Scheduling: The 2014 Canadian Grand Prix

Formula 1 heads for its annual trip across the pond for the Canadian Grand Prix. The good news is that the race is live on both BBC One and Sky Sports F1, in my view it is always good to see a live race airing in primetime on free-to-air television. It’ll be interesting to see how the race coverage rates given that it is going up against Soccer Aid on ITV.

For the second year in a row, Natalie Pinkham will not be in Canada, this year she is presenting Sky’s coverage of the Hockey World Cup throughout the first half of June. I’m guessing both Rachel Brookes and Craig Slater will be out in Canada, Brookes presenting The F1 Show alongside Ted Kravitz. Kravitz will be back with the team after needing to go home from the Monaco Grand Prix weekend early. On a scheduling related note, I’m disappointed that BBC Three’s practice two coverage will not have more reaction and analysis, that being one of the highlights of last year’s coverage.

Whilst there is no GP2 and GP3 during the Canadian Grand Prix weekend, there is BTCC and the IndyCar Series to whet the appetite. Below is the full schedule:

Thursday 5th June
16:00 to 16:45 – F1: Driver Press Conference (Sky Sports F1)
21:30 to 22:00 – F1: Preview (BBC Radio 5 Live)

Friday 6th June
07:00 to 07:15 – F1: Gear Up for Canada (Sky Sports F1)
14:45 to 16:50 – F1: Practice 1 (Sky Sports F1)
14:55 to 16:30 – F1: Practice 1 (BBC Two)
18:45 to 21:00 – F1: Practice 2 (Sky Sports F1)
19:00 to 20:35 – F1: Practice 2 (BBC Three)
21:00 to 21:45 – F1: Team Press Conference (Sky Sports F1)
23:00 to 00:00 – The F1 Show (Sky Sports F1)

Saturday 7th June
14:45 to 16:15 – F1: Practice 3 (Sky Sports F1)
14:55 to 16:05 – F1: Practice 3 (BBC Two)
17:00 to 19:20 – F1: Qualifying (BBC One)
17:00 to 19:45 – F1: Qualifying (Sky Sports F1)

Sunday 8th June
01:30 to 04:00 – IndyCars: Firestone 600 (BT Sport 2)
– repeated on Sunday 8th June at 13:00
11:15 to 17:40 – BTCC: Oulton Park (ITV4)
17:30 to 22:15 – F1: Race (Sky Sports F1)
=> 17:30 – Track Parade
=> 18:00 – Race
=> 21:30 – Paddock Live
18:20 to 21:00 – F1: Race (BBC One)
21:00 to 22:00 – F1: Forum (BBC Red Button)
22:15 to 23:15 – GP Heroes: Clay Regazzoni (Sky Sports F1)

Wednesday 11th June
20:30 to 21:00 – Midweek Report (Sky Sports F1)

Classic F1 on Sky Sports F1
I believe this is the first time that Sky have shown the 1998 Canadian Grand Prix. I am disappointed that it is not the full race given that races post 1996 have tended to be the full race, so one assumes this is the original ITV highlights minus pre and post race analysis. EDIT on June 5th: Or not, its since disappeared from the schedule.

31/05 – 21:00 to 21:40 – 1982 Caesars Palace Grand Prix Highlights
01/06 – 21:00 to 23:30 – 2007 Chinese Grand Prix
02/06 – 21:00 to 23:00 – 2012 Canadian Grand Prix (Sky commentary)
03/06 – 21:00 to 00:00 – 2011 Canadian Grand Prix
04/06 – 21:00 to 23:15 – 2007 Canadian Grand Prix
05/06 – 21:00 to 23:30 – 2008 Canadian Grand Prix
06/06 – 22:00 to 23:00 – 1978 Season Review
07/06 – 19:45 to 20:45 – 1991 Canadian Grand Prix Highlights
09/06 – 21:00 to 21:45 – 1984 Brazilian Grand Prix Highlights
10/06 – 21:00 to 23:15 – 1998 Japanese Grand Prix
11/06 – 21:00 to 21:45 – 1983 United States Grand Prix West Highlights
12/06 – 21:00 to 23:00 – 2008 Brazilian Grand Prix
13/06 – 21:00 to 21:45 – 1985 Portuguese Grand Prix Highlights

As always, if there are any amendments, I’ll update this schedule.

