It appears that Sky Sports F1 have had a Winter clean, as today’s schedule updates for the channel following the Australian Grand Prix reveal some perhaps surprising developments.

– Ted’s Notebook remains, continuing to be fifteen minutes in length.
– Sky are repeating the Classic F1 races that they originally shown last year. Conviently, Sky repeating those races last December meant that I made a full list of them on the aforementioned link. In between Australia and Malaysia, schedules already show Japan 1998, USA 1981, Abu Dhabi 2010, Japan 1988 and Brazil 2003. Interestingly, I don’t think that USA 1981 has been shown before on Sky Sports F1, so that race at least is new. If Sky have flexibility to do this, and if they plan to, I’d much prefer to see an entire season across two or three weeks as I have advocated on this blog before.
– Midweek Report is back! A new timeslot, Wednesday’s at 20:30. I hope Anna Woolhouse is back presenting, and I hope the discussion and guests differs from the main Sky Sports F1 team, please don’t turn it into ‘another show’, Sky.
– F1 Legends returns with Juan Pablo Montoya, an edition I’m definitely looking forward to.

Those four points are not surprising. However, Weekend in Stills, Fast Track, Inside Track are not in the schedule, nor are the Brundle and Pinkham fifteen minute segments that Sky created last season. If you were hoping for Sky to create new programming aside from their 2013 offerings between races you are going to be disappointed, however if you want to sit down and watch a classic race each night I think you’ll be pretty pleased. Regarding new programming, I am wondered what has happened to the Max Chilton series that they were meant to be filming with him last season, as talk on that front has gone quiet from all directions.

A final note is that Sky’s race day programme will continue to be split into three for 2014, Australia is down as three separate shows. Remember that, when it comes to PR reporting should viewing figures be down year-on-year, if you’re going to compare, do it fairly. As The F1 Broadcasting Blog intends to throughout the upcoming season…

Of course schedules are subject to change, so I’ll update this blog post if anything post-Australia scheduling wise changes.

Update on February 25th – Sky are indeed maxing out on classic races, one race a day from March 7th through to December 31st. In terms of content, I don’t think there will be more content, just that the scheduling will actually make sense in 2014. And hey, they are actually promoting it, which is good!

Update on March 3rd – Forgot to say that Sky’s schedules do indeed confirm Anna Woolhouse as host of the Midweek Report again.

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.

The scheduling details for Sky Sports F1’s coverage of the final test for the 2014 Formula 1 season have today been confirmed. The test, from the Bahrain International Circuit will again feature fifteen minute highlights from each day, with Ted Kravitz back for his Notebook afterwards.

I cannot emphasise this next statement enough: At the moment, no live coverage is currently in Sky’s schedules. Yes, that can always change, but at the moment nothing is in the schedule to suggest live coverage

Thursday 27th February
21:00 to 21:45 – Day 1 Highlights
– round-up at 21:00
– Ted’s Notebook at 21:15
22:15 to 23:00 – Day 1 Highlights (R)

Friday 28th February
21:00 to 21:45 – Day 2 Highlights
– round-up at 21:00
– Ted’s Notebook at 21:15
22:15 to 23:00 – Day 2 Highlights (R)

Saturday 1st March
21:00 to 21:45 – Day 3 Highlights
– round-up at 21:00
– Ted’s Notebook at 21:15
22:15 to 23:00 – Day 3 Highlights (R)

Sunday 2nd March
21:00 to 21:45 – Day 4 Highlights
– round-up at 21:00
– Ted’s Notebook at 21:15
22:15 to 23:00 – Day 4 Highlights (R)

As always, I’ll update this post if anything changes concerning the second Bahrain test.

The scheduling details for Sky Sports F1’s coverage of the second test for the 2014 Formula 1 season have today been confirmed. The test, the first of two from the Bahrain International Circuit will again feature fifteen minute highlights from each day.

However, Ted Kravitz’s Notebook is replaced by #AskCrofty. The reason for this is simply because Kravitz is not going to be at the first of the two Bahrain tests. I assume that the #AskCrofty feature will be filmed at the end of each day, with viewers submitting questions via Twitter.

Kravitz will be back for the final test, for which scheduling details should be out next week.

