to long-term in the commentary box. If not, I would be unsurprised if Paul di Resta is indeed in line to succeed Brundle as Sky’s leading Formula 1 analyst.

Updated on April 29th to correctly reflect that Davidson replaced Brundle for Hungary 2017 and not di Resta.

Happy 6th Birthday!

An idea following my first year of University in 2012, turned into something that thousands read every month and enjoyed by those inside and outside the paddock.

Today, this site marks its sixth birthday. My main driver behind setting up the site was that motor sport broadcasting, in my view, is not adequately covered by the mainstream motor sport media, something that I wanted to change. Yes, the headline stories are, but underneath the surface in-depth independent pieces are rare.

We all watch motor racing for the drivers, the machinery, the thrill of the speed. But there is an undercurrent to all the spills: an effort consisting of hundreds, if not thousands of people to get the show televised, to get the story told and re-told in various formats, around the world.

Combining my love for motor sport, my interest in the media landscape and then the data driven side led to the creation of this site, which felt like a natural fit for me. Writing race reports that are elsewhere ad-nauseam does not interest me, other sites exist for that purpose.

The reason this site exists is to tell the broadcasting story, and to be distinctive in its content, from behind the scenes with those involved in motor sport broadcasting through to the analytical in-depth number crunching.

Over the past twelve months I have moved towards focusing on more on in-depth writing: fewer posts, better content, branching out into previously uncovered areas, and I hope that comes through on the site.

There will always be a need for instant posts in the event of breaking stories, however I have tried to balance the nature of the articles produced. If you are reading this and thinking “you should cover X”, I am open to new, original guest posts. Whether it is Formula E, World Rally Championship, or something completely different, new ideas and contributors are welcome.

I am proud of how far the site has come and look forward to seeing how it continues to evolve over the next year.

Cheers,
Dave
Creator and Editor of The F1 Broadcasting Blog