Scheduling: The 2014 Jerez test on Sky Sports F1

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.”

A tale of two halves as TV ratings increase slightly

The 2013 Formula 1 season brought in a higher viewership than 2012 in the United Kingdom, according to unofficial overnight viewing figures. However, a deeper look inside the figures shows that the season was a tale of two halves.

The season, when taking into account Sky’s longer running time for each race programme, averaged 4.11m across the nineteen races on BBC One and Sky Sports F1. This is an increase of 130k (or 3.3%) on the 3.98m average recorded for 2012, but is again down on the figures recorded between 2009 and 2011 when Formula 1 was exclusively live on the BBC. Despite an overall increase, viewing figures dropped a million viewers from the first half to the second half of the season. The first half of the season averaged 4.58m (2012: 4.06m), whilst the second half of the season averaged 3.59m (2012: 3.89m), a 27.6% drop compared with a 4.4% drop in 2012.

BBC’s Formula 1 coverage was the reason for the increase, averaging 3.42m viewers throughout 2013 for their race-day coverage, compared with 3.22m in 2012, an increase of 6.2%. The main source of the increase was the high German Grand Prix highlights rating, which averaged 5.15m and benefited from following the Wimbledon final. Removing this would still keep 2013 above 2012 for the BBC. Nevertheless, the first half of the season averaged 3.81m (2012: 3.21m), with the second half averaging 3.00m (2012: 3.23m), a 27.0% drop compared with a 0.6% increase last year, slightly below the overall average drop. It shows how well the first half of the season did, helped not only by the German Grand Prix, but also the controversial Malaysian Grand Prix.

Unlike BBC, Sky Sports F1’s coverage dropped throughout. When putting it on a level playing field with the BBC, the main part of their race-day programming averaged 685k, down on the 767k recorded in 2012, a decrease of 12.0%. There is no particular race that struggled, but rather an overall declining picture for the channel compared with 2012. 770k (2012: 855k) watched the first half of the season with Sky, this number dropping to 590k (2012: 659k) for the latter half of the season. In both 2012 and 2013, Sky’s coverage has dropped across the season: a decrease of 30.5% compared with a 29.7% drop in 2012.

The F1 Broadcasting Blog says: The season from a ratings perspective can only be described as a tale of two halves in about every possible way. From a television point of view, producers would expect and hope for the season to start slowly and then build to a crescendo towards the end, 2008 is a perfect example of that with the Lewis Hamilton and Felipe Massa battle bubbling up at several points in the season before the season finale. 2013 was almost the opposite in that round two had the biggest story of the entire year, with Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel’s on track battle. It was downhill from there. Casual fans love stories like that. Sadly though for companies around the world, it was never followed up on where the on track action was concerned. There was no juicy follow up, and I don’t think Webber and Vettel ever got close on track again.

Instead, the second half of the season seen Vettel dominate, and viewing figures plunge. I imagine, although I cannot verify, that a similar picture was repeated around the world. I’d be surprised if the UK was an anomaly given the context of the season. Which leads me onto double points.

AUTOSPORT has learned that teams were pressured into supporting the move because they were told by Bernie Ecclestone that television companies and race promoters had asked for a way to ensure the world title battle was kept alive for longer. – AUTOSPORT – December 20th

Obviously broadcasters can see the ratings as soon as they are released and may well have done the same comparisons as I have shown above. Has one of them forced Formula One Management (FOM) to press the panic button? I think they did. And rather stupidly too, given that 2013 was definitely not a typical season in terms of layout. As good as the Webber and Vettel story was, the other stories, the public simply don’t care about, for example the ‘tyre test’ and the outcome of that. They care about personalities. More of Webber and Vettel, less of the tyres which I suspect no one out of the Formula 1 bubble really cares about.

A good season for the BBC, they will be pleased to be up versus 2012. Yes, they did drop in the latter half of the season, but given the context, it is difficult to have expected anything different. What I would say is that the BBC ratings do show is that Formula 1 needs to keep the terrestrial television presence, which I hope continues beyond 2018, although that is a long, long way away yet. Whilst Sky’s decline in the latter half of the season is unsurprising, the first half of the season also declined, which was not a good sign from the get-go. From a ratings perspective, they desperately need stability and avoid the free-fall continuing into 2014. How do they do that?

