"Live Bahrain Grand Prix averaged 1.4m and peaked at 1.6m on Sky Sports F1 yesterday #F1"
99 percent certain that is the race average only. Programme average will be around ~800k I think. In comparison with Malaysia, according to the same Twitter that had an average of 1.25m, with a peak of 1.51m.
Sorry - this post is gonna be epic, having spent hours reading about 15 pages of this thread (:eek: - I have way too much time on my hands), so pass on by if you're not really bored ...
Was anyone else amused to see Martin being very deferential to the BBC on his grid walk, when Jennie Gow (presumably for 5 live) was interviewing Mark Webber, and Martin was very reluctant to stick his oar in? If it was anyone else, he'd have been shoving his mic in pronto, but instead he wandered off to check out the exhaust before coming back. Looks like he doesn't wanna cause a ruck with the Beeb ... especially judging by that really impressive clip from the BBC's F1 Forum - loved that. Good attitude from everyone involved there.
Anyway, better post-race coverage from Sky this time, I thought. Good analysis of both McLaren's ropey pit stops (particularly from Ted) and Rosberg forcing everyone off the track.
Quite noticeable how disinterested Red Bull were to talk to Sky though! No-one around the garage to talk to them, practically no media left in the "pen" by the time Sky finally got a chance to speak to Vettel, and Christian Horner being pulled away for the team photo (and not coming back) after only one or two questions!
The last part being primarily about responding to tweets seems like a direct copy of the recently added extra half-hour of Monday Night Football (10:30pm to 11pm).
Very bizarre at the end, telling us the Alan Jones Legends interview was "next", when the extension of the main live show to 4:30pm had been known about for days. Mind you, it still should've been "next" anyway - just push back the rest of the schedule by half-an-hour - it's only re-runs. And of course the programme title in the EPG had been telling us all week that it was a Jack Brabham interview. :rolleyes:
They are. They're not breaking any regulations - compared to what cheapo channels elsewhere on digital satellite dish up nearly every hour of every day, Sky Sports F1 still come nowhere near them in terms of advertising during qualifying/race build-up.
I think I'd rather see a break just before the 5-minutes-to-go sting, a break that Sky surprisingly don't have, and only 3 breaks in the rest of the pre-race build-up, instead of 4 crammed into the first 65 minutes of the show when the BBC aren't live. The show would flow better then, and I don't think we'd be missing much during that last break - it's only Simon and Damon waffling on about nothing much, as Martin's grid walk is long finished by then. Also you'd think a break then would be more commercially attractive to Sky (not that that should be important on a heavily subscription-funded channel, which is perhaps why it's not there), as it's akin to the just-before-kick-off break that both Sky and ITV are so keen on these days in their live football coverage (due to the captive audience at that time).
And on the ads, while I don't mind them in the pre-race show as they are to be expected, it's the fact that they go out of their way to remove them on BBC live races only. As I've said before, it just comes across as being more interested in competing with the Beeb than producing the best coverage they can.
Yeah ... especially as Simon was practically pleading with us to stay with them around the 2 ad breaks they DID show before the BBC came on-air in China, whereas there was none of that yesterday.
I like Simon Lazenby, but he's asked some very poor questions today. I don't know if it's just me, but it doesn't appear that Brundle is enjoying this at all.
Worse moment was just then while talking about the Alonso/Rosberg move, Brundle explaining how Alonso was unimpressed, with Simon coming in with 'yeah that was an awesome move', cue Brundle trying to cut in, awkward silence and Simon asking him to continue, only for Brundle to say 'well that's for the stewards to decide...'. Brundle looked thoroughly unimpressed, but then we got to see what threw Simon off. As usual, an abrupt cut off for an advert. :rolleyes: Awkward.
I'm sure I saw Brundle grimacing earlier after Simon said that McLaren had changed the mechanic on rear left after the first pitstop. :cool:
Yeah, I noticed that grimace. Probably coz he said the mechanic had "messed up". Though I think you've read a little bit too much into the rest of it (apart from the reason for Simon making the strange "awesome move" comment).
Not really bothered whether they "have" to broadcast football updates or not. The fact remains that the continual football and rugby updates ruined the actual race commentary and the commentators provided incredibly little additional information that couldn't be seen on screen.
Strange as it may seem, radio commentators are commentating for radio listeners, not people who are taking their commentary over foreign TV pictures.
I wonder if the shorter highlights programme and earlier start time is because the Beeb want to make the News more prominent for this weekend. Therefore a full 25 minute bulletin after the race rather than before.
