News Articles – Spanish Grand Prix

Normally after a race weekend, some of the news articles tend to go under the radar, so I thought I would sum up what BBC Sport and Sky Sports have put up on their respective websites in terms of opinion pieces.

On the BBC website, both Andrew Benson and Gary Anderson have written pieces looking at Pastor Maldonaldo’s victory at last Sunday’s race, those pieces can be found here and here. Benson has also put up a separate blog looking at Michael Schumacher’s performance so far this season, which is located here. Jake Humphrey’s blog focusses on the fire that engulfed the Barcelona pitlane after Sunday’s Grand Prix. And there is also Mark Webber’s weekly column on the website as he looks back on the weekend, both in Formula 1 and the final day of the Premier League season. Finally on the BBC side of things, 5 Live’s Jennie Gow has written a blog, which can be found here.

Over on Sky Sports’ Formula 1 website, there are opinion pieces from Martin Brundle and commentary director Mark Hughes. There are also pieces from Sky Sports’ website team consisting of Pete Gill and Mike Wise. Gill’s blog, located here, looks at the Spanish Grand Prix weekend as a whole, while Wise continues his race weekend day-by-day diary, with his Spanish edition online here. Finally, the website has a ‘Talking Heads‘ piece looking at whether Qualifying needs to be changed, the article raising the prospect of Qualifying tyres being brought back to Formula 1.

That’s all on both websites, but I hope it helps having all the opinion pieces in one place! Comments, as always, are welcome.

Weekend in Stills – my thoughts

So, after several tweets from the Sky Sports F1 team informing us about tonight’s edition of Weekend in Stills, including Martin Brundle and Natalie Pinkham, I decided to give the show a go. Now in its third race, after it began in China, the programme is essentially half an hour of images from the Sutton Images collection.

When I first began this blog, in my ‘The Verdict so Far’ series, I described the Weekend in Stills show as “not my cup of tea”. Which, after watching tonight, is probably a sentiment that I would stick to. As a channel that is short of original content however, it is worth keeping.

Beginning on the imagery as a whole, there were some fantastic images in the programme, such as Sebastian Vettel in discussion with Bernie Ecclestone as well as Fernando Alonso embracing on the podium after Maldonaldo’s debut win. The latter of those two is best caught as an image as the camera was close up on both of them and caught the shot perfectly (I won’t at this point claim to know a lot about camera angles and taking pictures, it’s not my expertise area!).

Beyond the imagery however, it’s just that. The musical choice leaves a left to be desired and needs a lot more thought. The music used was actually that used in Sky’s very own Formula 1 trailers, such as this one. It needs a bit of imagination, instead of an instrumental in the background. Which brings us onto the next point and that’s the fading in and out of images. The ‘talking heads’ images would work much better with a fade in and out – fading out of one conversation and into another instead of snapping from one image straight to another.

I think one other thing that could do is bring some video into it. You may argue that defeats the entire purpose of the programme, but I think personally that it would enhance it. Say for instance with the start. You would show the start in video and then just as the cars are turning in cut to this image for instance, but stay on the image for a good 15 seconds. Or to give another example, when Maldonaldo goes around the final corner you have it all moving until the chequered flag when you cut to this shot. I think cutting between video and image would work better, in my opinion than a full half an hour show with just stills. At least with Weekend in Stills it has a purpose, unlike Weekend in Words which appears to regurgitate information we have already heard over the weekend and add nothing new.

As a show, it doesn’t really appeal to me with just half an hour of images, but I think interspersing moving clips with still photos may be worth experimenting with. It’s an okay show for what it is, but not something I can imagine watching on a regular basis.

Sky Sports F1 to screen Friday’s Team Press Conference live on channel

Following on from the decision to shown Thursday’s Driver Press Conference live on their channel starting from last weekend’s Spanish Grand Prix, it appears that they have made the same move with Friday’s Team Press Conference.

Due to the Monaco Grand Prix scheduling (where practice takes place on Thursday’s), the first Team Press Conference will air on Thursday 24th May at 15:00 on Sky Sports F1.

