Scheduling: The 2013 Monaco Grand Prix

From a fairly confusing Spanish Grand Prix, it is time for the glitz and glamour in the Formula 1 world: the Monaco Grand Prix! One of the shocks when the BBC and Sky picks came out at the end of last year was the the Monaco Grand Prix will be screened on Sky Sports F1 exclusively live. As thus, BBC viewers will either have to listen to it on the radio, wait for the highlights or find another method of viewing.

Sky’s coverage during the weekend is broadly similar to last year, with an extra The F1 Show again on the schedule. The Qualifying show is 20 minutes longer but there are no other changes versus last year. As normal, there are five classic races – 1992 and 1996 in highlights form with 2003, 2008 and 2011 as full races. Aside from that, there is some special programming within the schedule. ‘Monaco: The Greatest Race of All’ first airs on Friday 17th May following The F1 Show, as Steve Rider asks drivers past and present their thoughts on the Monte Carlo race. I suspect it is bits from his ‘F1 Legends’ interviews cut into one programme, but we shall see. ‘GP Uncovered’ is a strand of archive programming looking back at past Monaco Grand Prix races. If you don’t have access to Sky Sports F1, the strand is repeated also on the main Sky Sports channels.

On BBC, due to cricket and golf on the schedule, neither Qualifying or Practice 3 are live on BBC Radio, both sessions you can only listen to online. Also not on the schedule is the GP3 Series, despite being on the Monaco Grand Prix schedule last year, they will be having a standalone race towards the end of June. I’ve also added the Indianapolis 500 to the schedule, it is unfortunate that only two men and their dogs will be watching that prestigious event…

Friday 17th May
20:00 to 21:00 – The F1 Show (Sky Sports F1)
21:00 to 21:30 – Monaco: The Greatest Race of All (Sky Sports F1)

Saturday 18th May
20:00 to 20:30 – GP Uncovered: 1955 Monaco Grand Prix (Sky Sports F1)
– from the D. A. Clarke archive
– repeated on Friday 24th May at 19:30
20:30 to 21:15 – F1: 1992 Monaco Grand Prix Highlights (Sky Sports F1)
– commentary from Murray Walker and James Hunt
– repeated on Friday 24th May at 18:00

Sunday 19th May
20:00 to 20:40 – GP Uncovered: 1957 Monaco Grand Prix (Sky Sports F1)
– from the Castrol archive
– repeated on Friday 24th May at 21:30
20:40 to 21:20 – F1: 1996 Monaco Grand Prix Highlights (Sky Sports F1)
– commentary from Murray Walker and Jonathan Palmer
– repeated on Friday 24th May at 18:45

Monday 20th May
20:00 to 20:40 – GP Uncovered: 1957 Monaco Grand Prix (Sky Sports F1)
– from the JFPT archive
– repeated on Saturday 25th May at 11:20
20:40 to 22:55 – F1: 2003 Monaco Grand Prix (Sky Sports F1)
– commentary from James Allen and Martin Brundle
– repeated on Friday 24th May at 22:10

Tuesday 21st May
20:00 to 20:30 – GP Uncovered: 1962 French Grand Prix (Sky Sports F1)
– from the Castrol archive
– repeated on Saturday 25th May at 17:30
20:30 to 23:00 – F1: 2008 Monaco Grand Prix (Sky Sports F1)
– commentary from James Allen and Martin Brundle
– repeated on Saturday 25th May at 22:25

Wednesday 22nd May
14:00 to 14:45 – F1: Driver Press Conference (Sky Sports F1)
19:45 to 20:00 – F1: Gear up for Monaco (Sky Sports F1)
20:00 to 20:30 – GP Uncovered: 1958 Monaco Grand Prix (Sky Sports F1)
– from the Hepolite archive
– repeated on Sunday 26th May at 18:30
20:30 to 23:30 – F1: 2011 Monaco Grand Prix (Sky Sports F1)
– commentary from Martin Brundle and David Coulthard
– repeated on Sunday 26th May at 08:15

Thursday 23rd May
08:45 to 11:00 – F1: Practice 1 (Sky Sports F1)
08:55 to 10:35 – F1: Practice 1 (BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra)
11:00 to 11:35 – GP2: Practice (Sky Sports F1)
12:45 to 15:00 – F1: Practice 2 (Sky Sports F1)
12:55 to 14:35 – F1: Practice 2 (BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra)
15:10 to 15:55 – GP2: Qualifying (Sky Sports F1)
16:00 to 16:45 – F1: Team Press Conference (Sky Sports F1)
17:00 to 18:00 – The F1 Show (Sky Sports F1)
20:00 to 21:00 – F1: Preview (BBC Radio 5 Live)

Friday 24th May
10:10 to 11:35 – GP2: Race 1 (Sky Sports F1)
17:00 to 18:00 – The F1 Show (Sky Sports F1)
18:45 to 19:00 – Inside F1 (BBC News Channel)