I reckon for most races it'll be at 5.30 for 90 minutes but for this they wanted the news to be more prominent, so after the race rather than before. And I wonder if 5pm is the earliest start time the contract allows.
Don't forget it was pretty likely that this race wouldn't go ahead, so maybe by only having 80 minutes set aside for highlights, they were giving themselves less time to fill if the race was cancelled. Whether that's the right thing to do or not is another matter.
I hate to say it really because I was always a fan before, but Crofty.
Something seems to have changed with him and he was bodering on James Allen levels of cringeworthyness, misidentifying things (Granted FOM didn't help on a couple of occasions!) and, worst sin of all, cramming in a crass football reference towards the end of the GP
Crofty wouldn't be the first person to lose performance quality after moving from the BBC elsewhere (to either ITV or Sky). Such moves seem to do strange things to people.
A very interesting post. But of course this is their third non-live race and the first two certainly had more than 50% of the race.
Which is why it's so baffling, unless as arius suggested as a possible explanation there was an element of pre-loading going on in the first two.
This is the first race to be run in the afternoon though, European time. I would imagine it's different rules for these races from those run in the mornings, our time.
Each time i visit this thread, I hope to see at least a few positive comments about...something! maybe one day, someone will wade through all the bitterness and negativity that goes on here!
I've seen some! But, judging by the number of posts I've responded to here, I probably read this thread a bit too thoroughly at times.
Maybe I'm wrong but I suspect that some people might be criticising the BBC coverage of Bahrain a bit unfairly.
I watched the race live and then watched the BBC coverage this evening as well and, TBH, I found the race just as choppy, confusing and disjointed as the BBC show portrayed.
Me too. Even the commentators were saying the same thing. Any edits at all in the first half of the race would've made life difficult for viewers.
I've not read all the posts but David croft is grating on me.
He sees a car, has a guess as to which driver it is and is wrong more times than not (obviously not a lucky fella). First 6 laps yesterday he had 4 guesses and got them all wrong, only to be corrected by Brundle.
He's a good commentator, but gets alot of things wrong.
Other than that, I like the coverage. I don't watch all the gumph inbetween which maybe helps, but the race and qualifying coverage is decent enough.
Not on paper, it wasn't. Okay - so the result and the sheer number of goals made it so, but beforehand it wasn't that big.
5 live is all about breaking news, once it became clear you had one of defining moments of the premier league season happening at Old Trafford, they HAD to give extensive updates.
So what would they have broadcast on 5 live? They didn't have the live rights to commentate on the Man Utd v Everton game - talkSPORT hold those.
I'm aware of that, if 5 live did have rights to the ManUtd game then the f1 would have been relegated to sports extra.
As it was, because 5 live didn't have commentary rights to the football, you had the odd situation where the quality of the f1coverage decreased because they had to run regular updates of the football. 5 live normally run a general sports discussion programme during the early Sunday kickoff, they could have done that again, dipped in and out of the f1, but given f1 fans a full service on sports extra.
Mrs Diva watched a race for the first time this year, yesterday on Sky, and during the post race show, she asked who the prat on the left was (Simon) Had to agree with her, he does come across as a bit of a pain in the rear :rolleyes:
Watched the BBC feed live yesterday from a foreign source and switched over to the Sky feed during the commercial breaks. To me the BBC's commentary seemed slicker and more polished than Sky's other than MB's efforts. Is Croft paid in wpm?
By the way just for balance, good of the BBC to pop the winner of qualifying on Final Score just before the highlights. I know the 'keep away from the net etc' comes to mind but a mate tuned in just before the start of Quali highlights, caught the last 10 seconds of FS and saw the result on the ticker below. At least Sky's 'faux pas' (did Crofty actually give away the result? I just heard him say it was an epic and then changed audio to listen to pit radio, so I didn't hear the rest) was for a different sport rather than a BBC own goal to use soccer terms.
By the way just for balance, good of the BBC to pop the winner of qualifying on Final Score just before the highlights. I know the 'keep away from the net etc' comes to mind but a mate tuned in just before the start of Quali highlights, caught the last 10 seconds of FS and saw the result on the ticker below. At least Sky's 'faux pas' (did Crofty actually give away the result? I just heard him say it was an epic and then changed audio to listen to pit radio, so I didn't hear the rest) was for a different sport rather than a BBC own goal to use soccer terms.