Monaco Grand Prix hits 2014 high

The on-going rivalry at Mercedes between Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg helped the Monaco Grand Prix ratings in the UK, unofficial overnight figures show. After a bleak first four races, ratings began to pick up in Spain, signalling the start of a turnaround.

Race
Live coverage of the race itself, screened on Sky Sports F1 from 12:00 to 15:30, averaged 1.10m (12.1%). Finding an equivalent rating for last year is somewhat difficult due to the red flag period, but using a similar 12:00 to 16:15 slot brought an average of 889k (11.5%), so Sky was about 25 percent up year-on-year. BBC’s ratings were up 7 percent year-on-year. Highlights on BBC One from 17:05 averaged 3.33m (23.3%), up on the 3.11m (22%) recorded last year.

The combined figure of 4.44m is not only the highest number of the year so far, which in my view is a sign of how poorly the first four races did, but also the highest Monaco Grand Prix number since 2011. 2012 and 2013 averaged 3.80m and 4.00m respectively, whilst 2011 averaged a massive 4.99m. 2011 was helped somewhat by the red flag period which meant that programme sustained higher viewership numbers for longer. 2010 also slots in above 2014, which makes 2014 the third highest number in the past decade and a bit. On the front of it, its a very good number for the F1. It also makes for a potentially great Canadian Grand Prix number in two weeks time. The Track Parade from 11:30 averaged 268k (3.5%), whilst Paddock Live averaged 230k (2.2%) from 15:30.

Qualifying
The ratings trajectory for Qualifying was identical to the race. Sky’s live coverage from 12:00 to 15:00 averaged 578k (6.5%). That number is a record high for the channel where Qualifying is concerned. No doubt the Rosberg incident helped significantly, but I do admit to being surprised by that, mainly because they had an hour post-session reaction yet it rated higher than those programmes with only 35 minutes reaction. BBC’s highlights averaged 2.53m (16.8%). With both channels up on last year, the combined Qualifying figure of 3.11m is the highest for Monaco since 2011, and the second highest on record. From a ratings point of view, it was a very, very good weekend for Formula 1.

I’ll be interested to see if that was replicated across Europe. I think certain people in Formula 1 need to blame themselves for the poor start to the season ratings wise. When you are throwing negative hyperbole into the media about the sound, what do you expect? No one is going to be drawn towards a product that the main players are criticising, hence it really was no surprise that the first quartet failed to do well. For the moment, the media will continue to push the Hamilton and Rosberg angle, a good news story for Formula 1, as long as they can. In my opinion, the casual fans like personalities more than the technology. The Mercedes story is a great story for the media to push, and you can guarantee that Sky will be pushing it into Montreal. Whilst I may not like seeing ‘Hamilton overdrive’ at times, with ratings like the above, in some ways, I can’t say I particularly blame them.

Indianapolis 500
Over on BT Sport 2, live coverage of the Indianapolis 500 peaked with 36k (0.3%) at 18:50. The main programme from 16:30 to 21:00 averaged 23k (0.1%). The number is up comfortably on 2013, and at the lower end of the Sky Sports numbers. Since I’ve started this blog, a recurring question is always “why so low”, where the Indianapolis 500 is concerned. Sadly, the answer is, and always will be fairly simple for me to answer, as I noted two years ago.

The 2013 Monaco Grand Prix ratings report can be found here.

Scheduling: The 2014 Monaco Grand Prix

Formula 1 next weekend heads to the glitz and glamour of Monte Carlo for the Monaco Grand Prix! Always a fan-favourite, the race will air exclusively live on Sky Sports F1 with extended highlights on BBC One later that evening. If you wish to skip straight to the schedule, as usual, click the links below…

– Monday 19th May
– Wednesday 21st May
– Thursday 22nd May
– Friday 23rd May
– Saturday 24th May
– Sunday 25th May
– Wednesday 28th May
– Classic F1

Whilst Sky Sports F1’s pre-Monaco schedule is perhaps not as extensive as last year, the channel does have highlights of the Historic Grand Prix from Monaco (also on ITV4), which took place last weekend along with the usual selection of classic races. As is the usual Monaco tradition, Thursday is practice day. The only on-track action on Friday is GP2, which hopefully is less dramatic than last year’s start shambles! There are two editions of The F1 Show, now traditional for Sky at Monaco.