Saturday 25th May
09:45 to 11:10 – F1: Practice 3 (Sky Sports F1)
12:00 to 15:05 – F1: Qualifying (Sky Sports F1)
15:05 to 16:10 – GP2: Race 2 (Sky Sports F1)
17:35 to 18:50 – F1: Qualifying (BBC One)
19:45 to 20:00 – Inside F1 (BBC News Channel)

Sunday 26th May
11:30 to 16:00 – F1: Race (Sky Sports F1)
13:00 to 15:00 – F1: Race (BBC Radio 5 Live)
16:00 to 17:00 – F1 Legends: Gerhard Berger (Sky Sports F1)
17:00 to 20:30 – Indianapolis 500 (ESPN)
17:35 to 19:05 – F1: Race (BBC One)
– note: For Scotland viewers, the race is on BBC Two at 18:35

Wednesday 29th May
19:00 to 19:30 – Midweek Report (Sky Sports F1)

Spanish Grand Prix drops to four year low

The Spanish Grand Prix dropped to its lowest rating since 2009, overnight figures show. BBC One’s programme from 12:10 to 15:15 recorded an average of 3.285 million viewers, a 29 percent share. Sky Sports F1’s exact programme figure is unknown, however, it failed to make ITV Media’s top 10, meaning it had under 483,000 viewers from 11:30 to 16:20.

The joint average is therefore around about 3.77 million viewers – however that is an estimate and could be slightly lower depending on Sky’s exact figure. Either way, using my usual ‘35 percent theory‘, applied to Sky Sports F1 only to account for its longer run-time, brings the average up to 3.94 million.

Spanish Grand Prix – Official Ratings
2002 – 3.72 million
2003 – 3.20 million
2004 – 3.04 million
2005 – 2.72 million
2006 – 2.33 million
2007 – 3.15 million
2008 – 3.51 million
2009 – 3.89 million
2010 – 4.04 million
2011 – 4.75 million
2012 – 4.09 million / 4.28 million
2013 – 3.77 million / 3.94 million*

* overnight figure and approximation of Sky Sports F1 figure

The figures unfortunately do not point to a positive trend. The combined factors of lack of British success and football competition will not have helped. In 2011, Sebastian Vettel was fighting Lewis Hamilton for victory until the last lap, whereas in comparison yesterday was a Fernando Alonso dominating performance, a relative turn off for the British audience.

The peak figures are again not the greatest, a combined peak of 4.83 million viewers, with a 36.1 percent share. BBC had 4.13 million at its peak, with Sky recording 703,000 viewers. The split was 86 percent versus 14 percent, which compared to last year is bigger in BBC’s favour. BBC’s peak is down 470,000 year-on-year, with Sky’s peak down 350,000, despite having a much lower audience reach. The 2011 peak was 6.2 million, so the difference of having a last lap showdown can account for an extra 25 percent of your audience.

Monaco should be interesting from a ratings perspective, as it is a Sky exclusive race. Given that it is considered one of the ‘crown jewels’, surely Sky must see some kind of uplift from its usual exclusive race weekend ratings. I imagine they will be hoping for more viewers, at least a peak of nearly 2 million if the weather in the UK plays in their favour.

The 2012 Spanish Grand Prix ratings report can be found here. Note: The ratings information comes from Digital Spy, TV Ratings UK and BARB.

Sky Sports F1 – Top 10 ratings (week ending 5th May, 2013)

From BARB:

1 – 52k – The F1 Show (Friday, 20:00)
2 – 11k – The F1 Show (Friday, 22:31)
3 – 8k – Time of Our Lives: Grand Prix Greats (Friday, 19:00)
4 – 7k – Chinese Grand Prix Replay (Sunday, 10:00)
5 – 7k – 1983 French Grand Prix Highlights (Saturday, 21:40)
6 – 7k – Inside Track: Brundle and Hamilton (Friday, 23:47)
7 – 7k – Behind the Scenes with Lotus (Friday, 23:32)
8 – 7k – 1983 Brazilian Grand Prix Highlights (Friday, 21:00)
9 – 6k – The F1 Show (Saturday, 14:30)
10 – 6k – Inside Track: Brundle and Hamilton (Thursday, 21:46)

Another fairly hideous set of ratings for a non-race week outside of The F1 Show, with no content bringing over ten thousand viewers. The biggest disappointment has to be the classic race highlights. Yes, it is great that they are showing them, but it counts for nothing when promotion is poor and scheduling is not good.

I like watching classic races and all, but in the middle of primetime on a Saturday night? Not happening when the majority of people will be watching Britain’s Got Talent, Doctor Who or The Voice. A better option would to schedule Bank Holiday Monday as follows:

14:30 – 1983 Brazilian Grand Prix Highlights
15:00 – 1983 United Grand Prix West Highlights
15:45 – 1983 French Grand Prix Highlights
16:30 – 1983 San Marino Grand Prix Highlights
17:15 – 1983 Monaco Grand Prix Highlights

Extremely logical to have two and a half hours of back-to-back Classic F1 on a Bank Holiday seems fine, probably too logical for the Sky Sports F1 schedulers to consider. Consolidating to less than ten thousand viewers shows that something is going wrong somewhere. Promotion is an issue too, but that side is slowly getting better. For series’ like this however, there needs to be supplemental articles on the Sky Sports websites (retro 1983 articles) to give viewers a reason to tune in.

