All posts relating to Sky Sports F1.
Sky have increased their Sky Sports F1 advertising ahead of the 2013 season. Like they did this time last year, the channel now features on many billboards around the country. On his travels this morning, The F1 Broadcasting Blog was lucky enough to spot this billboard:
With the schedules now out, a new raft of programming has appeared in the schedules leading up to the Malaysian Grand Prix. At the moment, here are the new things that are listed:
– Ted’s Notebook listed as a standalone 15-minute programme for Australia. First airing is on Saturday 17th March at 17:45 for the Qualifying Notebook and at 12:30 on the Sunday for the Race Notebook.
– Inside Track: The Full Interview is a 15-minute programme with an interview with someone from the race weekend. First airing is on Monday 18th March at 18:45.
– The Malaysian Grand Prix Classic F1 races are 1999, 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2007. These will air from Tuesday 19th March through to Thursday 21st March. As with the Australian Grand Prix Classic races, these will be repeated throughout the week and into the weekend.
– Martin’s Grid Walk and Natalie’s Track Parade. This is a bit odd, because there are two separate titles, but it is listed under one 15-minute programme. Either way, the second description indicates that Sky will be covering the Drivers’ Parade more in their pre-race build-ups.
– Gear Up for Malaysia. The programme title sounds generic in that it will be on for every race, but it first premières on Thursday 21st March at 13:30. This looks like all the Thursday interviews being combined into one programme.
And in terms of existing programming:
– Fast Track remains, but Weekend in Stills and Weekend in Words appear to have been dropped.
– The programme lengths for Practice, Qualifying and the Race are the same as last year
– Sky Sports will be covering every session of GP2 exclusively live again in 2013, as first revealed last December.
I won’t do this every week as the programming slate should remain the same, but this is the state of play at the moment. As always, things could change, programmes could disappear and re-appear. I’ll update the blog if that happens.
Update on March 8th – Weekend in Stills has now been added to the schedule, airing on Wednesday’s at 19:00. Gear Up for Malaysia is indeed a programme that will be on air every Thursday before each weekend as Gear Up for Australia has now been added – although both times are different to the 13:30 time I published above.
Update on March 15th – For some reason it appears Sky are not showing the 2001 Malaysian Grand Prix. The timings have changed, so 1999 and 2002 are on the Tuesday, 2003 and 2007 are on the Wednesday, with 2010 now on the Thursday evening.
The news that The F1 Broadcasting Blog broke ten days ago that Georgie Thompson had left the Sky Sports F1 team came as a surprise to many. For about a week after the blog post went up, news on the matter from other websites went quiet, until this past weekend when several websites began reporting on Thompson’s status. Some suggested that she was off to BT, whilst others believe that she will remain at Sky in a different capacity.
An interesting train of thought though comes from Phil Duncan’s blog on the Daily Mail website, where he suggests that Thompson was unhappy with the amount of air-time she was getting, and wanted a bigger role for 2013. It is a fascinating perspective on the matter, and suggests that Thompson wanted the main presenting role for 2013, thus ousting Simon Lazenby from the post. In 2012, Thompson presented The F1 Show on Friday’s along with the Sky Pad segments on Saturday and Sunday of a race weekend. You can see why travelling to the other side of the world to present about 90 minutes of television over three days would not appeal to her. Personally, I would consider Thompson before 2012 one of Sky’s main presenters, she was definitely one of the main faces on the Sky Sports News channel.
So what she considered a bigger role than Sky Sports News at the start of 2012 in fact turned out to be a smaller role. It probably also should be considered the viewership that The F1 Show was getting – less than 100,000 viewers a week – and Thompson may not have wanted to travel around the world to present to a ‘miniscle’ viewership when her previous role was based in London and getting double the figures. Let’s not forget that Sky expected 167,000 viewers per week for The F1 Show, what they got was only a tenth of that. That would have only added to the belief from Thompson that she was in a smaller role than previously and wanted a bigger role within Sky, if the Daily Mail are to be believed. I do wonder how long Thompson’s unhappiness with the Sky team has been ongoing for, at the latter end of last season Thompson was staying in London alongside Anthony Davidson during race weekends, which may suggest that something was up as far back as then.
Drop Simon Lazenby? Considering the reaction he got overall in 2012, it might have been the sensible option. I’m not sure I would have necessarily agreed with it, as I believed stability was crucial heading into 2013, but it appears at this point that Sky were left with little choice. Thompson in my opinion would have been able to steer the ship better than Lazenby, and clearly gelled in well with the Sky team as seen by her weekly presenting slots on The F1 Show. Some may say I am basing this on her appearance rather than presenting skills, personally I think Thompson is a better all-rounded presenter than Lazenby (and Natalie Pinkham for that matter). It is not as simple as just saying “we’ll drop Lazenby”, though. Especially when you consider that Lazenby and Sky Sports F1 executive producer Martin Turner worked together before 2012 regularly on Sky’s Rugby product. So Turner would almost certainly have stuck with Lazenby, leaving Thompson with the option of staying or going.
