Originally Posted by mjr:
“Well if they're in line with BBC 2 in the past that's not too bad, also it's only qualifying - I suspect more people will be inclined to seek out the race coverage. I don't know much about ratings, but that seems like not too bad a start considering they need time to build awareness of where the coverage has gone to.
Maybe the controversy from yesterday will get it a bit more attention. Possibly even there might be an effect if the news channels are running with footage from the Alonso crash, people might decide to watch the race after lunch.”
I think it's important to point out with ratings that C4 are not going to expect them to be as high as they were on the BBC. BBC 1 will pick up more casual viewers just because it is the first channel and normally if you just scroll through your EPG/TV magazine it's the first thing you see and therefore you have the greatest chance of people choosing to watch it. This is probably best illustrated by those figures being in line with what happened on BBC 2 in 2012 and 2014.
But there is some very positive news for C4 there, they won the time slot which is very important and quite unusual for them to do. They peaked with 1.768m which is impressive for them and I'm sure is about what they were hoping for. Also it is above the slot average, so C4 succeeded- yesterday at least- in getting more viewers in for Saturday/Sunday afternoons where they tend to struggle against the competition.
The real test will come today as a lot of their promotion centred around this afternoon's action, although they are up against a stellar line-up of football this afternoon but hopefully it won't affect them too much as the football is on Sky and thus pay-per-view.
Also, forgot to mention Alonso in my post earlier, have to be very thankful he's fine. I felt sick as the camera panned away from the Haas car to show the pile of carbon fibre that was wedged into the barrier, was very relieved- along with everyone else- when he crawled out of the car.