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.

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.

Hamilton’s win not as big as “multi 21” but remains solid

With no race drama in another “multi 21” controversy up front to draw in viewers, nor plumes of snow in the United Kingdom, the Malaysian Grand Prix dropped off year-on-year, but didn’t disgrace itself.

Race
Yesterday’s live coverage on BBC One from 08:00 to 11:15 averaged 2.45m (32.7%) with Sky Sports F1’s race show, also from 08:00 bringing 574k (7.7%) to the channel. Highlights on BBC One added 1.07m (12.5%), according to unofficial overnight viewing figures, bringing the combined average to 4.09m viewers. In 2013, the race averaged 4.01m (27.1%) for the highlights show on BBC One and 908k (13.0%) from 07:00 to 10:30 on Sky Sports F1. With a combined figure of 4.92m, it means a drop of over 20 percent. However, given the controversy that surrounded last years’ race, and the British weather doing what it does best, this shouldn’t be too surprising. Does that make it a bad rating? I don’t think so, as last year was clearly a set of freak circumstances all coming together.

In 2012, perhaps a better reflection, the race averaged 2.73m (27.9%) on BBC One from 14:45 to 16:40 and about 1.03m (14.0%) on Sky Sports F1. An exact slot comparison is difficult for 2012 as the race was red flagged and overran. This brings us to a combined average of 3.76m in 2012, so 2014 is up on that. It should be noted that yesterday’s figure is down on the BBC exclusive years: 2009, 2010 and 2011. So whilst, yes its a solid rating and not a disaster, it is definitely by no means great.

Elsewhere, live coverage of the opening round of the 2014 British Touring Car Championship averaged a disappointing 192k (2.1%) on ITV4 (including +1) from 10:30 to 18:00, peaking with 278k (3.4%) at 14:20. By the championship’s standards, that is an unusually low rating, and is the lowest season opener since at least 2010. I don’t know the reasoning behind it, but in the past, BTCC races have tended to peak upwards of half a million viewers so that strikes me as low. The F1 highlights could have knocked a few hundred thousand off it, however it is a seven and a half hour show where viewers traditionally dip ‘in’ for the main BTCC races, except that clearly didn’t happen yesterday. Over on ESPN, IndyCar averaged 5k (0.01%). BT Sport haven’t promoted IndyCar once this year, so this should come as no surprise. In their view, it is simply there to fill the hours.

Qualifying
Saturday’s Qualifying session brought in the second largest ever audience for a Malaysian Qualifying session, only behind 2013, unofficial overnight viewing figures show. Extended live coverage on BBC One from 07:00 to 10:10 averaged a respectable 1.41m (24.0%). I use the word ‘respectable’ as it is not that much better than BBC One’s usual Saturday morning line-up, but it is still good for what it is. Sky Sports F1’s coverage averaged approximately 282k (4.8%), with BBC One’s afternoon highlights from 13:15 to 15:30 adding a further 850k (11.0%).

This brings the combined figure to 2.55m viewers, a far cry from the 3.17m combined average in 2013 – split 336k for Sky and 2.83m for BBC, but above every other year. In the grand scheme of things, it has to be said that 2013 is an anomaly due to the weather: the preceding years from 2009 to 2012 were all in the ~2.2m region.

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

MotoGP viewership drops without FTA live coverage

A new era in the broadcasting scene began for MotoGP this past weekend on BT Sport and ITV4, with diminishing returns, as the sport found itself being watched by less people than the previous BBC and Eurosport deal, unofficial overnight viewing figures show. In 2013, the race was screened exclusively live on BBC Two from 19:30 to 21:00, the race starting an hour later in 2013 compared with this season. The programme averaged 1.67m (6.9%), peaking with 2.12m (8.4%) at 20:40.

