From India, F1 heads to Abu Dhabi for round 18 of 20 in the 2012 Formula One season. Both BBC and Sky are live for this one, so full coverage is available from both sides.
On 5 Live F1, James Allen and Jaime Alguersuari are not with them this weekend, so it is John Watson alongside Jonathan Legard for the weekend. As is normal during live BBC TV weekends, however, Ben Edwards will be in the box too for practice 1, which I believe will be the first time since their A1 Grand Prix days that Edwards and Watson are commentating together!
Thursday 1st November
11:00 to 11:45 – F1: Driver Press Conference (Sky Sports F1)
19:30 to 20:00 – Britain’s Next F1 Star (4/6) (Sky Sports F1)
Friday 2nd November
08:45 to 10:50 – F1: Practice 1 (Sky Sports F1)
08:55 to 10:35 – F1: Practice 1 (BBC Red Button)
12:45 to 15:00 – F1: Practice 2 (Sky Sports F1)
12:55 to 14:35 – F1: Practice 2 (BBC Red Button)
15:00 to 15:45 – F1: Team Press Conference (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 3rd November
09:45 to 11:10 – F1: Practice 3 (Sky Sports F1)
09:55 to 11:05 – F1: Practice 3 (BBC Red Button)
12:00 to 14:45 – F1: Qualifying (Sky Sports F1)
12:10 to 14:15 – F1: Qualifying (BBC One)
18:45 to 19:00 – Inside F1 (BBC News Channel)
Sunday 4th November
11:30 to 16:15 – F1: Race (Sky Sports F1)
12:10 to 15:15 – F1: Race (BBC One)
15:15 to 16:15 – F1: Forum (BBC Red Button)
As always, if anything changes I shall update this blog if necessary.
Sixteen races gone. And only four remain, starting at the Buddh International Circuit for the Indian Grand Prix. From a broadcasting perspective, the race is somewhat unique in that it is the only race in the calendar to start at half past the hour. Bahrain used to, as did Japan, but both of them races now start on the hour, with India in its second year the only one to have a different start time.
Pedantry aside, Sky Sports F1 are live with every session as usual, while BBC have afternoon highlights. As is the norm now, expect Eddie Jordan to be away, Jordan only having appeared on the Australian and Italian highlight weekends. Over on Sky, Anthony Davidson is alongside Georgie Thompson back in London on the Sky Pad and Damon Hill back with them after a two race absence. For their news team, Craig Slater is in for the next three rounds with Rachel Brookes back for the season finale in Brazil.
The full schedules, including the MotoGP from Phillip Island, is below. Interesting to note that the race day highlights programme length on BBC One is only 100 minutes long, suggesting that the race may only be getting a 50 minute race edit instead of the usual 70 minute race edit for the Asian based races. I’ve removed the forum as well, because, despite the claims made before the season started, more often than not the forum has not turned up on the website, BBC instead opting for a longer post-race show on BBC One for the highlights shows.
Thursday 25th October
10:30 to 11:15 – F1: Driver Press Conference (Sky Sports F1)
19:30 to 20:00 – Britain’s Next F1 Star (3/6) (Sky Sports F1)
Friday 26th October
05:15 to 07:20 – F1: Practice 1 (Sky Sports F1) 05:25 to 07:05 – F1: Practice 1 (BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra)
09:15 to 11:30 – F1: Practice 2 (Sky Sports F1) 09:25 to 11:05 – F1: Practice 2 (BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra)
11:30 to 12:15 – F1: Team Press Conference (Sky Sports F1)
13:30 to 14:30 – The F1 Show (Sky Sports F1)
18:45 to 19:00 – Inside F1 (BBC News Channel)
Saturday 27th October
06:15 to 07:40 – F1: Practice 3 (Sky Sports F1) 06:25 to 07:35 – F1: Practice 3 (BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra)
08:30 to 11:15 – F1: Qualifying (Sky Sports F1) 09:25 to 10:35 – F1: Qualifying (BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra)
13:00 to 14:15 – F1: Qualifying (BBC One)
18:45 to 19:00 – Inside F1 (BBC News Channel)
NOTE: Clocks go back one hour, with the change from British Summer Time to Greenwich Mean Time. The times below are GMT…
Sunday 28th October
04:30 to 06:00 – MotoGP: Phillip Island (BBC Two)
08:00 to 12:45 – F1: Race (Sky Sports F1) 09:25 to 11:30 – F1: Race (BBC Radio 5 Live)
14:05 to 15:45 – F1: Race (BBC One)
As always, if anything changes I shall update this blog if necessary.
The Korean Grand Prix yesterday on BBC One and Sky Sports F1 had a 15-minute peak of 2.52 million viewers, overnight viewing figures show. Between 08:30 and 08:45, an average of 2.11 million viewers were watching on BBC One, with a further 407,000 viewers watching on Sky Sports F1. Whilst the peak, on paper looks good it is marginally down on 2010’s rain-affected race and nearly a million viewers down on the 3.39 million peak recorded at 08:30 last year.