Elsewhere, the BTCC brought in 219,000 viewers on ITV4, a fairly low rating by its own standards, presumably a combination of Bank Holiday and good weather hitting the ratings.

Sky Sports F1 – Top 10 ratings (week ending 28th April, 2013)

From BARB, a day later than usual due to the May Day Bank Holiday:

1 – 71k – The F1 Show (Friday, 20:00)
2 – 17k – Legends (Friday, 21:00)
3 – 15k – The F1 Show (Saturday, 18:01)
4 – 10k – Legends (Wednesday, 22:32)
5 – 9k – Martin’s Bahrain Grid Walk (Tuesday, 20:00)
6 – 8k – Bahrain GP2 Sprint Race Replay (Tuesday, 23:24)
7 – 8k – Inside Track: Hill and Villeneuve (Saturday, 17:46)
8 – 7k – Ted’s Bahrain Race Notebook (Saturday, 20:30)
9 – 5k – Bahrain GP2 Feature Race Replay (Tuesday, 22:01)
10 – 5k – Ted’s China Race Notebook (Saturday, 17:32)

It appears viewers have been successfully trained into realising that The F1 Show is the only original content on Sky Sports F1 during a typical non-race week.

Looking at this week last year, The F1 Show is down marginally, however all other content is down. Last year, at least ten shows hit ten thousand viewers, this year only four can hit that figure. Maybe the Season Reviews need to return to the schedule alongside the Classic Races that are already in place. Reach was 482,000 viewers, versus 678,000 viewers last year.

Motors TV in comparison reached 359,000 viewers, their highest rated programme was the Mini Challenge on Friday evening with 23,000 viewers. The 2012 Tractor Pulling Competition also performed solidly for the channel, with 17,000 and 18,000 viewers respectively.

Interaction

Currently, at the moment, Sky appear to operate with the following social media guidelines:

Sky Sports F1's current social media guideline, as I see it. — Sky Sports F1’s current social media guideline, as I see it.

For those of you who follow @SkySportsF1 or @SkyF1Insider on Twitter, you will notice that they rarely tweet during their shows (F1 sessions aside), that includes The F1 Show and the feeder series’ GP2 and GP3. Hence, at the moment we have a situation where they do not live tweet throughout their shows, meaning that there is little incentive for fans to tweet throughout their shows. I define ‘live tweeting’ as tweeting whilst the show is on air, the reason I say that is last week @SkyF1Insider tweeted behind the scenes videos last Friday, but they were before the show went to air, and all of those videos would not have made any significant difference as to who does or does not watch the show. As thus, there is no demand for other people to watch the show, in turn making no difference to the viewership. This cycle will rinse and repeat on a weekly basis, with no change on the horizon. No one really benefits, meaning that in the case of The F1 Show the viewership remains below 100,000 viewers.

I know someone is going to say “why did you not mention this last season?”. Quite simply because last year was Sky’s first season, and as thus they may have been coy on going in heavy on the interactivity because of the negativity towards the deal with BBC, so I can see why they did not do much on that side of things in 2012. But now in the second year of the deal, there is no reason why social media cannot play a bigger part in The F1 Show. Yes, they have introduced Your View, where viewers can e-mail their clips into the show. It is an improvement, but we are in 2013. Social media is the thing where instant communication is paramount. When you compare it to Jake Humphrey in 2011 looking on his phone scrolling down the tweets and selecting a few, Sky are light years behind where this is concerned. In my view, they should have the e-mail and live tweets, emphasis on the tweeting, it appears to me that even in year two Sky are ‘shying away’ from social media and live interaction on a weekly basis.

The diagram above should be more like this:

Sky Sports F1's social media guideline, as it should be. — Sky Sports F1’s social media guideline, as it should be.

Viewers tweeting in live can then have their thoughts discussed on the show, as well as the Twitter account discussing other users thoughts, the benefit of this would drive interaction instantly, resulting in more demand off viewers, and the end result is that viewers who would not normally tune in would be more inclined to tune in as a result. As well as this, dedicated @SkyF1Show, @SkyGP2 and @SkyGP3 accounts would be created to live tweet throughout shows, with @SkySportsF1 being used as their main hub. I think having @SkyGP2 and @SkyGP3 would help advertising their coverage where those two series’ are concerned as I have covered before on this blog, the only problem with that though is that as Sky take the GP2 and GP3 World Feed commentary with Will Buxton, I doubt they could mention those Twitter pages on air though. I’m surprised @SkyF1Show has not been created by them, though.

Am I right? I don’t know. But there must be a reason why Sky has individual accounts for @SoccerAM, @FantasyFC and other football related shows. I do think that The F1 Show at the moment is still not drawing in the viewers it should be, unless 70,000 to 80,000 viewers really is the roof. Whilst timeslot is definitely an issue, the amount of live interaction leaves a lot of potential left on the table.