Compare that to last weekend. BT Sport’s programme, from 15:00 to 20:30, averaged 126k (0.8%). When comparing with the equivalent BBC slot for the MotoGP race last year, from 18:30 to 20:00, that averaged 187k (0.8%), peaking with 230k (1.1%) at 19:05. ITV4’s hour long highlights show last night average 492k (2.2%), peaking with 603k (2.6%) according to unofficial overnight viewing figures, including +1. This brings us to a combined average of 679k, and a combined peak of 833k. For both years, viewing excludes anyone who viewed via the internet, so all viewing via the BT Sport app or their website is excluded, whilst the same also applies for anyone who viewed MotoGP in 2013 through BBC iPlayer. I would hazard a bet that the latter figures would be higher than the former, meaning that the overall effect is negligible.

So, are the figures any good? I said previously that if BT’s average, for the MotoGP part, was around 200k to 250k, then that would be acceptable (250k being their rumoured expectation), with ITV4’s highlights adding a further 400k. That would bring a combined figure in the 600k region, with a peak realistically near to 1 million. I’d say the figures are positive, but also a tale of two halves. Given the amount of promotion that they have done, BT’s figures are lower than I expected. On the other hand, ITV’s highlights deal came with little fan-fare and no promotion in comparison to BT. Yet, despite being on 24 hours after the original race, it brought nearly half a million viewers. BT Sport will claim to increase the sports popularity, except the viewing figures show completely the opposite. In many ways, the ITV4 viewership number has ‘saved face’. It is one of ITV4’s highest ratings of the year, only behind football and numerous repeats of Storage Wars.

I think you could run around this subject a lot, but the fact is that, thanks to Dorna taking the money and not the viewers, the viewership has halved. Julian Ryder said on Twitter last month that without BT Sport’s money, some teams would not have been on the MotoGP grid this year. I have no reason not to believe Ryder, and trust what he is saying. But instead of going to pay TV, surely MotoGP should have had a look at itself and say how do we make ourselves marketable to the wider public in the UK? If it wasn’t for the ITV4 deal (which Dorna themselves did not promote on the MotoGP website, with a press release, like they did twice for BT Sport), then MotoGP would have been turned into a niche sport.

So, will the declines continue? I think they will, be not to the extent we seen in Qatar. If ITV4’s highlights stays around half a million viewers, with BT Sport adding say 150k for the European races, then it won’t be a million miles away from BBC’s ratings. I think Dorna would have perhaps been hoping for a higher BT figure and a lower ITV4 figure. The gap, and how the viewing changes over the season will definitely be one to watch. If I’m a betting man, I’d say MotoGP will lose viewers this year, but thanks to the ITV4 deal, this has definitely been a better deal for Dorna than many people may have expected…

Scheduling: The 2014 Malaysian Grand Prix

Whether it is noise, fuel or just, you know, the racing that gets you talking, there is plenty on the agenda as Formula 1 heads to Sepang for the Malaysian Grand Prix. The Malaysian circuit is highly regarded by Formula 1 fans, this year is its 15th anniversary on the calendar having joined in 1999. The race will be the first of nine races to be screened live on both the BBC and Sky Sports F1 this season. Before getting into the main details, the most important point for all of those in the UK is that the clocks go forward one hour in the early hours of Sunday morning. So, just be wary of that if you plan to put your alarm on. If you want to jump to the schedule, click on the links below…

– Thursday 27th March
– Friday 28th March
– Saturday 29th March
– Sunday 30th March
– Wednesday 2nd April
– Classic F1

Based on comments in Australia, I don’t believe that Eddie Jordan will be with the BBC team in Malaysia, so expect to see Allan McNish alongside Suzi Perry and David Coulthard for the build-up and post-race reaction. Over on Sky Sports F1, ahead of ‘Senna Week’ at the end of April to mark the 20th anniversary of Ayrton’s death, Bruno Senna will be making his first appearance with the team in Malaysia. I did at the time say that Bruno would be a good addition to the Sky team, nothing more, nothing less. Whilst we don’t have concrete details, I think it is fair to assume that he will be playing a significant part in the Senna programming coming up, which was probably the main reason for Sky getting him on-board in the first place.

