Sky’s response to showing Classic F1 races: “no firm decision”

There has been “no firm decision” to broadcast Classic F1 races on Sky Sports F1, as of today. As I noted here, I sent an e-mail to Sky on Tuesday night asking about the situation with regards to Classic F1 races.

Their response was that there is “no firm decisions to show classic races”, and that the Classic Grand Prix schedule that we seen on the Sunday prior to Monaco, for the time being, “appears […] a one off”.

An interesting point has to be, why did they broadcast them, getting fans hopes up that Sky Sports F1 was finally going to be a proper Formula 1 channel. It is possible that they were ‘testing the waters’ so to speak for broadcasting them some time in the future and to monitor the reaction alongside viewing figures.

Schedules for June show no Classic F1 for Canada, as already noted, with no Classic F1 also for Europe. But then we come to Britain. Given that it’s Silverstone, one would have thought that Sky would make a big deal out of it with it being the home race with more airtime and features. Also, with it being one of the blue ribbon events alongside Monaco, I am hopeful that we will see Classic F1 races turn back up for Britain. Will that happen? Who knows. I hope it does.

At the moment at non-F1 weekends there is nothing for me to watch on the channel, as it is filled with endless repeats. At least adding Classic F1 races gives the viewer something different to watch. The viewing figures appear to support that Classic F1 races bring a portion of extra viewers to the channel, increasing the channel reach with it.

Sky Sports F1 – Top 10 ratings (week ending 20th May, 2012)

From BARB:

1 – 53k – The F1 Show (Friday, 20:00)
2 – 24k – Spanish Grand Prix Highlights (Monday, 16:31)
3 – 23k – 2008 Monaco Grand Prix (Sunday, 12:35)
4 – 22k – 2006 Season Review: Part 1 (Friday, 21:00)
5 – 20k – 2010 Monaco Grand Prix (Sunday, 17:30)
6 – 19k – 2007 Monaco Grand Prix (Sunday, 10:20)
7 – 15k – 1983 Monaco Grand Prix (Sunday, 09:40)
8 – 15k – 2006 Season Review: Part 3 (Saturday, 22:15)
9 – 15k – Spanish Grand Prix: GP2 Sprint Race Replay (Wednesday, 22:55)
10 – 13k – The F1 Show (Friday, 22:31)

The first point to note is that all of the top ten is above or equal to thirteen thousand viewers, the first time that has happened in a non race week since the week ending April 1st, 2012. In terms of the Sunday ratings, the classic races did fairly well when you think that the previous non-F1 Sunday the channel failed to get above 11k at all. Assuming the other classic races had 12k for the sake of argument, between 09:00 and 20:00 on Sunday 20th May, Sky Sports F1 averaged 18 thousand viewers. This compared with an average of eight thousand viewers for Sunday 6th May, 12 thousand viewers for Sunday 30th April and seven thousand viewers for Sunday 8th April.

Is 18 thousand viewers enough to justify showing classic F1 races? I don’t know. Don’t forget here, though, that each of the above races were repeated over the week, so maybe the totals will look a bit higher once they are accounted for (although I doubt any will appear in next week’s Top 10). The weekly reach was also high, a reach of 812 thousand was the highest for a non-F1 race week since the week ending March 11th, which was the channel launch week.

One thing also of note is that 2008 was the highest rating, which is no coincidence considering it was the most exciting race (and the fact that 2009 is no where to be seen, 2011 I imagine is not there as it fell into the more competitive primetime). Had they have been imaginative, and say repeated the 1996 Monaco Grand Prix, ratings across the day could have been slightly higher, although we’re talking a few thousands more here rather than anything over the top.

The F1 Show’s rating for it’s main Friday airing at 20:00, however, was the lowest since its airing on March 30th, which surprises me considering they had Pastor Maldonaldo as a guest. I do think it needs to be promoted a lot more as it rarely gets promotion outside of the channel.

Monaco Grand Prix ratings suffer under British heat [UPDATED]

The Monaco Grand Prix plunged from its 2010 and 2011 highs yesterday unsurprisingly as the UK experienced its first heat-wave of the year. The race attracted a peak of 4.16 million viewers on BBC One, lower than the average for last year’s programme.

Yesterday’s programme averaged 3.13 million, which I believe is the lowest rating for a live BBC F1 race programme in daytime since Formula 1’s return to the corporation in 2009. Sky Sports F1 added a further 565 thousand viewers, bringing the total viewership to 3.69 million, the lowest since 2009. This split is 84.9% to 15.1% in BBC’s favour, the biggest split ratio yet between the two. Given the weather, a drop was expected, and it’s not a concerning drop, this was round about expected. All ratings in the past few days have been hit hard by the warm weather, and the F1 was another victim of that.