Wednesday 19th February
21:00 to 21:45 – Day 1 Highlights
– round-up at 21:00
– #AskCrofty at 21:15
22:15 to 23:00 – Day 1 Highlights (R)

Thursday 20th February
21:00 to 21:45 – Day 2 Highlights
– round-up at 21:00
– #AskCrofty at 21:15
22:15 to 23:00 – Day 2 Highlights (R)

Friday 21st February
21:00 to 21:45 – Day 3 Highlights
– round-up at 21:00
– #AskCrofty at 21:15
22:15 to 23:00 – Day 3 Highlights (R)

Saturday 22nd February
21:00 to 21:45 – Day 4 Highlights
– round-up at 21:00
– #AskCrofty at 21:15
22:15 to 23:00 – Day 4 Highlights (R)

Sunday 23rd February
13:00 to 13:45 – Day 1 Highlights (R)
13:45 to 14:30 – Day 2 Highlights (R)
14:30 to 15:15 – Day 3 Highlights (R)
15:15 to 16:00 – Day 4 Highlights (R)

As always, I’ll update this post if anything changes concerning the first Bahrain test.

Update on February 15th – Some minor changes made, but nothing too major.

The scheduling details of Sky Sports F1’s coverage of the first Formula 1 test of the 2014 season from Jerez have today been confirmed. There will be an hour’s action from each day, up on the half an hour from last year. As with last year, this consists of a round-up show followed by Ted Kravitz’s Notebook. The usual Sky Sports News updates will continue throughout each day.

Friday 24th January
20:00 to 20:15 – McLaren MP4-29 Launch
– repeated at various times

Tuesday 28th January
21:00 to 21:35 – Day 1 Highlights
– round-up at 21:00
– Ted’s Notebook at 21:15
21:35 to 21:45 – Rush Movie Competition
– repeated at various times
23:00 to 23:35 – Day 1 Highlights (R)

Wednesday 29th January
21:00 to 21:35 – Day 2 Highlights
– round-up at 21:00
– Ted’s Notebook at 21:15
23:00 to 23:35 – Day 2 Highlights (R)

Thursday 30th January
21:00 to 21:35 – Day 3 Highlights
– round-up at 21:00
– Ted’s Notebook at 21:15
23:00 to 23:35 – Day 3 Highlights (R)

Friday 31st January
20:30 to 21:00 – The F1 Show Special: The MM Hall of Fame Awards
– see here for more details
21:00 to 21:35 – Day 4 Highlights
– round-up at 21:00
– Ted’s Notebook at 21:15
23:30 to 23:35 – Day 4 Highlights (R)

Saturday 1st February
11:00 to 11:35 – Day 1 Highlights (R)
11:35 to 12:10 – Day 2 Highlights (R)
12:10 to 12:45 – Day 3 Highlights (R)
12:45 to 13:20 – Day 4 Highlights (R)

As of writing, there is currently no live action scheduled. I think I should quote from my piece last month about Sky’s coverage where that is concerned:

I normally would say that I hope live testing returns for 2014, with testing more critical than ever next season. Three letters, one word: FOM. If Sky want to screen testing live, once again they have to go through them. As always, FOM give Sky access, Sky can’t just walk in and around a live F1 circuit with cameras and start filming. So, we’ll see what happens.

It is possible that it could be added last minute, or nearer the time once it is clearer who is doing what. I’m not sure it will, but again we will have to wait and see. As always, I’ll update the blog when anything changes.

Update on 8th January at 22:30 – I’ve added the Saturday repeat airings in, whilst it should also be noted that repeats of the Jerez test are scheduled multiple times in the following week. There’s also several Car Unveiling place-holder shows in the schedules, but all are TBA so there is not much point in adding it yet above.

Update on 11th January at 18:40 – The schedule has changed, and we’re back to the 2013 scheduling, it appears.

Update on 21st January at 17:10 – McLaren car launch now added, and a 10-minute filler entitled “Rush Movie Competition”. Regarding the latter, yes, really. The description for that is “Find out more about an opportunity to win a host of Formula 1 prizes including four VIP seats at the 2014 British Grand Prix at Silverstone in July.”