The F1 Show from Malaysia will be a Williams special, which should be good. I assume the entire show will be from location in Malaysia, but it wouldn’t surprise me if some of it was coming from the studio in London if they are going to showcase some of the old Williams cars. As I have done in the past, again in 2014 I will include non-F1 content of my choice, in other words, if I plan to watch said motor sport, I’ll add it below. This week, the IndyCar Series is back on BT Sport, albeit on ESPN, whilst the BTCC returns to ITV4, with Steve Rider fronting the coverage and David Addison and Tim Harvey in the commentary box.

Thursday 27th March
07:00 to 07:45 – F1: Driver Press Conference (Sky Sports F1)
20:30 to 21:00 – F1: Preview (BBC Radio 5 Live)
20:45 to 21:00 – F1: Gear Up for Malaysia (Sky Sports F1)

Friday 28th March
01:45 to 03:50 – F1: Practice 1 (Sky Sports F1)
01:55 to 03:35 – F1: Practice 1 (BBC Two)
05:45 to 08:00 – F1: Practice 2 (Sky Sports F1)
05:55 to 07:35 – F1: Practice 2 (BBC Two)
08:00 to 08:45 – F1: Team Press Conference (Sky Sports F1)
10:00 to 11:00 – The F1 Show: Williams Special (Sky Sports F1)
18:45 to 19:00 – Inside F1 (BBC News Channel)

Saturday 29th March
04:45 to 06:15 – F1: Practice 3 (Sky Sports F1)
04:55 to 06:05 – F1: Practice 3 (BBC Two)
07:00 to 09:30 – F1: Qualifying (BBC One)
07:00 to 09:45 – F1: Qualifying (Sky Sports F1)
13:15 to 15:30 – F1: Qualifying Replay (BBC One)
18:45 to 19:00 – Inside F1 (BBC News Channel)

NOTE: Clocks go forward one hour, with the change from Greenwich Mean Time to British Summer Time. The times below are BST…

Sunday 30th March
07:30 to 12:15 – F1: Race (Sky Sports F1)
=> 07:30 – Track Parade
=> 08:00 – Race
=> 11:30 – Paddock Live
08:00 to 11:15 – F1: Race (BBC One)
10:30 to 18:00 – BTCC: Brands Hatch (ITV4)
11:15 to 12:15 – F1: Forum (BBC Red Button)
13:45 to 15:45 – F1: Race Replay (BBC One)
20:00 to 23:00 – IndyCars: St Petersburg (ESPN)

Wednesday 2nd April
20:30 to 21:00 – Midweek Report (Sky Sports F1)

Classic F1 on Sky Sports F1
An addition to the Sky Sports F1 line-up starting this week is some classic season reviews from the 1970s coming out of the Brunswick Films archive, which is really good as Sky have not shown much content from that era, their ‘GP Uncovered’ strand has tended to focus on the 1950s and 1960s, whereas of course material owned by FOM is 1980s onwards. 2001 Malaysia was included in the provisional schedule, but again failed to make the final cut, which suggests that the copy FOM has is incomplete, or without UK commentary.

27/03 – 21:00 to 23:45 – 1999 Malaysian Grand Prix
28/03 – 21:00 to 23:00 – 2002 Malaysian Grand Prix
29/03 – 09:45 to 10:45 – 1970 Season Review
29/03 – 21:00 to 23:30 – 2007 Malaysian Grand Prix
30/03 – 12:15 to 13:15 – 1971 Season Review
30/03 – 21:00 to 23:30 – 2010 Malaysian Grand Prix
31/03 – 21:00 to 21:35 – 1982 Austrian Grand Prix Highlights
01/04 – 21:00 to 23:00 – 2012 Canadian Grand Prix (Sky commentary)
02/04 – 21:00 to 00:00 – 2012 Singapore Grand Prix (Sky commentary)

As always, if anything changes I shall update this blog if necessary.