Between 06:00 and 09:15, 1.35 million watched Formula 1 on BBC One and 274,000 watched on Sky Sports F1. I should note Sky’s programme average will be lower as the 274,000 excludes the first half an hour and the last 75 minutes. Here is a comparison between the three years:
2010 – 3.39 million (1.39 million live and 2.00 million repeat – live peak of 2.6 million at 09:00)
2011 – 4.09 million (2.17 million live and 1.92 million repeat – live peak of 3.4 million at 08:30)
2012 – 3.18 million (1.62 million live [see above] and 1.56 million repeat on BBC One – live combined peak of 2.5 million at 08:30)
Although it is a record low, using it in the title as a headline is a useless statistic in my opinion given that the event has only been running for three years, so for me even though the statement is true, it is not a headline figure. With only three sets of data available, there is little point of comparing with 2010 and 2011, in my opinion.
One thing I do want to look at though is the respective BBC and Sky breakdowns from yesterday, because it makes for interesting reading.
A 15-minute breakdown of the Korean Grand Prix 2012 viewing figures on BBC One and Sky Sports F1.
The first thing that caught my eye was the different trajectory for BBC One and Sky Sports F1 after 07:00. BBC’s viewership increases constantly until the peak at 08:30, partly thanks to people waking up while the race is progressing and turning straight to BBC One, whilst Sky Sports F1’s viewership actually goes slightly down. Which I do find odd. It’s not the first time I’ve seen that happen. Considering Sky Sports F1 is a dedicated channel, the fact that the audience declined slightly after the race started is worrying.
It also, for me, shows why Formula 1 has to stay on terrestrial television in some form, because sporting events catch the interest and can rise to a big peak on terrestrial, which very rarely happens on multichannel television. It looks like no one tuning in bothers to tune to Sky Sports F1 during the race. Between 07:00 and 07:15, 416,000 viewers were watching Sky Sports F1. Between 08:30 and 08:45, 406,000 viewers were watching the channel, a 10,000 viewer drop. BBC One in the same period increased 700,000 viewers.
Another thing is that under 100,000 viewers were watching Sky Sports F1 between 06:00 and 06:30. That, and all the figures above, include viewers that timeshifted that exact block of programming up until 02:00 on Monday morning (which may also explain why BBC One suddenly jumped 700,000 at 07:00, which may be a few hundred thousand watching it later but not bothering with the build-up). A final graph, this time, the percentage difference:
A percentage comparison between BBC One and Sky Sports F1 during the Korean Grand Prix broadcast. (for some reason the quality of the image appears to be blurry, clicking on the image will solve that)
The smallest percentage gap between the two was in the 15-minutes from 07:00 when 77.2 percent were watching BBC One and the other 22.8 percent were watching Sky Sports F1. The gap grew again, however, by 08:00 it was 82.7 percent vs 17.3 percent and by 08:45 it was 88.3 percent versus 11.7 percent. For a early morning race, I would have expected the gap to be closer between the two, I would have expected the gap to be closer, but it turns out that has not been the case.
Thanks to gslam2 for kindly posting the 2012 breakdown on Digital Spy Forums.
Or alternatively, none of the above takes place and you miss the alarm. It doesn’t go off. You don’t go downstairs. – October 3rd, 2012 as I preview the Japanese Grand Prix
Ten days later, it turns out that did happen. The alarm, for the Korean Grand Prix Qualifying session was on for 04:45. I went to bed last night at 22:15 last night. The alarm came and went, and I slept straight through it. As I said in the Japanese Grand Prix blog, I have been doing this “getting up early business” for many years with Formula 1 purely because I love it and there is nothing better than seeing Formula 1 live. I ended up waking up at 06:55. So not only did I miss the build-up’s, but I also missed the session itself, the first time that has happened. Near misses have happened before, in 2008, I missed the opening laps of the Japanese Grand Prix and I think a few years ago I missed the majority of BBC’s build-up for the Chinese Grand Prix.
So it was 06:55, pretty quickly it became apparent that I had missed the session, probably as a result of not having a lie-in since September 30th due to University and Formula 1. I was wondering then when to watch. Ten years ago it would be a simple answer, either just wait until the ITV1 re-run or read the results on Ceefax via P360. Which I did back then as I never really got up for Qualifying early back then. I wanted to avoid spoilers, nowadays with the amount of technologies available, I find avoiding spoilers near impossible and very rarely do I, in 2012, watch Formula 1 “as live” seven hours later. It does not appeal to me.
The BBC F1 re-run at 13:00? That means killing the morning hours and trying to avoid just about every website I visit, including AUTOSPORT, BBC, Sky, Facebook and Twitter. Hmmm. This is 2012, and that is not happening. The Sky Sports F1 re-run at 09:45? Possibly. Go back to sleep for a few hours and then get up, ready and watch it? Realistic. But then I thought and said to myself “Doesn’t BBC iPlayer have a feature where you can rewind live television by two hours?” I don’t think I’ve leapt out of bed faster in recent times. Turned on the PC, went direct to iPlayer, loaded up the live BBC One page, put a book over the screen so I did not have the result spoiled and then scrolled from about 07:05 to 05:05, ie. a full two hours.