Unlike BBC, which is purely dependent on the on-track action, Sky need to consider how Formula 1 is packaged within their portfolio of channels. Limiting who can, and cannot view Formula 1, and punishing people through loopholes is not the way to go. At the end of the day (and this will apply to BT Sport with MotoGP too), Sky need to make their coverage more accessible to people and not price them out of the market. I’m not sure that will happen, and if it doesn’t happen, then I only see viewing figures continuing to drop for Sky. The aim of the game needs to be to get Formula 1 ratings in the UK back up to the levels seen between 2009 and 2011. And who knows, for the moment, 2014 may be make or break where that is concerned.

TV season review shows drop

With the 2013 season ending on a bit of a dull note, it is perhaps no surprise that the end of year season review shows on BBC One and Sky Sports F1 suffered as a result, according to unofficial overnight viewing figures.

BBC One’s show, entitled ‘A Record Breaking Show’ averaged 880,000 (8.5%) on Saturday 28th December. It was the first time since the ITV days that a season review had dropped below one million viewers. The previous lowest on BBC was in 2009, which averaged 1.10m (12.5%) albeit that was broadcast a week after the season concluded. Since then, the season reviews have average between 1.1 million and 1.3 million viewers, so the 2013 overnight figure comes in slightly below that.

Unofficially, Sky’s review show averaged 1,000 (0.01%), despite it being half the length of last year’s season review show. Seeing something average 1,000 viewers is very, very rare, and it should be said that the smaller you go, the margin of error gets bigger. Nevertheless, I imagine both BBC and Sky are fairly glad to see the back of 2013.

Special edition of The F1 Show to air on January 31st

A special edition of The F1 Show will air on January 31st at 20:00 on Sky Sports F1, it has been confirmed. The half an hour episode, entitled ‘The F1 Show Special: Motor Sport Hall of Fame’, will be filmed at the 2014 Motor Sport Hall of Fame awards on Wednesday 29th January and fronted by Natalie Pinkham. Simon Lazenby will present the awards itself.

Damien Smith, editor of Motor Sport magazine said: “The Royal Opera House is a suitably grand venue to honour some of motor sport’s greatest names and we could not dream of a better Broadcast Partner than Sky Sports. To mark our 90th birthday in suitable style, we have four true motor sport legends being inducted into the Motor Sport Hall of Fame in January. It’s going to be another memorable evening and for those not lucky enough to be present, as in F1, Sky Sports F1 will be the next best place to follow all the action.”

Good to see Sky doing things like this, and it is an expansion on the coverage last year which was within a normal episode of The F1 Show. The schedules themselves have not been updated yet (as the last week of January is also meant to feature F1 testing from Jerez), but it should not be too long before we have a clearer picture of what Sky are, and are not, doing.

Looking ahead to 2014

The first four parts of the 2013 verdict looked back at the year gone by and analysed both the BBC and Sky Sports F1 products, along with their respective teams. But of course while Formula 1 plays a large part in this blog (hence the blog name), it is easy every so often to get wrapped in the Formula 1 bubble. Which in why in 2013, I have been trying to cover more than just Formula 1 on the blog, on both two and four wheels.

Sometimes, in the broadcasting and media world, you have to look at the bigger picture to see what patterns are emerging, to see where the landscape is heading, to see what could be the next big thing. Enter BT Sport. Launching on August 1st, 2013, BT has only been on air for five months. March 2014 will signal the beginning of their MotoGP coverage. Sitting here, writing this at the end of 2013, we still do not know who will form part of the line-up. Obviously first impressions are vital, so it will be interesting to see who is announced, no doubt within the next month I imagine.

I hope that viewing figures are good for MotoGP, but we will only get the full picture after a few races of the season. Critically, they need a championship battle to last for the majority of the season to prevent viewing figures dropping. Of course, the figures will be lower than BBC, I just hope by not a huge amount. Another story in 2014 will be the Formula E rights announcement, which will be make up break for the series. If it is not on terrestrial television, then it will simply blend in with the rest and won’t stand out, simple as. If they want the concept to be successful in this country, it needs to be easily accessible. Time will tell.

And then of course we have all the usual Formula 1 discussion, from both BBC and Sky, home and abroad. Year three of a seven year contract means that both sides should have firmly settled in, although like last year, we could well see some surprising changes. Along with that there will be the usual ratings analysis, will the draw of the ‘2014 formula’ bring viewers back to Formula 1 again, or will viewing figures slip down a notch further? A lot of questions ahead for 2014, some bigger than others, and it looks set to be another interesting year on the broadcasting front.