Sky Sports F1 – Top 10 ratings (week ending 6th May, 2012)

From BARB:

1 – 83k – The F1 Show (Friday, 20:00)
2 – 19k – 2003 Season Review: Part 1 (Friday, 21:00)
3 – 19k – 2004 Season Review: Part 2 (Saturday, 22:30)
4 – 11k – Chinese Grand Prix Replay (Sunday, 11:00)
5 – 9k – 2004 Season Review: Part 1 (Saturday, 21:03)
6 – 9k – Malaysian Grand Prix Highlights (Tuesday, 21:02)
7 – 8k – Australian Grand Prix Replay (Saturday, 11:00)
8 – 8k – Bahrain Grand Prix: GP2 Race 1 Replay (Thursday, 17:01)
9 – 8k – Fast Track (Tuesday, 18:59)
10 – 7k – 2003 Season Review: Part 2 (Friday, 22:18)

On the bright note, The F1 Show recorded it’s highest individual figure since launch. That’s about the only bright note. Only four shows above ten thousand viewers which is the lowest number for the channel so far. This is not really surprising though – in the three week gap between Malaysia and China, the second ‘off week’ performed worser than the first, and that is exactly the same here, with this week performing worser than last week.

The weekly reach for the channel is the lowest yet, albeit very marginally. The channel reached 607 thousand viewers for the week ending 6th May, compared with 608 thousand viewers for the week ending 8th April. Overall, though it’s not particularly surprising, although it shows why Sky needs to put more of an effort into its mid-week programming as I showed in Part 4 of my ‘The Verdict so Far’ series.

Spanish Grand Prix peaks with 5.6 million viewers

The Spanish Grand Prix peaked at 5.6 million viewers on BBC One and Sky Sports F1, overnight figures have shown. BBC One had 4.6 million of these viewers, with Sky Sports recording a peak of 1.05 million – a split of 82% to 18% in BBC’s favour.

In terms of programme averages (which is what I tend to use for comparison purposes), BBC One had an average of 3.49 million viewers from 12:10 to 15:15, while Sky Sports F1 had an average of 512,000 (3.6%) from 11:30 to 16:45, their programme extended by 15 minutes due to the events in Barcelona. This totals up at exactly 4 million viewers, with a split of 87% to 13% in BBC’s favour. The split is larger for the averages due to Sky’s longer pre and post race show. Doing some calculations shows that Sky had in the region of 770,000 viewers between 12:10 and 15:15.

But how does the split compare with China (the last race where both BBC and Sky were live), and how do the averages compare with previous years? For the Chinese Grand Prix, BBC recorded a 5-minute peak of 4.21 million, whereas Sky Sports F1 had a peak of 887,000 viewers. This was a split of 82.6% vs 17.4% in BBC’s favour. You could argue the split was 0.6 percent higher in Sky’s favour for Spain, but in reality the numbers are in the usual margin of error that you would expect. Overall, since China it seems Sky has not clawed anything from BBC, and vice versa.

The comparisons to previous year’s make for interesting reading, though. Last year’s race – which had the highest rating since 1996 – peaked with 6.2 million viewers and had an average of 4.68 million viewers. So this year marks a 600 thousand viewer drop on that figure. For the Spanish Grand Prix, that figure was abnormally high, the remainder of the Spanish Grand Prix races in the 21st century have either had bang on 4 million viewers, or below 4 million viewers. The 2012 figure of 4 million is in-line with the 2010 race day average which had 3.99 million, and above the preceding years. I guess, from a viewers’ perspective, a battle between Sebastian Vettel and Lewis Hamilton is more intriguing than that of a relative unknown to viewers (Pastor Maldonaldo) and Fernando Alonso. It’s worth considering outside factors as well, it was the last day of the Premier League season yesterday which, although it did not clash with the F1, would have probably depleted the Formula 1 figures slightly.

Either way, although it’s down year-on-year, I think it was to be expected given last year’s surprisingly high figure. Moving onto Qualifying, Saturday on BBC One only had 2.10 million. I don’t yet know Sky Sports F1’s Qualifying figure, we probably won’t know until next Monday, but assuming it is above 200 thousand viewers, it will be higher than last year’s Qualifying figure of 2.30 million, albeit lower than 2009 and 2010.

In conclusion, I think the figures are solid, and as expected. Nothing too high, but nothing of much concern. Next, we move onto Monaco, which due to the glitz and glamour of the place and it being one of the main races of the year tends to bring higher viewing figures.

Note: The ratings information comes from Digital Spy, Media Guardian, the Controller of BBC News Kevin Bakhurst and BARB.

UPDATE: Seconds after posting this, James Allen claims that BBC’s show peaked with 6.2 million. I’m not sure how true this is, none of the averages or peaks that I have seen support his assertion.