A few bits of housekeeping

Just a few bits of housekeeping worth letting you know about:

– You can now contact me via e-mail, the e-mail address is thef1broadcastingblog AT gmail DOT com, replacing the AT and DOT with the suitable symbols.
– I have adjusted the categories, specifically “‘The Verdict so Far’ series” category now has two sub-categories, one for April 2012 and one for August 2012. That is because, from next Tuesday, I will start pushing my mid-season F1 Broadcasting review online. Most of the content in the blogs will be taken from the April blogs, but will be updated and adapted where necessary.
– The Twitter outlook and the weekly Sky Sports F1 ratings posts will continue through the Summer break as usual. The Twitter counters for the past few weeks have been taken on Tuesday’s due to being on holiday, but I expect that to revert to Monday as of next week.
– The News Articles posts after each race are no longer, mainly because it was link farming, and in my opinion did not really add much to the blog, so I have ditched it.

Those of you that read my Twitter will know that the blog has broken 7,000 hits, which I think is fantastic for a relatively niche topic. I was unsure in April whether the blog would take off or slide into oblivion, and I am glad to see that it has taken off, slowly, but surely. Thank you to all of you that have read the blog, and I hope the blog continues to be a sucess.

Sky Sports F1 – Top 10 ratings (week ending 29th July, 2012)

From BARB:

1 – 718k – Live Hungarian Grand Prix (Sunday, 11:30)
2 – 366k – Live Hungarian Grand Prix: Qualifying (Saturday, 12:00)
3 – 63k – Live Hungarian Grand Prix: Practice 2 (Friday, 12:45)
4 – 49k – Live Hungarian Grand Prix: Practice 3 (Saturday, 09:45)
5 – 40k – Live Hungarian Grand Prix: Practice 1 (Friday, 08:45)
6 – 29k – The F1 Show (Friday, 17:00)
7 – 26k – Hungarian Grand Prix: Practice 1 Replay (Friday, 18:01)
8 – 25k – Behind the Scenes with Force India (Sunday, 16:18)
9 – 25k – Fast Track (Sunday, 10:58)
10 – 24k – Hungarian Grand Prix: Qualifying Replay (Saturday, 17:24)

This bit really is mainly directed to Formula One Management and the FIA, not Sky Sports, but the “Idiots Guide to Scheduling” tells you not to schedule a Formula 1 race during the Olympic Games period. Although the race itself did well considering, everything else fell down like a stack of cards. The practice ratings are dismally low – the lowest since the season opener in Australia for live sessions on Sky Sports F1 – while it seems anything to do with GP2 and GP3 was under 24,000 viewers during the Hungarian Grand Prix weekend. A major, major ouch. Not surprising, but still extremely low numbers.

Dumbstruck would be the word to describe the scheduling by those high up this season, as I outlined in this piece. Those at FIA and FOM appear to think that scheduling Formula 1 races during the European Championship’s and the Olympics will help ratings. Not true, it will only hurt ratings for those rounds as attention is diverted elsewhere.

Again, both Qualifying and Race figures are the worst since 2008, but as I said earlier, I think the race did well considering, and in fact was not that far down on the last three years.

As always, your thoughts and opinions are welcome.

The Twitter outlook

The first half of the 2012 Formula One season has come and gone, and the Summer holidays are already here. Well, for me, they’ve already gone having been on holiday for two weeks. Which explains why this post is slightly late.

I say slightly, the counters were done on Tuesday instead of Monday, and with it being the end of July, this post is longer with every driver and every team with a Twitter account listed below. Sebastian Vettel, Michael Schumacher and Kimi Raikkonen, I’m afraid, still do not own a Twitter account.

Drivers
01 – 1,057,003 – Jenson Button (McLaren)
02 – 953,645 – Lewis Hamilton (McLaren)
03 – 945,685 – Fernando Alonso (Ferrari)
04 – 461,516 – Bruno Senna (Williams)
05 – 404,682 – Mark Webber (Red Bull)
06 – 242,841 – Sergio Perez (Sauber)
07 – 237,207 – Pastor Maldonaldo (Williams)
08 – 183,467 – Nico Rosberg (Mercedes)
09 – 166,083 – Heikki Kovalainen (Caterham)
10 – 160,938 – Pedro de la Rosa (HRT)
11 – 142,153 – Paul di Resta (Force India)
12 – 133,874 – Felipe Massa (Ferrari)
13 – 124,342 – Narain Karthikeyan (HRT)
14 – 84,063 – Vitaly Petrov (Caterham)
15 – 78,012 – Timo Glock (Marussia)
16 – 77,941 – Nico Hulkenberg (Force India)
17 – 66,563 – Kamui Kobayashi (Sauber)
18 – 61,318 – Romain Grosjean (Lotus)
19 – 39,983 – Daniel Ricciardo (Toro Rosso)
20 – 28,051 – Jean-Eric Vergne (Toro Rosso)
21 – 16,640 – Charles Pic (Marussia)

Up front it is status quo, with Jenson Button above one million followers as the end of last month. Further down, and Felipe Massa has moved ahead of Narain Karthikeyan. Despite joining at the same time as his team-mate, Massa has moved up the charts at a much slower rate than Alonso, which shows the difference in the two drivers’ respective popularities.

