Sky Sports F1 – Top 10 ratings (week ending 17th June, 2012)

From BARB:

1 – 47k – The F1 Show (Friday, 20:00)
2 – 25k – The F1 Show (Friday, 22:31)
3 – 20k – Legends (Friday, 19:00)
4 – 18k – Canadian Grand Prix Highlights (Monday, 16:30)
5 – 17k – Canadian Grand Prix Replay (Monday, 19:00)
6 – 16k – 2009 Season Review: Part 3 (Sunday, 21:00)
7 – 12k – 2009 Season Review: Part 2 (Saturday, 21:01)
8 – 11k – Bahrain Grand Prix Highlights (Saturday, 13:32)
9 – 8k – Fast Track (Tuesday, 19:31)
10 – 8k – Canadian Grand Prix Highlights (Tuesday, 21:02)

The F1 Show is unsurprisingly down from a high of 86,000 two weeks ago, but to be honest, I’m surprised it held up as well as it did here against England vs Sweden.

The rest of the schedule did normal figures, if anything slightly higher for some reason. The channel reach, though, just managed to avoid the record low it recorded two weeks ago, with a reach of 564,000 viewers compared with 560,000 viewers a fortnight ago.

Sky Sports F1 to screen Classic British Grand Prix’s [UPDATED]

Sky Sports F1 starting next Friday are to screen Grand Prix classics, I can confirm. Schedules on the Sky Sports website are updating, and reveal the following for next weekend:

11th GP D’Europe – 20 minutes
– Friday 29th June, 19:40 to 20:00
– Wednesday 4th July, 20:00 to 20:15

1956 British Grand Prix – 1 hour
– Friday 29th June, 21:00 to 22:00
– Tuesday 3rd July, 20:00 to 21:00

1958 British Grand Prix – 30 minutes
– Sunday 1st July, 21:00 to 21:30
– Thursday 5th July, 19:30 to 20:00

1964 European Grand Prix – 40 minutes
– Friday 29th June, 19:00 to 19:40
– Monday 2nd July, 20:00 to 20:45

2007 British Grand Prix – 2 hours
– Saturday 30th June, 18:00 to 20:00
– Monday 2nd July, 21:00 to 23:00

2008 British Grand Prix – 2 hours
– Saturday 30th June, 21:40 to 23:40
– Tuesday 3rd July, 21:00 to 23:00

2009 British Grand Prix – 2 hours
– Sunday 1st July, 17:00 to 19:00
– Wednesday 4th July, 21:00 to 23:00

2010 British Grand Prix – 2 hours
– Sunday 1st July, 19:00 to 21:00
– Thursday 5th July, 16:00 to 18:00

2011 British Grand Prix – 2 hours
– Sunday 1st July, 21:30 to 23:30
– Thursday 5th July, 21:00 to 23:00

Legends: Stirling Moss – 40 minutes
– Saturday 30th June, 21:00 to 21:40
– Wednesday 4th July, 20:00 to 20:40

Looking around the web, the 11th GP D’Europe is in fact the 1950 British Grand Prix. The 1964 European Grand Prix took place at Brands Hatch, also under the title of the British Grand Prix. And according to Radio Times, the Stirling Moss programme is an interview with him and Steve Rider.

Great to see Sky putting out all the stops for the British Grand Prix. This is the second time Sky are showing Classic races, the first time being from Monaco in May.

UPDATE on 26th June: I’ve added the entire week’s schedule, so you can see when the races are being shown.

A few movers and shakers for this weekend and Silverstone

With practice over for this weekend’s European Grand Prix, there are a few movers and shakers to keep you informed of for the remainder of the weekend and at Silverstone.

On the Sky Sports side of things, Karun Chandhok is joining the team this weekend, starting with tonight’s The F1 Show with Georgie Thompson and Ted Kravitz. This is Chandhok’s second appearance I believe with the team having been on The F1 Show alongside Derek Warwick a few weekends back. Another person joining the team is former Sauber and BMW driver Nick Heidfeld, who will join Simon Lazenby, Johnny Herbert and Martin Brundle on Sunday. Allan McNish is the third driver with the team temporarily, McNish replacing the injured Anthony Davidson as viewers for practice today would have spotted.