Yeah, BBC got me with that one too. Tuned in for quali higlights managed to avoid the results all day and the first thing I see on screen was "....Hamilton in second..." I quickly changed channel but it spoiled the end of qualifying because Hamilton was the only one to challenge Vettel and I knew he wouldn't make it.
Why would they do this? show that sport show after the highlights of F1
I know the 'keep away from the net etc' comes to mind but a mate tuned in just before the start of Quali highlights, caught the last 10 seconds of FS and saw the result on the ticker below
This is why in these circumstances I mute the sound and bring up a menu display to mask the screen until the coverage I want to watch starts up. Having a semi-transparent menu display helps so you can make out when the previous programme ends and the channel ident comes up without focussing on any detail.
Good Sky coverage this weekend, of course there are some teething problems here and there including the fact that the team is still very much gelling together however considering this is a brand new channel the signs are good (and improvements are continuous - I expect more "upgrades" for Barcelona).
I have to admit that I am not a fan of watching highlights for any sport therefore the BBC's offering doesn't really appeal (I would rather Sky+ the entire race and fast-forward).
One thing to note is that I could pick flaws in both Sky and BBC's coverage every race weekend however primarily I'm watching the sport for the live racing, nothing more, nothing less. We are lucky to have the choice compared to other countries around the world!
* those who watch 3 consecutive minutes of a particular channel
And from BARB for the channel itself:
Top 10 - Week Ending 15th April
1 - 504k - [highlight]Live Chinese Grand Prix[/highlight] (Sunday, 06:30)
2 - 251k - [highlight]Live Chinese GP Qualifying[/highlight] (Saturday, 06:00)
3 - 108k - [highlight]Live Chinese GP Practice 2[/highlight] (Friday, 06:45)
4 - 104k - Chinese GP Qualifying Replay (Saturday, 10:01)
5 - 62k - The F1 Show (Friday, 20:00)
6 - 57k - The F1 Show (Friday, 22:01)
7 - 52k - Chinese Grand Prix Replay (Sunday, 12:31)
8 - 46k - [highlight]Live Chinese GP Practice 1[/highlight] (Thursday, 26:45)
9 - 42k - Legends (Saturday, 08:55)
10 - 37k - [highlight]Live Chinese GP Practice 3[/highlight] (Friday, 27:45)
Just watched the forum that everyone's been raving about here! And yeah, it was indeed good. Learned so much more in the early part of those 30 minutes (about the teams at the back of the grid) than I did throughout the 90 minutes of post-race coverage on Sky (and that's after me saying their post-race had been an improvement!), which just shows Jake and DC know what's interesting and therefore what questions to ask.
Good Sky coverage this weekend, of course there are some teething problems here and there including the fact that the team is still very much gelling together however considering this is a brand new channel the signs are good (and improvements are continuous - I expect more "upgrades" for Barcelona).
I have to admit that I am not a fan of watching highlights for any sport therefore the BBC's offering doesn't really appeal (I would rather Sky+ the entire race and fast-forward).
One thing to note is that I could pick flaws in both Sky and BBC's coverage every race weekend however primarily I'm watching the sport for the live racing, nothing more, nothing less. We are lucky to have the choice compared to other countries around the world!
Yep, that pretty much sums up things for me. I use sky+ and try and avoid all results and then watch things as if they were live.
By the way just for balance, good of the BBC to pop the winner of qualifying on Final Score just before the highlights. I know the 'keep away from the net etc' comes to mind but a mate tuned in just before the start of Quali highlights, caught the last 10 seconds of FS and saw the result on the ticker below.[ /QUOTE]
Just goes to show that total media blackout is necessary for a few hours! I have successfully watched all the non-live races on the BBC so far without knowing the result. Be careful with which websites you visit too. Stay away from Yahoo! Among others!
Bahrain Grand Prix - Ratings Roundup 2008 Qualifying - 1.48m Race - 3.44m
2009 Qualifying - 2.40m Race - 4.39m
2010 Qualifying - 2.74m (31.2%) Race - 4.76m (41.2%)
2011 - no race
2012 Qualifying
Sky Live - ???
BBC Highlights - 2.99m (18.1%)
Race
Sky Live - 738k (6.2%)
* race average - 1.4m
* peak - 1.6m
BBC Highlights - 3.65m (20.2%) Total = 4.39m
Good ratings, 2012 in line with 2009. 2010 was the season opener, hence why it was a bit higher. Qualifying will be approx ~3.4m, so a very good rating there.