Looking at the figures compared to last year, only one of the five races so far (Bahrain does not count) has been up year-on-year, that being China. All the rest of the races have recorded declines of some sort.

Qualifying held up fairly well, with 2.07 million watching on BBC One. Sky Sports F1 added 388 thousand, with the overall total in line with 2009 and 2010. 2011 was abnormally high due to the session overrunning as a result of Sergio Perez’s crash.

Note: The ratings information comes from Digital Spy and Attentional.

Did the media brush the Hamilton and Schumacher incident from Spain under the carpet?

One thing I forgot to blog about yesterday was how the media treated the Lewis Hamilton and Michael Schumacher incident from practice three in Spain. It, to me, had a ‘brushed under the carpet’ feel to it.

The incident started at turn ten when Schumacher was behind Hamilton. As they came into the chicane, Schumacher took to the old race track (thus overtaking Hamilton) and then appeared to brake test Hamilton. It was difficult to see how close Schumacher was to Hamilton as the camera was on the left hand side of Hamilton’s car, so you could not see how close they were to colliding. Even as a Schumacher fan however, the incident appeared unacceptable to me.

Schumacher got off with a reprimand, but I was surprised to see how the media treated the incident. In their Qualifying build-up show, BBC looked at Hamilton’s onboard shot, with the camera placed on the left-hand side of the car, while Sky on The F1 Show the following Friday showed both the Schumacher onboard and Hamilton’s onboard shot (they claimed the Schumacher onboard was ‘new’ footage), see this video. BBC briefly brought it up yesterday, showing the same Schumacher footage, but it appeared thrown in there, with no opinion or thoughts from either Schumacher or Hill to go alongside it.

What I did not get though, is why the media did not ask Hamilton or Schumacher how they interpreted the incident. This is in contrast to the Pastor Maldonaldo and Sergio Perez incident yesterday, where Maldonaldo was moved ten places back on the grid, and both were asked by Sky or BBC on their opinions on the incident. Neither Sky or BBC (or any other media outlet for that matter) asked Hamilton or Schumacher for their thoughts. Which I thought was odd. It was not mentioned in the Saturday post-qualifying press conference in Spain to Hamilton. Looking at Autosport’s news archive, I can see no article covering the incident.

Fast forward to Monaco. Both Schumacher and Hamilton were in the Wednesday drivers’ press conference. Despite this, no one asked them for their thoughts on the incident, and whether any punishment should have been given.

It all seemed a bit odd…

No Classic F1 for Canada next Sunday on Sky Sports F1

Now that the EPG is updating for next Sunday, it appears that there will no Classic F1 on Sky Sports F1 next Sunday like there was last Sunday. This is extremely disappointing to see considering the positive reaction there was to Sky screening Classic F1 races last week.

It seems, although time will tell, that was just a one-off for Monaco. I should note that it was no where stated on their website that classic races would be shown for every race for Monaco, just that was the assumption.

Nevertheless, it is disappointing to see another repeat of the Spanish and Monaco Grand Prix’s in the schedule for this time next week. Here is their schedule for next Sunday:

10:00 – Spanish Grand Prix Repeat
13:50 – filler
15:30 – Monaco Grand Prix Repeat

Hopefully that will change mid-week. But at the moment, it appears that Sky are screening no classic stuff for Canada. Considering Canada is one of the best races of the entire season, I would be more likely to watch the 2007 through 2011 races for Canada than what was shown last weekend. I watched 2008 Monaco last weekend, but 2007, 2009 and 2010 were nothing spectacular, whereas with Canada just about every race in the past few years has had excitement and I would happily watch 2007 Canada, 2008 Canada and so on and so forth again.

I should probably note that Sky are continuing to screen the season reviews – with 2007 airing next weekend at 21:00.

Update on Wednesday 30th May: So it is now mid-week, and as of writing this update, the schedule is exactly the same to that above. I sent an e-mail to Sky last night asking why they are not broadcasting Classic Formula 1 races this Sunday. I also said that the following schedule would be much better:

09:00 to 09:30 – a classic Canadian Grand Prix from the 1980’s (similar to Monaco)
09:30 to 11:25 – 2006 Canadian Grand Prix
11:25 to 13:35 – 2007 Canadian Grand Prix
13:35 to 15:35 – 2008 Canadian Grand Prix
15:35 to 17:30 – 2010 Canadian Grand Prix
17:30 to 21:00 – 2011 Canadian Grand Prix
21:00 to 22:20 – Season Review 2007 (Part 2)

I added to the end of the e-mail that the above schedule “appeals to the hardcore fans, whereas showing more repeats appeals to no one”. The ratings released this past Monday appear to support that very fact.