F1 Fanatic

That, Sky, is how you do post-race analysis.

Jake, EJ and DC covered more in 30 minutes than the entire Sky team did in 1 and 1/2 hours.

The drivers WANT to come over and talk, the team principles are happy to make time for an interview and most importantly we got PROPER re-plays, explained and talked through.

Sky had no replays, only a couple of uninteresting interviews and it was packed with adverts and self-promotion.

I’m so glad the BBC are still motivated enough to do this properly, and I’m definitely going to be switching to BBC when they have their 10 live races.

It’s good to see the BBC did the analysis lacking from the Sky coverage. Sky analysed the first lap and Maldonado vs. Grosjean and that was it, which was disappointing. If Sky just did more analysis, their coverage would improve greatly. Maybe instead of walking around, they should sit in a motorhome and analyse the race from there, whilst someone like Natalie goes around interviewing people.

Sky don’t have the relationships with the teams that the BBC do, but hopefully they will build relationships with the teams over the year, though it will be harder with the BBC around. I can’t see BBC seeing out the deal, I think they’ll drop the F1 coverage altogether eventually, so Sky really need to make themselves known around the paddock, or we’ll very few post-race interviews.

In regards to which is better BBC or Sky, I’d say that Sky will get right what they did wrong today and they clearly have the better coverage. Sky did a good job throughout the weekend up until after the race, if they get the analysis in, they’ll be even better. I be watching all races on Sky, the fact that they have Martin Brundle is a big factor my decision too.

I listened to the bbc radio commentary this morning, caught a bit of the sky coverage in the afternoon whilst visiting someone’s house and have just been watching the bbc coverage. Only discovered the site today after scanning for more technical stuff!
Totally agree with @simon touchscreens don’t work well in these sort of programs, they are always slow, make the discussion stilted and are more trouble than they’re worth. In addition, when I saw the sky channel the night before, they were covering drivers completing a sort of operation game. Not impressed…
Ben Edwards and DC were good, I like the main pundits on the BBC but some of their conversations grating, last year, Jake’s constant digs at EJ’s clothes in particular. Having them for a small amount of time before the race highlights was refreshing. Ted Kravitz is sorely missed, but I think Gary Anderson could fill that hole after a few races. As an engineer I enjoyed the video he did on the BBC when the mclaren car was released, so a bit more coverage like that would be nice.
The radio coverage was ok but a bit patchy but that may be because I’m used to watching the races on the telly and getting a lot more visual information.

Overnight figures suggest Sky averaged 874k viewers for the live race, and the BBC highlights averaged 2.73m viewers.
Figures taken from digital spy tv forum, post 235

In total thats 0.5m less then the combined race and re run viewers last year which got 2m and 2.1 m respectively.

So lets make some presumptions…
Half the “live” 2011 BBC audience watched the 2012 race on sky.
Most of the rest of the 2011 live race audience listened on the radio / stayed in bed and joined with the 2011 re run audience in watching the BBC highlights show.

That leaves half a million people who simply didn’t watch at all. Of course that might not be entirely down to the sky deal but it probably played a part.

Plus you can’t tell from those figures how many people watched both early morning and afternoon shows last year or this year (probably higher this year due to people comparing sky and bbc) and just how many viewers new to F1 the sky channel has brought.

Anyone who’s missing Ted Kravitz, his post-race video notebook thing is available online for anyone to watch, not just Sky subscribers. That’s a bonus – this one’s not very insightful, but previously I thought these round-ups were the best thing he did.

Ok, you could clearly see the edits in the qualifying show, but mainly all we missed were cars leaving the pits onto a warm up lap. I recall last year when i had recorded qualy, i got back and fast forwarded the HRT’s/Virgins/Team Lotus early laps in Q1 as they were never going to be troubling the front positions. Then did same with Q2 & Q3, so personally, not much has been lost.
Pre-qualy & race parts – Don’t forget that this was the first race of the year, and therfore has to include all the driver and team changes. There will be new viewers coming to F1 each year, so it is for their benefit, as are the pieces about Tyres/DRS that a section of the viewers (such as people on fan forums) already know about. Not every fan is pouring over on the internet for the latest news from Brazil to testing to the first race. I mean i do, but i realise it’s not for everyone!!

The Race show was ok, i had avoided all news, so to be honest i was wanting them to get on with it a bit more than they did, but i can live with that (again, not everyone would have seen qualy show, so there always has to be some repeat of basic segments). The commentary team did ok for their first live race together, especially when Ben Edwards was struggling to understand the radio transmissions and said what we’ve all felt sometimes, namely that you can’t understand a word of it! Lee McKenzie interviewed Romain and Michael pretty quickly. Analysis was really good from Gary Anderson, who i feel can explain more than Ted Kravitz ever could. Though, i will miss the entertainment side that Ted brought, i mean, he never let the facts get in the way of a good story (i remember quite a few occasions over the last 3 years where it seemed like he was blatantly guessing why teams were doing what they were doing). But please, can someone at BBC Sport let Gary Anderson wear a normal shirt and not the corporate BBC Navy Blue we see on Steve Parish and Charlie Cox during Moto GP. I kept expecting him to wax lyrical about Webbo needing that first corner argy-bargy like he needed a third armpit. And while i’m moaning a little, the title sequence was better in the past 3 years. I really liked the cars racing around the different circuits, even though they did need liveries updating.

The post race analysis was good, they covered everything i think, but i do like to see the podium drivers after the race and recieving the trophies. As so much has been made of Lewis’ demenour on the podium and press conference, i’m a little disappointed that we didn’t get to see it, even in highlight form.

Overall though, i thought they did a good job. I’ve got friends who have sky, so hopefully i will see what they are offering at somepoint (maybe Bahrain if it’s on), so i will be able to contrast, but i’ve always liked the way BBC do sport, and i certainly prefer my pundits talking to each other (like normal people would do) rather than the American way of presenting and talking direct to the camera even if you are responding to something your colleague has just asked you. If people actually did that in real life, you’d stop talking to them!

In this weeks coverage did they say there would be a F1 Forum on the Red Button or did I miss it?

I don’t recall them mentioning anything but about half and hour after the show on Sunday I was looking through the Electronic Programme Guide on my TV and it said F1 highlights on channel 301 (the Red Button channel) so I thought I would see what they were showing and I caught the end of the F1 Forum.

It then seemed to show a full repeat of the BBC1 highlights programme on a loop.

Also does anyone know why Eddie Jordan wasn’t in Malaysia, again unless I missed it they only seemed to mention it at the end of the show when they said he would be back for China.