Like last year, I am surprised that BBC did not opt to take Monaco, however, their first two choices were Britain and the final race meaning that the third race was always going to be an American-timezone race, which turned out to be Canada. So Sky were always going to pick up Monaco. Over on BT Sport, and I’m happy to say that they are pushing the boat further out for live coverage of the Indianapolis 500. Preceding the event will be a Motorsport Tonight Special, as always fronted by Abi Griffiths with studio guests including motor sport commentator Ben Evans.

Fans therefore have a choice of watching the Monaco post-race stuff on Sky or the Indy 500 build-up on BT Sport, a good choice! During the race itself, the plan is for BT to take a split screen approach, with studio discussion during the ad-breaks in America. Again, this is great news and reminiscent of what Sky Sports did for years with the IndyCar coverage. One imagines Keith Huewen will turn up somewhere, hopefully he does being Sky’s presenter for many years. Below are all the scheduling details you need:

Monday 19th May
20:00 to 21:00 – Monaco Historic Grand Prix 2014 (Sky Sports F1)
– repeated on Tuesday 20th May at 20:00 on ITV4

Wednesday 21st May
14:00 to 14:45 – F1: Driver Press Conference (Sky Sports F1)
23:45 to 00:00 – F1: Gear up for Monaco (Sky Sports F1)

Thursday 22nd May
08:45 to 11:00 – F1: Practice 1 (Sky Sports F1)
08:55 to 10:35 – F1: Practice 1 (BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra)
11:00 to 11:50 – GP2: Practice (Sky Sports F1)
12:45 to 15:00 – F1: Practice 2 (Sky Sports F1)
15:10 to 16:00 – GP2: Qualifying (Sky Sports F1)
16:00 to 16:45 – F1: Team Press Conference (Sky Sports F1)
17:00 to 18:00 – The F1 Show (Sky Sports F1)
20:00 to 21:00 – F1: Preview (BBC Radio 5 Live)

Friday 23rd May
10:05 to 11:35 – GP2: Race 1 (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 24th May
09:45 to 11:15 – F1: Practice 3 (Sky Sports F1)
09:55 to 11:05 – F1: Practice 3 (BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra)
12:00 to 15:00 – F1: Qualifying (Sky Sports F1)
12:55 to 14:05 – F1: Qualifying (BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra)
15:00 to 16:00 – GP2: Race 2 (Sky Sports F1)
16:10 to 17:10 – GP Heroes: James Hunt (Sky Sports F1)
17:25 to 18:40 – F1: Qualifying Highlights (BBC One)
19:45 to 20:00 – Inside F1 (BBC News Channel)

Sunday 25th May
10:00 to 11:00 – Formula Renault 3.5 (BT Sport 1)
11:30 to 16:15 – F1: Race (Sky Sports F1)
=> 11:30 – Track Parade
=> 12:00 – Race
=> 15:30 – Paddock Live
13:00 to 15:00 – F1: Race (BBC Radio 5 Live)
15:30 to 16:30 – Motorsport Tonight Special (BT Sport 2)
16:30 to 21:00 – Indianapolis 500 (BT Sport 2)
17:05 to 18:35 – F1: Race Highlights (BBC One)

Wednesday 28th May
20:30 to 21:00 – Midweek Report (Sky Sports F1)

Classic F1 on Sky Sports F1
19/05 – 21:00 to 21:40 – 1982 Monaco Grand Prix Highlights
20/05 – 21:00 to 21:45 – 1988 Monaco Grand Prix Highlights
21/05 – 21:00 to 21:45 – 1989 Monaco Grand Prix Highlights
22/05 – 21:00 to 21:40 – 1993 Monaco Grand Prix Highlights
23/05 – 21:00 to 21:45 – 1984 Monaco Grand Prix Highlights
24/05 – 21:00 to 22:00 – 1992 Monaco Grand Prix Highlights
25/05 – 16:15 to 17:15 – 1977 Season Review
25/05 – 21:00 to 21:40 – 1983 Monaco Grand Prix Highlights
26/05 – 21:00 to 23:30 – 2011 Hungarian Grand Prix
27/05 – 21:00 to 22:00 – 1996 German Grand Prix Highlights
28/05 – 21:00 to 21:30 – 1990 Australian Grand Prix Highlights
29/05 – 21:00 to 23:45 – 1999 Malaysian Grand Prix
30/05 – 21:00 to 21:30 – 1987 Australian Grand Prix Highlights

As always if anything changes, I’ll update the above details.