I’m also surprised at how low Romain Grosjean is in the table and his lack of improvements across the months, but maybe that will change if Lotus pick up their first win soon. In terms of milestones other than Button’s seven figure follower, Fernando Alonso is now right behind Lewis Hamilton and therefore above 900,000 followers while Mark Webber is above 400,000, partially thanks to his victory in the British Grand Prix.

Drivers – Increases
01 – 215,927 – Fernando Alonso (n/a)
02 – 79,859 – Lewis Hamilton (n/a)
03 – 59,449 – Jenson Button (n/a)
04 – 38,781 – Mark Webber (n/a)
Average driver = 28,120
05 – 24,666 – Bruno Senna (up 1)
06 – 23,894 – Sergio Perez (down 1)
07 – 22,579 – Felipe Massa (up 1)
08 – 18,510 – Pastor Maldonaldo (down 1)
09 – 16,280 – Pedro de la Rosa (n/a)
10 – 14,843 – Nico Rosberg (n/a)
11 – 11,005 – Paul di Resta (up 1)
12 – 10,764 – Romain Grosjean (up 2)
13 – 9,964 – Heikki Kovalainen (n/a)
14 – 8,182 – Narain Karthikeyan (down 3)
15 – 7,947 – Daniel Ricciardo (up 5)
16 – 6,479 – Kamui Kobayashi (down 1)
17 – 5,856 – Vitaly Petrov (down 1)
18 – 5,072 – Nico Hulkenberg (down 1)
19 – 4,320 – Timo Glock (n/a)
20 – 3,297 – Jean-Eric Vergne (down 2)
21 – 2,847 – Charles Pic (n/a)

The up and down positions above is a comparison to their position in the same table last month. The raw values, though, are not directly comparable. As July was a 31 day month, the above values cover five weeks, whereas in June, the values covered a four week period.

As thus, it is a bit embarrassing if the raw value is lower this month than last month, as is the case with Pastor Maldonaldo, Jean-Eric Vergne and Narain Karthikeyan! As thus, Karthikeyan records the biggest dip, down three places. Daniel Ricciardo moves up three places, the biggest increase in comparison to other drivers’. The average driver is a lot higher as well compared to June, which is down to another mammoth gain by Fernando Alonso.

Teams
01 – 312,627 – Ferrari
02 – 215,998 – McLaren
03 – 139,971 – Mercedes
04 – 139,958 – Red Bull
05 – 124,135 – Lotus
06 – 81,874 – Caterham
07 – 75,084 – Marussia
08 – 71,403 – Williams
09 – 71,139 – Force India
10 – 66,927 – Sauber
11 – 56,707 – HRT
12 – 46,345 – Toro Rosso

Again, not much to report in this chart, although Red Bull are very close to overtaking Mercedes for third. Chances are that they have already done it…

Teams – Increases
01 – 19,788 – Ferrari (n/a)
02 – 14,732 – Red Bull (up 1)
03 – 13,621 – McLaren (down 1)
04 – 9,893 – Lotus (n/a)
Average team = 8,288
05 – 7,036 – Sauber (n/a)
06 – 7,000 – Marussia (up 3)
07 – 6,441 – Mercedes (down 1)
08 – 4,893 – HRT (down 1)
09 – 4,285 – Williams (up 3)
10 – 4,282 – Caterham (down 2)
11 – 4,169 – Force India (down 1)
12 – 3,312 – Toro Rosso (down 1)

A few bits to note here. McLaren and Red Bull do a swap, probably due to their respective form in July with McLaren on the back foot until Hungary at least. Marussia move up a few places, as do Williams.

Driver and Team statistics as of Tuesday 31st July 2012.

The F1 Show to continue throughout August

Sky have today confirmed that The F1 Show will continue throughout August. The editons on 3rd and 24th August will be, as usual, live with Ted Kravitz and Georgie Thompson. The 17th August edition is a review of the 2012 season so far, but it is the edition on 10th August that interests me the most.