BBC’s team meanwhile reverts back to the usual set-up after Jake Humphrey’s brief departure to cover Euro 2012. He was expected to stay out there, but the schedule means that he is able to cover Valencia in full. The move means that Tom Clarkson will probably not be covering this weekend for BBC and will only be with them for Germany and Hungary. For radio, Jonathan Legard replaces James Allen again for this weekend.

Looking ahead to Silverstone, and former McLaren mechanic Marc Priestley will be pitlane reporter for 5 Live. Priestley, who was with McLaren from 1999 to 2009 will be alongside Jennie Gow for the entire weekend. Also, it has been announced that the F1 Forum from Silverstone will take place on the main stage on Sunday after the race. So if you’re heading to the main stage after the race at Silverstone, you may just be caught on camera!

Thanks to Karun Chandhok and 5LiveF1 on Twitter for some of the information above.

UPDATE on 23rd June: Clarkson is actually still out there for BBC, as you can hear him interviewing Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel here.

Sky’s IndyCar scheduling this weekend

So this weekend there is Live IndyCars on Sky Sports 2 at 02:30. Which is fair enough, that’s just the luck of the draw unfortunately that some races are on in the early hours. What I don’t get, though, is where the repeats are scheduled, or rather the lack of repeats are scheduled on one particular channel. Scrolling through the channels, I see:

– 02:30 to 05:00 – Sky Sports 2 [live]
– 10:00 to 12:00 – Sky Sports 2 [repeat]
– 17:00 to 19:00 – Sky Sports 4 [repeat]
– 20:00 to 22:00 – Sky Sports 3 [repeat]

Two of the three repeats are either against F1 or Football while the other repeat is against the Legends programme featuring Mika Hakkinen on Sky Sports F1.

With scheduling like this, it is as if Sky are not willing to commit to IndyCars given the disastrous three thousand viewers last Saturday. Fact is there, there are a lot of people that want to watch IndyCars, but can’t. Why? Because they have Sky Sports F1 but don’t have the other Sky Sports channels. I outlined the various ratings reasons here, but to summarise, this is how the IndyCar Series has rated so far this season:

Round 1 – St. Petersburg
– first hour and a half shown behind Red Button due to Malaysian Grand Prix overrunning
– Sky Sports F1
– Sunday 25th March, 19:00 to 20:30
– programme average: 21,000 (0.09%)
– peak: 34,000 (0.15%) at 19:05

Round 2 – Barber
– Sky Sports 4
– Sunday 1st April, 20:00
– programme average: under 30,000; outside of BARB Top 10

Round 3 – Long Beach
– Sky Sports 4
– Sunday 15th April, 21:00
– programme average: under 25,000; outside of BARB Top 10

Round 4 – São Paulo
– was originally meant to be shown on Sky Sports 4, but moved to Sky Sports F1 as race time was moved earlier (more here)
– Sunday 29th April, 16:30 to 19:00
– programme average: 16,000

Round 5 – Indianapolis
– Sky Sports 4
– Sunday 27th May, 16:30 to 21:00
– programme average: 28,000
– peak: 53,000 at 17:20

Round 6 – Detroit
– Sky Sports 4
– Sunday 3rd June, 20:30 to 25:00
– programme average: under 35,000; outside of BARB Top 10

Round 7 – Texas
– Sky Sports 1
– Saturday 9th June, 01:30
– programme average: ???

Round 8 – Milwaukee
– Sky Sports 3
– Saturday 16th June, 18:00 to 22:00
– programme average: 3,000 (0.01%)
– race average from 20:00 to 22:00: 4,000 (0.02%)

The above ratings are criminally low, and are in fact lower than all live content that airs on Sky Sports F1, including GP2 and GP3. With that in mind, would it not make sense to move it to Sky Sports F1 to try and boost ratings?

