News round-up: Two countries lose F1 FTA; Berger subject of Ofcom complaint

There’s a few broadcasting related bits of F1 news that are making the rounds that there is little point me adding to other than what is already out there, but worth me blogging about in one summary piece.

The first point is that Formula One Management produced their first 4K feed over fibre during the Singapore Grand Prix weekend. There’s a video below from Tata Communications for anyone who wants to know more.

Now, whilst I don’t know enough about 4K to answer this, the thought that always comes into my mind is whether 4K is another ‘fad’, and if so, is money being wasted here? Doing a few quick Google searches, the consensus appears to be that 4K is better than 3D (if the two can really be compared). Since Sky screened last year’s final test from Barcelona live and in 3D, the experiment in the UK has began to disappear. The next piece of news from further afield in Europe is that Czech Republic and Slovakia fans will have to subscribe to pay-TV stations to watch Formula 1 from next season. The AMC Networks International Central Europe deal is an exclusive one, including GP2, GP3 and also Sky Sports F1’s Legends series as well.

And lastly, in their bi-weekly bulletin published three weeks ago, Ofcom have cleared Sky Sports over an incident that happened during the Austrian Grand Prix race day programme involving Johnny Herbert and Gerhard Berger. The relevant bit on page 37, notes that Berger uttered the words “fuck” and “shit”, which, despite Herbert apologising at the end of the piece, resulted in one person complaining to Ofcom (not me, for the avoidance of doubt!). Sky said that it “deeply regrets the use of inappropriate language during any of its live broadcasts and takes the issue extremely seriously indeed”, and that the rest of the programme structure was adjusted so that Berger did not appear in the remainder of their live programming. Ofcom considered the matter resolved, in any case.

On a separate note, the eagle eyed of you may notice that I am now a student again, final year undergraduate for anyone interested (more on the ‘About‘ page). I’ll try and keep the blog updated throughout the next eight months, but just in case there are periods of inactivity, that is why!

News round-up: Motorsport Tonight; BTCC on-board; Formula E

Some bits of news today (not of an April Fools nature!) and the past few days worth mentioning which I have summarised below.

The first bit of news is that BT Sport are debuting a new motor sport show. Entitled ‘Motorsport Tonight’, it will be presented by Abi Griffiths, and will première tonight at 20:00, filling the gaps when MotoGP Tonight is not airing. Tonight’s episode will feature John Watson and Guy Smith talking about the Blancpain GT Series amongst other segments. Whilst that is all great, at time of writing, we’re about two hours before the first broadcast.

Can anyone explain to me why this hasn’t been promoted? If it wasn’t for a tweet by Ben Constanduros this afternoon, I wouldn’t have known about it! It seems to be a common problem, and it sadly is not isolated to BT Sport: broadcasters debut new programmes and fail to promote them. Just yesterday I mentioned the IndyCar Series on ESPN (under the BT Sport banner), which falls under this category. Why air live and/or original programming if you’re not going to bother giving it promotion? I don’t know why it hasn’t been promoted, and to be honest I don’t understand the logic behind it whatsoever. It doesn’t matter how cheap it may be to show, the fact is you are showing it, therefore you should promote it. Otherwise, why bother? It frustrates me.

Whilst I praised Formula One Management (FOM) last week for the improvements to the official F1 App, one area that another series appears to have got the upper hand on is concerning the quality of the on-board footage. Several tweeters pointed out that the British Touring Car Championship on-board cameras from this past Sunday are now in high definition. I haven’t yet had time to watch the races yet from Sunday, but I approve in any improvements in broadcast quality, so this is definitely a good thing. As always with anything in broadcasting, there are people behind these improvements, so credit here goes to Videosys Broadcast for the design and Cloudbass Graphics for implementing it.

Lastly, this week’s TV Sports Markets magazine contains some quotes from Formula E’s CEO Alejandro Agag. The piece notes that the deal with ITV4, announced last month, is only for the first season, and that ITV Sport paid very little money to screen it. Agag says “We have other interested parties on the pay side, but we wanted it to be free to air. So we want to give priority to that but then be able to re-evaluate it.” The fact that ITV did not pay much money for it doesn’t surprise me. At the moment, the series has no value and is unproven. Only after the first season will we see how much value it is to ITV, although I don’t think we will see any races on ITV’s main channel, the last time any motor sport was aired live on ITV1, as it was back then, was Formula 1 in 2008. If Formula E does move to pay, it will sink, in my view irrespective of whether it is one, two or five years from now, unless it turns into a massive hit. Any pay TV deal needs a terrestrial counter part. We shall see what happens, but that is a long, long way into the future.

News round-up: Roberts joins Eurosport; Sky extend Speedway deal

There’s a few bits of news this week that are not worth covering as individual articles but are worth noting anyway, so I’ve bundled the bits into one post for future reference.

The main piece of news is that Matt Roberts is joining British Eurosport as their World Superbikes and British Superbikes presenter. Personally I’m very happy to see Roberts get the role, he was a fine presenter presenting MotoGP on the BBC. What the announcement does mean is that he is eliminated from the running for a place on BT Sport’s MotoGP team. Keith Huewen appears nailed on for a role, presumably commentator alongside Julian Ryder, but outside of that it is anyone’s guess. Azi Farni has gone quiet on Twitter lately which makes me wonder if she is part of the team. I’m not too familiar with the two wheels broadcasting picture outside of MotoGP so there are probably more obvious picks which are not obvious to me at this moment in time!

Sky Sports have renewed their Elite League Speedway contract for five years, alongside five other contracts. This is important for speedway to thrive in the country as there was the possibility that Sky could have decided to dispose of this contract, as they did with the Speedway Grand Prix championship before last season. Viewing figures tend to be around 100,000 to 200,000, nothing spectacular but enough for Sky to keep it. There is also the BT factor in all of these contracts, Sky wanted to get these wrapped up early to prevent BT Sport snapping any up.

Talking of BT, and I’ll have more on this at the weekend, the ratings for their live coverage of the World Rally Championship were solid if unspectacular. It is a good starting block, especially when considering that more motor sport fans are liking to subscribe to BT for MotoGP in the forthcoming months (team still TBC for anyone wondering). I haven’t looked in detail at ITV4’s World Rally Championship ratings yet, but the coverage appears to have done better than the majority of 2013, which is a positive sign going forward.