In that edition, David Croft will be the presenter, and will have alongside him F1 journalists Kevin Eason (The Times), Jonathan Noble (Autosport) and Bryon Young (Daily Mirror). For regular readers of my blog, you will know from my initial blog posts back in April that one idea I had was for a weekly or bi-weekly show called “The Paddock View” which, in essense, will be doing exactly what The F1 Show will be doing on 10th August. So I am extremely pleased to see Sky doing this for that particular show and look forward to see how it turns out.

I will be, however, disappointed if that turns out to be the only original programme on Sky Sports F1 during August. The rest of the schedule up until at least Sunday 12th August is glittered with repeats, repeats and, yep, you guessed it, repeats. It is as if the schedulers lack imagination. Why not give us something else? There are hours and hours of archive Formula 1 footage sitting on the shelf, being unused which deserve to be shown again. Being brutally honest here, showing repeats of 2012 races throughout August is taking the extremely lazy route. Where’s the classic Formula 1 races for hardcore aficionados to grit their teeth in too and to whet their appetite? It will be plain disappointing if Sky do not show classic races, or a classic season during the August break.

As always, your comments and thoughts are welcome. Would you want to see some classic action on Sky Sports F1 instead of 2012 repeats during the Summer break?

Poll Results: Has the free weekend persuaded you to watch F1 on Sky more?

A third of people watching Sky’s Formula 1 coverage believe that it is better than BBC’s Formula 1 coverage, however, almost 40 percent believe that the coverage Sky offer is worser than their rivals. That is according to an exclusive poll on The F1 Broadcasting Blog.

– 32.6 percent believe Sky coverage is better than BBC’s
– 39.1 percent believe Sky coverage is worser than BBC’s
– 52.9 percent do not have access to Sky Sports F1

The poll was conducted by visitors to this blog between Sunday 22nd July and Saturday 28th July following Sky’s move to air the German Grand Prix free to all Sky and Virgin Media customers as part of their free weekend. 48 people did Question 1, 49 people did Question 4 and 46 people did Question 5, so a relatively large sample size considering the blog has been going for just over three months. Question’s 2 and 3 were dependent on the responses to Question 1. Question 3 had the exact amount of respondents based on the answer to Question 1, however Question 2 had four more than those that answered Question 1. If you’re confused reading that, it should become clearer later.

The first three questions focussed on the platform choice and how they currently watch Sky Sports F1. Question 1 asked readers’ what platform they currently have, with a choice of “Sky”, “Virgin Media” or “Neither”. Unsurprisingly, Sky was the overwhelming winner here, with 54.2% of the 48 respondents having Sky. Virgin Media and the Neither choice were joint in second, both with 22.9% or 11 out of 48. So at the moment, we’ve found out least 22.9% of people cannot watch Sky Sports F1. That number is set to increase, when we see the responses to Question 2 and 3.

Question’s 2 and 3 were tailored specifically at Sky and Virgin Media, with Question 2 only for Sky customers and Question 3 only for Virgin Media customers. While the Virgin Media question had exactly 11 responses, the Sky question had 30 responses. The problem here is that number is 4 more than the 26 out of 48 people that claimed that had Sky at the end of Question 1. Discrepancy? Possibly. Given that the Virgin Media numbers are 100% accurate, I can only assume that four of the people that voted Neither on Question 1 voted on Question 2 when they shouldn’t have. I could randomly remove 4 votes from the poll, but I don’t particularly want to adjust the poll, so I shall take the results at face value, with the sample size of 30 people for the Sky question.

In question’s 2 and 3, 22 out of 30 people said that they already pay for Sky Sports F1, which worked out at 73.3%. This compares directly with only 27.3% (or 3 out of 11 responses) in the Virgin Media question who say they already pay for Sky Sports F1. The difference here is staggering. There is one reason for this in my view, and that is that with Sky you can get Sky Sports F1 via two methods. Either via the Sports pack or via the HD pack. With Virgin Media, however, you can only have the channel by subscribing to all four Sky Sports channels, hence in my view why there is such a large difference in the two numbers. If we merge the Question 2 and 3 responses, we see that 25 out of 41 people, or 61.0% of people with Sky or Virgin Media already pay for Sky Sports F1. If we then work out 61.0% of 37 people from Question 1, we get 22.6 people. Which, if we then look at the 48 total responses, we see that 47.1% of people that conducted the poll already pay for Sky Sports F1. Or, to put it another way, over half of people survey do not have access to Sky Sports F1. Considering this is an F1 blog, that is an extremely large number in my opinion and shows how the deal made last year even prices the most hardcore fans out of watching Formula 1.