It will interesting if we do find out how much truth there is to the Daily Mail article. But if Sky have let Thompson go, then they have just left a huge open goal for BT Sport to fire straight into.
From BARB:
1 – 34k – The F1 Show (Friday, 21:30)
2 – 31k – The F1 Show (Sunday, 19:00)
3 – 25k – The F1 Show (Friday, 18:30)
4 – 21k – Inside Track: Lewis at Mercedes (Tuesday, 19:46)
5 – 16k – Legends (Saturday, 14:00)
6 – 13k – Day 3: Jerez Test (Monday, 23:00)
7 – 13k – Car Unveiling: Red Bull (Friday, 19:30)
8 – 10k – Paul di Resta: 2013 Preparations (Tuesday, 19:30)
9 – 8k – Ted’s Notebook: Jerez Day 3 (Monday, 23:16)
10 – 8k – Day 4: Jerez Test (Monday, 23:37)
Solid start to The F1 Show, when you consider that it was simulcast on Sky Sports 1 for the Friday, 18:30 airing. I still think Sky expect higher figures for The F1 Show, so it will be interesting to see how the figures progress as the season begins.
The testing season comes to a conclusion this week, beginning on Thursday, with the third and final test from Barcelona. But this time, for the first time ever, testing will be live. Viewers in both the UK and Italy will be able to watch the test via their respective Sky Sports F1 channels, whilst coverage will also be shown in 3D on Sky 3D. The 3D action will be a Sky production, whilst the 2D production will come from Formula One Management (FOM) cameras.
Simon Lazenby will front the coverage, with David Croft providing the commentary alongside a series of guests, whilst Ted Kravitz will be down in pit-lane – in essence, this is ‘Round 0’ for the Sky team. Rachel Brookes will be there for Sky Sports News, so she may pop up occasionally in the live coverage. As a general guide, all of the live action is in 3D, along with The F1 Show. The only live action that is not in 3D is the last 35 minutes on Sunday, as from 15:55, Sky 3D will be showing Tottenham vs Arsenal live.
On a side note, as FOM are producing the 2D feed, I wonder if Sky Sports have ‘exclusive’ access to that feed for United Kingdom viewers? If not, then it is always possible that the feed could turn up live on the BBC F1 website for each of the four days in the afternoon too. Personally I don’t think it will, but it is worth noting I feel. Another thing we don’t know is whether Sky’s coverage will have commercials, I suspect that like the practice sessions, there will be regular commercials at 15/20 minute intervals.
Over on The F1 Show, the show will have highlights of the Motor Sport Magazine Hall of Fame ceremony which takes place this Monday (25th February). Unlike with the first two test schedules, I’ve only labelled the first repeat for each of the day’s live action below as the live action is repeated a lot over the course of the four days, so if you miss the live testing, it is repeated multiple times.
Thursday 28th February
14:00 to 16:30 – Day 1 Live
18:30 to 21:00 – Day 1 Repeat (R)
21:00 to 21:35 – Day 1 Highlights
– 15-minute round-up at 21:00
– Ted’s Notebook at 21:15
Friday 1st March
14:00 to 16:30 – Day 2 Live
16:30 to 17:30 – The F1 Show
17:30 to 20:00 – Day 2 Repeat (R)
21:00 to 21:15 – Day 2 Round-Up
Saturday 2nd March
14:00 to 16:30 – Day 3 Live
18:30 to 21:00 – Day 3 Repeat (R)
21:00 to 21:35 – Day 3 Highlights
– 15-minute round-up at 21:00
– Ted’s Notebook at 21:15
Sunday 3rd March
14:00 to 16:30 – Day 4 Live
18:30 to 21:00 – Day 4 Repeat (R)
21:00 to 21:35 – Day 4 Highlights
– 15-minute round-up at 21:00
– Ted’s Notebook at 21:15
Times above are in BST. Italian readers, Sky Sport F1 will be live on air at the same times with their own presentation.
As always, if there are any schedule amendments, I will update this blog.
Correction – Contrary to what I have written above, Sky are in fact producing both the 2D and 3D feeds. The 3D cameras can output in both 2D and 3D, so everything live next week will be a Sky production.
Update on February 25th – Marc Priestley confirmed as one of the guests alongside David Croft in the commentary box this weekend.
Motorsport Broadcasting 