Why the Indianapolis 500 gets little news coverage in the UK

I’ve seen several people and journalists say on Twitter “why does the Indy 500 not get much coverage” in the UK, despite a Scottish winner? I admit, it’s a valid question. The answer is, unfortunately, that people are not really interested in this country about the Indianapolis 500 or American motor sports as a whole. Here’s the Indy 500 overnight viewership for this year and the past two years:

2010 – 14,000 viewers (17:30 to 22:00 – peaked with 27,000 at 21:10)
2011 – 39,000 viewers (16:30 to 21:00 – peaked with 65,000 at 20:10)

And this past Sunday on Sky Sports 4 averaged 28,000 viewers between 16:30 and 21:00, peaking with 53,000 at 17:20, interestingly at the start of the race rather than the end of the race.

One would have to ask whether the above 2012 rating would have been higher had it have been on Sky Sports F1. Unquestionably, yes, given the reasons I outlined here about the similar audience profiles. In comparison, an unadvertised IndyCar Series race live on Sky Sports F1 on April 29th had 16,000 viewers (moved from Sky Sports 4 at late notice).

One thing that bemused me was how they failed to promote it at the end of the Monaco Grand Prix programme, yet, if you were watching Sky Sports 4 for the Indy 500 you would have been bombarded with “the new home of F1 in HD” trailers. I mean, surely the majority of people watching Sky Sports 4 would have previously been watching the Monaco Grand Prix? It shall be interesting to see how the repeat of the Indianapolis 500 does on Sky Sports F1 tomorrow at 20:00, we should find out a week on Monday in the official BARB update.

I’m sure over the next months I’ll probably do a blog on MotoGP ratings, BTCC ratings and the such like, but in general, the situation in the UK in terms of ratings is…

1) Formula 1 (BBC and Sky)
2) MotoGP (BBC and Eurosport)
3) BTCC (ITV)

All of the rest is under 200k, or even under 100k the majority of the time. Things like GP2, WTCC and IndyCars are nearly always under 100k. Back to the original point though, the result of the Indy 500 does not get mentioned in news bulletins because it is something of minority interest in the UK, as the ratings show.

Comments and thoughts, as always, are welcome.

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

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.

Changes to the BBC line-up for the Summer

There will two significant changes to the BBC line-up for the Summer as the Formula 1 season approaches its halfway point. On the TV side of things, Jake Humphrey will only be ‘travelling’ to one of the five Summer races, that being the British Grand Prix. Humphrey will not be at Canada or Europe due to his Euro 2012 presenting duties, while he will not be attending Germany or Hungary due to his presenting duties at the London 2012 Olympic Games.

Lee McKenzie will be stepping up from her pit lane duties to present from these four races. No one will be joining the team for these four races, so they will be operating with one less member for these races, although three of them are in the form of highlights so it is not a major depletion.

On the radio side of things, James Allen will not be covering the Canadian or European Grand Prix’s, with Jonathan Legard commentating alongside Jaime Alguersuari for those particular races. Allen will also be missing several races in the second half of the season from Belgium, although the specific races have not yet been confirmed.

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…