For the German Grand Prix, though, with Sky’s free weekend, 77.1% of the people surveyed had access to Sky Sports F1, a difference of over 60%. Going back to Question 2 and 3 though, only 2 out of the 41 total responses said that they would upgrade, or 4.9%. In contrast, 14 out of 41 or over a third, said that they had no intention of upgrading having watched Sky’s German Grand Prix coverage.

Question’s 4 and 5 I will treat independently to Question’s 1, 2 and 3 above. Although I intended for it to be about the German Grand Prix coverage, it is possible that some voted looking at their overall coverage, which is fair enough. Question 4 asked for people’s views on Sky’s coverage, from “Excellent” to “Poor” to “Didn’t watch”. In Question 4, 7 out of the 49 responses said that did not watch Sky Sports F1’s coverage, or 14.3%. Stripping out those 7 responses for the other five parts of Question 4, and we see over 60 percent value Sky Sports F1’s coverage as either Excellent or Very Good. 28.6% voted Excellent, 33.3% voted Very Good out of the 42 responses. 8 out of the 42 (or 19.0%) said the coverage was Good, while 18.0% said the coverage was Fair or Poor.

Question 5 asked people what they thought of Sky’s coverage in comparison with BBC’s Formula 1 coverage. There were three options here “Better”, “No Difference” or “Poorer”. This had mixed results, with clearly a difference of opinion between voters. 15 out of the 46 voters, or 32.6%, believed that the coverage Sky offered was better than BBC’s coverage. 13 voters, or 28.3%, said that there was no difference between Sky’s and BBC’s coverage, while nearly 40% said that Sky’s coverage was poorer than BBC’s Formula 1 coverage. So while there is a high level of praise for Sky Sports F1’s coverage, as seen in Question 4, there is a substantial amount of people that believe the coverage is worser than that offered by BBC last year.

Below is the poll results, in full:

Question 1 – What platform do you have?
26 votes – 54.2% – Sky
11 votes – 22.9% – Virgin Media
11 votes – 22.9% – Neither
=> TOTAL = 48 votes

Question 2 – Sky customers only
22 votes – 73.3% – I have Sky and already pay for Sky Sports F1.
01 votes – 03.3% – I have Sky and am planning to upgrade to watch Sky Sports F1.
07 votes – 23.3% – I have Sky and am not planning to upgrade.
=> TOTAL = 30 votes

Question 3 – Virgin Media customers only
03 votes – 27.3% – I have Virgin Media and already pay for Sky Sports F1.
01 votes – 09.1% – I have Virgin Media and am planning to upgrade to watch Sky Sports F1.
07 votes – 63.6% – I have Virgin Media and am not planning to upgrade to watch Sky Sports F1.
=> TOTAL = 11 votes

Question 2 and 3 – Sky and Virgin Media customers combined
25 votes – 61.0% – I already pay for Sky Sports F1.
02 votes – 04.9% – I am planning to upgrade to watch Sky Sports F1.
14 votes – 34.1% – I am not planning to upgrade.
=> TOTAL = 41 votes

Question 1, 2 and 3 combined
22.6 votes – 47.1% – I already pay for Sky Sports F1.*
14.4 votes – 30.0% – I do not pay for Sky Sports F1.** [Sky and Virgin Media customers]
11.0 votes – 22.9% – I do not pay for Sky Sports F1. [Neither]
=> TOTAL = 48 votes
* worked out from 25 divided by 41 in Q2 and Q3 above multiplied by 37 from Q1 above
** worked out from 16 (2+14) divided by 41 in Q2 and Q3 above multiplied by 37 from Q1 above

Question 4 – How do you rate Sky’s German Grand Prix coverage?
12 votes – 28.6% – Excellent
14 votes – 33.3% – Very Good
08 votes – 19.0% – Good
05 votes – 11.9% – Fair
03 votes – 07.1% – Poor
07 votes – 14.3% – I have not watched Sky Sports F1 this weekend.
=> TOTAL = 49 votes

Question 5 – How do you rate Sky’s German Grand Prix coverage in comparison with BBC’s overall coverage?
15 votes – 32.6% – Sky Sports F1’s coverage was better than the BBC coverage that I have seen
13 votes – 28.3% – Sky Sports F1’s coverage was no better or worser than the BBC coverage that I have seen
18 votes – 39.1% – Sky Sports F1’s coverage was worser than the BBC coverage that I have seen
=> TOTAL = 46 votes

So, that is that. As well as the questions above, several people left comments on the blog, with a range of differing opinions. The comments open will be open on this blog as well, so I welcome your thoughts and opinions now that the poll results are out.