The current schedule for this Sunday on Sky Sports F1 is:

09:30 – LIVE: GP2 Series
10:35 – filler
11:30 – LIVE: European Grand Prix
16:15 – NEW: Legends: Mika Hakkinen
17:15 – filler
19:00 – NEW: European Grand Prix Highlights
20:30 – Legends: Mika Hakkinen (R)
21:30 – GP2 Race 2 (R)
22:35 – European Grand Prix Highlights (R)
24:05 – Legends: Mika Hakkinen (R)
25:00 – off-air

Filler’s are in the wrong place there quite frankly. The schedule, in my opinion, should go:

09:30 – LIVE: GP2 Series
10:35 – NEW: Legends: Mika Hakkinen
11:30 – LIVE: European Grand Prix
16:15 – NEW: IndyCar Series
18:15 – NEW: European Grand Prix Highlights
19:15 – Legends: Mika Hakkinen (R)
20:15 – GP3 Race 1 (R)
21:00 – GP3 Race 2 (R)
21:50 – GP2 Race 1 (R)
23:15 – GP2 Race 2 (R)
24:20 – off-air

The schedule above has nine hours back-to-back of original content without any fillers to get into the way, with the highlights show sensibly on slightly earlier to avoid a clash with Euro 2012.

For those wondering, the Legends’ series has had:

– Nigel Mansell, 18th March: 76,000 (1.03%)
– Jody Scheckter, 25th March: 49,000 (0.65%)
– Alan Jones, 22nd April: 25,000 (0.16%)
– John Surtees, 13th May: 15,000 (0.10%)

So a timeslot change for itself to earlier in between GP2 and the main Formula 1 show on Sky may actually help it. Although I suspect for such a cheap programme, ratings are not as relevant, plus they are repeated multiple times so do their job well. Back to IndyCars though, and this particular Sunday moving the Legends programme to 10:30 would open up a slot for the IndyCar Series repeat to go into at 16:15 and give it some much needed exposure on Sky Sports F1.

Because let’s face it, the IndyCar Series ratings above are not only sad, but also plain embarrassing.

Sky Sports F1 – Top 10 ratings (week ending 10th June, 2012)

From BARB:

1 – 924k – Live Canadian Grand Prix (Sunday, 17:30)
2 – 483k – Live Canadian Grand Prix: Qualifying (Saturday, 17:00)
3 – 173k – Live Canadian Grand Prix: Practice 3 (Saturday, 14:45)
4 – 126k – Live Canadian Grand Prix: Practice 2 (Friday, 18:45)
5 – 109k – Live Canadian Grand Prix: Practice 1 (Friday, 14:45)
6 – 98k – F1 Legends (Saturday, 16:12)
7 – 58k – The F1 Show (Saturday, 19:45)
8 – 56k – The F1 Show (Friday, 23:00)
9 – 54k – Canadian Grand Prix: Qualifying Replay (Saturday, 20:45)
10 – 52k – F1 Legends (Saturday, 16:30)

The ratings above are where I would expect them to be, although maybe slightly lower. If you’re to compare it with the Bahrain weekend, the last exclusive race on Sky Sports F1, the ratings are around the same region, with all sessions above 100 thousand viewers.

One oddity is that the Saturday repeat of The F1 Show after Qualifying had a higher rating than the original Friday airing, which is somewhat odd.

The channel reach though for the week though is pleasing for Sky. The channel reached 3.27 million people, higher than Sky Sports 2, 3 and 4. That number, however, is lower than the channel reach for the Australian, Malaysian and Bahrain race weekends, which were the other Sky exclusive weekends this season.

The race day viewership of 974 thousand confirms my original post here that the Canadian Grand Prix race ratings did indeed hit a six year low, with a combined viewership of only 3.24 million viewers. It’s also the lowest viewership for a Grand Prix since the 2008 European Grand Prix, which had 2.64 million viewers.