Sky will be pleased with the viewing figures for F1, the overnights for Bahrain were superior to the football which contained arguably the biggest club in Britain, 1.14m for footie and 1.4 for F1, also the rights for football cost much more,
It would be interesting to see the Sky+ed figures for both the F1 and footie. Due to all the extra feeds and live timing I'd say it was preferable to watch the F1 live and the footie on catch-up (until that moment)
It would be interesting to see the Sky+ed figures for both the F1 and footie. Due to all the extra feeds and live timing I'd say it was preferable to watch the F1 live and the footie on catch-up (until that moment)
The figures above include everything who watched the two programmes before Monday morning at 2am.
Watching Weekends in Words... one word: pointless. No, really, it is.
Comments
"Live Bahrain Grand Prix averaged 1.4m and peaked at 1.6m on Sky Sports F1 yesterday #F1"
99 percent certain that is the race average only. Programme average will be around ~800k I think. In comparison with Malaysia, according to the same Twitter that had an average of 1.25m, with a peak of 1.51m.
The BBC highlights had 3.65m (20.2%).
Was anyone else amused to see Martin being very deferential to the BBC on his grid walk, when Jennie Gow (presumably for 5 live) was interviewing Mark Webber, and Martin was very reluctant to stick his oar in? If it was anyone else, he'd have been shoving his mic in pronto, but instead he wandered off to check out the exhaust before coming back. Looks like he doesn't wanna cause a ruck with the Beeb ... especially judging by that really impressive clip from the BBC's F1 Forum - loved that. Good attitude from everyone involved there.
Anyway, better post-race coverage from Sky this time, I thought. Good analysis of both McLaren's ropey pit stops (particularly from Ted) and Rosberg forcing everyone off the track.
Quite noticeable how disinterested Red Bull were to talk to Sky though! No-one around the garage to talk to them, practically no media left in the "pen" by the time Sky finally got a chance to speak to Vettel, and Christian Horner being pulled away for the team photo (and not coming back) after only one or two questions!
The last part being primarily about responding to tweets seems like a direct copy of the recently added extra half-hour of Monday Night Football (10:30pm to 11pm).
Very bizarre at the end, telling us the Alan Jones Legends interview was "next", when the extension of the main live show to 4:30pm had been known about for days. Mind you, it still should've been "next" anyway - just push back the rest of the schedule by half-an-hour - it's only re-runs. And of course the programme title in the EPG had been telling us all week that it was a Jack Brabham interview. :rolleyes:
They are. They're not breaking any regulations - compared to what cheapo channels elsewhere on digital satellite dish up nearly every hour of every day, Sky Sports F1 still come nowhere near them in terms of advertising during qualifying/race build-up.
I think I'd rather see a break just before the 5-minutes-to-go sting, a break that Sky surprisingly don't have, and only 3 breaks in the rest of the pre-race build-up, instead of 4 crammed into the first 65 minutes of the show when the BBC aren't live. The show would flow better then, and I don't think we'd be missing much during that last break - it's only Simon and Damon waffling on about nothing much, as Martin's grid walk is long finished by then. Also you'd think a break then would be more commercially attractive to Sky (not that that should be important on a heavily subscription-funded channel, which is perhaps why it's not there), as it's akin to the just-before-kick-off break that both Sky and ITV are so keen on these days in their live football coverage (due to the captive audience at that time).
Yeah ... especially as Simon was practically pleading with us to stay with them around the 2 ad breaks they DID show before the BBC came on-air in China, whereas there was none of that yesterday.
Not on paper, it wasn't. Okay - so the result and the sheer number of goals made it so, but beforehand it wasn't that big.
Yeah, I noticed that grimace.
Strange as it may seem, radio commentators are commentating for radio listeners, not people who are taking their commentary over foreign TV pictures.
So what would they have broadcast on 5 live? They didn't have the live rights to commentate on the Man Utd v Everton game - talkSPORT hold those.
Don't forget it was pretty likely that this race wouldn't go ahead, so maybe by only having 80 minutes set aside for highlights, they were giving themselves less time to fill if the race was cancelled. Whether that's the right thing to do or not is another matter.
Just more proof of how reliant the media is on Twitter these days, and anyone that doesn't use it doesn't matter to them. :rolleyes:
Crofty wouldn't be the first person to lose performance quality after moving from the BBC elsewhere (to either ITV or Sky). Such moves seem to do strange things to people.
This is the first race to be run in the afternoon though, European time. I would imagine it's different rules for these races from those run in the mornings, our time.
:eek: Tony Jardine?! As presenter?!