Genius. A frustrating situation turned very quickly a full 180 degrees. I was watching Qualifying as soon as I woke up, watched the entire BBC programme (bar the first 10 minutes) and finished it about 09:20. But what if this was a Sky exclusive weekend? Sky Go does not have that capability and in my opinion is a much inferior product to that of iPlayer. If this was last weekend, I would not have been able to get up, rewind Sky Go on the PC and watch it because it does not have the facility. I guess I was just… lucky that I slept through the alarm on a BBC live weekend.
And seeing as I have got to this point, I may as well comment on the programme itself. There was not too many VT’s in the build-up, it was mainly a ‘talk and chalk’ style I thought. But there is no real need in my opinion to stack all the VT’s into a programme airing at 05:00. Save the award winning VT pieces for a day when there is a higher audience watching. The ‘talk and chalk’ style worked, I liked it. Jake Humphrey, David Coulthard and Eddie Jordan looked at the bottom three teams fortunes and their potential line-ups for 2013 before being joined at Gary Anderson to look at the technical developments for the top half of the field. I really enjoyed Anderson joining them for 15 minutes, because it is not often you see that, and it is not often you get the technical developments analysed of the top four teams in a row. At times it was slightly difficult to see what the focus was on, but that may be down to the iPlayer stream rather than not looking at the right thing.
The session itself I thought was well directed by Formula One Management, and the commentary on the whole was good, although I did think Coulthard and Ben Edwards were very late on picking up that Lewis Hamilton could have been eliminated from Q1, and at the same point did not really spot that Bruno Senna had aborted his last effort. But apart from that, they were fine. Post-Qualifying was enjoyable as well, Jordan trying to chase Romain Grosjean and Anderson’s pit-stop strategies was interesting, I shall be looking to see if it is as accurate as his perfect prediction at the Q3 time!
So overall, yeah, I was a bit annoyed at sleeping through the alarm, but in the end I watched Qualifying when I got up, avoided spoilers and had it all done by 09:35. And that includes this blog. A win, win for me, then.
The Japanese Grand Prix brought poor viewership numbers this past Sunday to BBC One, with the combined average expected to be the lowest since 2008, or potentially as far back as 2004.
BBC One’s re-run airing of the race from 14:05 to 16:05 had an average of 2.36 million viewers, a 20.9% share, peaking with 2.79 million viewers at 15:30. Without even considering the positive effect that the BBC and Sky deal should have on the BBC One highlights shows for Asian races, the fact that it is only slightly up on last year’s 2.3 million viewers, and 600k up on the 1.8 million viewers for 2010 can only be described as poor. Going further back, the 2008 daytime re-run on ITV1 had 2.36 million viewers, identical to this past Sunday, whilst the 2009 highlights show brought 2.25 million viewers on BBC One.
So yesterday’s highlights show did not fair significantly better than in previous years despite a lot less people no doubt watching the live airing. Last year’s live broadcast airing from 06:00 had 2.1 million viewers, and Sky Sports F1 had less than a quarter of that. Here is a breakdown on previous years for the Japanese Grand Prix:
2004 – 2.86 million (1.32 million + 1.54 million)
2005 – 3.32 million (1.32 million + 2.00 million)
2006 – 3.49 million (1.19 million + 2.30 million)
2007 – 3.04 million (729k + 2.31 million)*
2008 – 3.14 million (785k + 2.36 million)*
2009 – 3.61 million (1.36 million + 2.24 million)
2010 – 3.70 million (1.90 million + 1.80 million)
2011 – 4.40 million (2.10 million + 2.13 million)
* note – the drop for 2007 and 2008 can be attributed to the change of track from Suzuka to Fuji meaning that the race started 90 minutes earlier in the UK
The reason why the live airings have skyrocketed in the last two years is because of more people recording the live airing and watching it later in the day, anyone that watches a programme before 02:00 will be counted in that days overnights, so do not assume that 500,000 more people got up early in 2010 compared with 2009, it just means that more people watched the “live” airing of the Japanese Grand Prix (a little bit more on the data that I use here).
In any case, the 2.36 million for BBC for this past Sunday is not a “out of the ordinary” number. Yes it is joint top alongside 2008, but arguably it should be higher when you consider that Sky Sports F1 will have lower numbers. None of Sky Sports F1’s race airings made ITV Media’s top 10, meaning each individual airing had under 559,000 viewers.
I don’t like to include Sky’s first repeat number, in Sunday’s case the 11:30 because given the money people have forked out to pay for the channel I would like to think that they would make the effort to watch it live! In any case, even if the live airing (+ re-run airing if you wish to) had 670,000 viewers, it would be the lowest figure since 2004. Which would be quite frankly a horrific statistic. If I do see any Sky Sports F1 numbers, I shall add them, but expect “low” rather than “high”.
Onto Qualifying, the BBC highlights show had 1.64 million viewers, down on the 1.97 million viewers for last year’s re-run. So not pretty figures all around, really.
Motorsport Broadcasting 