Melanie Sykes’s BT Sport MotoGP status

To clear up the Melanie Sykes situation regarding her presenting BT Sport’s MotoGP coverage.

I e-mailed BT Sport’s press office yesterday asking about her status, and I quote: “Can you confirm whether Melanie Sykes has been dropped as BT Sport’s MotoGP presenter?” Their response to this blog was: “Mel isn’t presenting this weekend due to personal circumstances. Chris [Hollins] is presenting [yesterday] and Craig Doyle [today].”

After a few tweets, I read nothing into it, ‘personal circumstances’ being the key phrase. Which is why I didn’t blog about it, it has no place for discussion in the public domain. I don’t do tabloid reporting, it is not for me to start discussing what ‘personal circumstances’ may or may not mean. It has no place on this blog. The other key phrase was ‘this weekend’, in other words she will be back presenting for them.

This morning, Mat Oxley has tweeted saying “Anyone noticed that Melanie Sykes ain’t there in the BT Sport studio? Parting of the ways, apparently.” That changes things substantially. I also cannot remember a previous occasion where a presenter has decided to leave a quarter of the way through the season. BT did not elaborate on their comment yesterday when I put Oxley’s tweet to them.

I’ll update this post if I hear anything more.

Update on May 28th – Craig Doyle tweeted yesterday with an image to the Isle of Man TT schedule for the week. The image had some hand writing next to the side of Sunday stating ‘Mugello GP’, which clearly indicates that he is (at least as of that tweet) presenting BT’s coverage this Sunday. Whilst Jon in the comments picked it up, the tweet has since been deleted.

Update on May 30th – It’s official. Sykes and BT have parted company.

News round-up: Motorsport Tonight; BTCC on-board; Formula E

Some bits of news today (not of an April Fools nature!) and the past few days worth mentioning which I have summarised below.

The first bit of news is that BT Sport are debuting a new motor sport show. Entitled ‘Motorsport Tonight’, it will be presented by Abi Griffiths, and will première tonight at 20:00, filling the gaps when MotoGP Tonight is not airing. Tonight’s episode will feature John Watson and Guy Smith talking about the Blancpain GT Series amongst other segments. Whilst that is all great, at time of writing, we’re about two hours before the first broadcast.

Can anyone explain to me why this hasn’t been promoted? If it wasn’t for a tweet by Ben Constanduros this afternoon, I wouldn’t have known about it! It seems to be a common problem, and it sadly is not isolated to BT Sport: broadcasters debut new programmes and fail to promote them. Just yesterday I mentioned the IndyCar Series on ESPN (under the BT Sport banner), which falls under this category. Why air live and/or original programming if you’re not going to bother giving it promotion? I don’t know why it hasn’t been promoted, and to be honest I don’t understand the logic behind it whatsoever. It doesn’t matter how cheap it may be to show, the fact is you are showing it, therefore you should promote it. Otherwise, why bother? It frustrates me.

Whilst I praised Formula One Management (FOM) last week for the improvements to the official F1 App, one area that another series appears to have got the upper hand on is concerning the quality of the on-board footage. Several tweeters pointed out that the British Touring Car Championship on-board cameras from this past Sunday are now in high definition. I haven’t yet had time to watch the races yet from Sunday, but I approve in any improvements in broadcast quality, so this is definitely a good thing. As always with anything in broadcasting, there are people behind these improvements, so credit here goes to Videosys Broadcast for the design and Cloudbass Graphics for implementing it.

Lastly, this week’s TV Sports Markets magazine contains some quotes from Formula E’s CEO Alejandro Agag. The piece notes that the deal with ITV4, announced last month, is only for the first season, and that ITV Sport paid very little money to screen it. Agag says “We have other interested parties on the pay side, but we wanted it to be free to air. So we want to give priority to that but then be able to re-evaluate it.” The fact that ITV did not pay much money for it doesn’t surprise me. At the moment, the series has no value and is unproven. Only after the first season will we see how much value it is to ITV, although I don’t think we will see any races on ITV’s main channel, the last time any motor sport was aired live on ITV1, as it was back then, was Formula 1 in 2008. If Formula E does move to pay, it will sink, in my view irrespective of whether it is one, two or five years from now, unless it turns into a massive hit. Any pay TV deal needs a terrestrial counter part. We shall see what happens, but that is a long, long way into the future.