I've seen some! But, judging by the number of posts I've responded to here, I probably read this thread a bit too thoroughly at times.
Me too. Even the commentators were saying the same thing. Any edits at all in the first half of the race would've made life difficult for viewers.
He sees a car, has a guess as to which driver it is and is wrong more times than not (obviously not a lucky fella). First 6 laps yesterday he had 4 guesses and got them all wrong, only to be corrected by Brundle.
He's a good commentator, but gets alot of things wrong.
Other than that, I like the coverage. I don't watch all the gumph inbetween which maybe helps, but the race and qualifying coverage is decent enough.
5 live is all about breaking news, once it became clear you had one of defining moments of the premier league season happening at Old Trafford, they HAD to give extensive updates.
I'm aware of that, if 5 live did have rights to the ManUtd game then the f1 would have been relegated to sports extra.
As it was, because 5 live didn't have commentary rights to the football, you had the odd situation where the quality of the f1coverage decreased because they had to run regular updates of the football. 5 live normally run a general sports discussion programme during the early Sunday kickoff, they could have done that again, dipped in and out of the f1, but given f1 fans a full service on sports extra.
Even on my phone it all mostly works
Yeah, BBC got me with that one too. Tuned in for quali higlights managed to avoid the results all day and the first thing I see on screen was "....Hamilton in second..." I quickly changed channel but it spoiled the end of qualifying because Hamilton was the only one to challenge Vettel and I knew he wouldn't make it.
Why would they do this? show that sport show after the highlights of F1
I have to admit that I am not a fan of watching highlights for any sport therefore the BBC's offering doesn't really appeal (I would rather Sky+ the entire race and fast-forward).
One thing to note is that I could pick flaws in both Sky and BBC's coverage every race weekend however primarily I'm watching the sport for the live racing, nothing more, nothing less. We are lucky to have the choice compared to other countries around the world!
Sky Sports - Week Ending 15th April
Sky Sports - Channel Share
1.4% - Sky Sports 1
0.8% - Sky Sports News
0.3% - Sky Sports F1
0.3% - Sky Sports 2
0.2% - Sky Sports 3
0.1% - Sky Sports 4
Sky Sports - Weekly Reach*
7.35m - Sky Sports 1
7.24m - Sky Sports News
4.15m - Sky Sports 2
2.40m - Sky Sports 3
2.38m - Sky Sports F1
2.28m - Sky Sports 4
* those who watch 3 consecutive minutes of a particular channel
And from BARB for the channel itself:
Top 10 - Week Ending 15th April
1 - 504k - [highlight]Live Chinese Grand Prix[/highlight] (Sunday, 06:30)
2 - 251k - [highlight]Live Chinese GP Qualifying[/highlight] (Saturday, 06:00)
3 - 108k - [highlight]Live Chinese GP Practice 2[/highlight] (Friday, 06:45)
4 - 104k - Chinese GP Qualifying Replay (Saturday, 10:01)
5 - 62k - The F1 Show (Friday, 20:00)
6 - 57k - The F1 Show (Friday, 22:01)
7 - 52k - Chinese Grand Prix Replay (Sunday, 12:31)
8 - 46k - [highlight]Live Chinese GP Practice 1[/highlight] (Thursday, 26:45)
9 - 42k - Legends (Saturday, 08:55)
10 - 37k - [highlight]Live Chinese GP Practice 3[/highlight] (Friday, 27:45)
Yep, that pretty much sums up things for me. I use sky+ and try and avoid all results and then watch things as if they were live.
Botty
Yes, i love Ben's commentary, so fluid and natural.
But, looking at him alongside DC and Jake, it was like watching Gulliver's Travels in reverse!
2008
Qualifying - 1.48m
Race - 3.44m
2009
Qualifying - 2.40m
Race - 4.39m
2010
Qualifying - 2.74m (31.2%)
Race - 4.76m (41.2%)
2011 - no race
2012
Qualifying
Sky Live - ???
BBC Highlights - 2.99m (18.1%)
Race
Sky Live - 738k (6.2%)
* race average - 1.4m
* peak - 1.6m
BBC Highlights - 3.65m (20.2%)
Total = 4.39m
Good ratings, 2012 in line with 2009. 2010 was the season opener, hence why it was a bit higher. Qualifying will be approx ~3.4m, so a very good rating there.
There's only one way to find out!.........
MEASURE!:)
The figures above include everything who watched the two programmes before Monday morning at 2am.
Watching Weekends in Words... one word: pointless. No, really, it is.