Pastor Maldonado set the pace in the afternoon session on Friday at Hockenheim, beating Nico Rosberg by a fraction, but the times were fairly meaningless given the weather, which was chucking it down at the start of the session. It improved a little but then the rain came again and the session ended with Michael Schumacher smacking his Mercedes into the wall in the stadium area and bringing out a red flag that ended the session prematurely.
Sebastian Vettel was third fastest ahead of Sergio Perez, Romain Grosjean, Nico Hulkenberg (who had an impressive 720-degree spin), Daniel Ricciardo, who dumped his car into the gravel, Jenson Button, Mark Webber and Kimi Raikkonen.
Outside the top 10 were Jean-Eric Vergne, Felipe Massa, Kamui Kobayashi, the Marussias of Charles Pic and Timo Glock (somewhat out of position), Bruno Senna, Heikki Kovalainen, Paul di Resta, Lewis Hamilton, Fernando Alonso, Vitaly Petrov, Narain Karthikeyan, Schumacher and Pedro de la Rosa.
It’s a pity that this is one of those GPs not broadcast on the BBC (or ‘bring back comedy’ for those who are familiar with Eric & Ernie).
I was intrigued to read recently, on this blog, the stats on viewing figures since the ‘split’ in F1 broadcasting between and the BBC/Sky this year. BE seems to be happy with this situation according to The Guardian (if you can believe that), despite the overall downward trend on the combined audience between the two. Sky alone appears to attract roughly 1m viewers per race, which is massively different to last year’s BBC average.
For me the questions are:
- how may viewers will eventually ‘deflect’ to Sky this year (I believe there’s little movement at the moment)?
- how many more will subscribe by the end of the year, having got fed up with watching delayed ‘live’ broadcasts on the beeb?
- are the BBC slowly walking backwards out the door, leaving Sky as the only F1 broadcaster?
- would Sky’s figures in the UK increase by having sole rights (even so, difficult to believe a 4m+ increase in audience)?
Just wondering.
Actually Karen has already given us the figures, you can substitute “trend” “with long dive off a steep cliff”. But Sky is paying so much more than the BBC.
I can’t see how the sponsors can justify continuing with such low viewing figures, however until they start leaving F1, FOM and co will be much better off.
The remaining BBC coverage is being diluted with only FP1 on R5SX this morning, the afternoon session was not covered at all. Formula1.com timing page with text commentary is the best I could find. Luckily it was pretty quiet and boring.
I have been tempted to get sky but cannot really afford it; also it goes very much against the grain to contribute to the wealth of a family who ought to be in prison after the phone hacking scandal. I read that Murdoch is splitting the empire into news and entertainment, he is going to be hard pressed deciding which category some of his publications fall into. Luckily for Murdoch, the LIBOR scandal has now taken the nation’s attention along with PPI. miss-selling. We await the Olympics scandals.
[quote] I can’t see how the sponsors can justify continuing with such low viewing figures, however until they start leaving F1, FOM and co will be much better off.[/quote]
It’s broadcast outside the UK as well, I’m guessing the sponsors know that …
I’m going to be like a dog with a bone on this one. It takes some working out. My feeling is that there may be some churn, as always, so what Sky may be left with at the end of the year, in terms of audience in the UK, is anyone’s guess. Subscribers to Sky Italia are offered free HD and free 3D to sports pack subscribers, for example, and one assumes that Sky UK are making similar offers, or will be. In any case there are, to coin a phrase, ‘lies, damn lies, and statistics’.
Another question worth asking is – ‘where is the fan base’. Is it in France (I don’t think so)? Is it in Germany (possibly, although as they’re having trouble organising their own GP I wonder)? Spain possibly, when Alonso is winning – and so forth. The UK has always been a strong supporter of GPs (but not the government it seems) but elsewhere I’m not convinced – look at the empty seats on TV (and often at much cheaper prices than the UK).
We’ll see.
Even given the weather effect, two Marussias posting times ahead of Hamilton and Alonso is somewhat extraordinary. Is this just down to them being on track at the right time or is there some genuine pace coming from their upgrades?
Seriously??????
‘sall right david, predict has his answer now.
It seems to me a bizarre decision to broadcast on a medium which will reduce numbers in the age of a burgeoning worldwide communications web which has the potential to reach most of the world’s population. The only reasoning which makes sense to me is that Bernie has decided that the internet isn’t quite ready for him yet, and while it comes up to scratch he’ll take the Murdoch dollars. The risk is that the audience lost won’t be won back. However, I’m sure that most disgruntled fans will find others ways to watch the sky broadcast. The net is subversive in more ways than one.
While it looks odd, never underestimate Bernie. He was too many years ahead of the world with digital tv so never got the full benefit, hence part of the reason for the 100year deal.
The news that the BBC has agreed for the Olympics coverage up to 2020 with the IOC is possibly relevant to the BBC F1 coverage drop. They probably looked ahead to the future and decided on the Olympics rather than F1 and other sports.
I may have misread what Karen said, easily done since I was banging on about the – blindingly obvious – idea for ages, but I believe they are testing their own IPTV system.
As for Sky, well, all I can say is all the coverage this year has left me cold. Money wasted. The rest is just fluff.
Moreover, I am not very certain as to this, but I think Sky may be a aggressive reporter of delayed or delinquent payments.
Now that doesn’t bother me directly. Save I sign a direct debit only at gun point. It is the legal equivalent of opening a joint account with a spouse you never met.
Not my phone company, BT, my ISP, AAISP, nor my cellular O2, ask me for direct debits. All quarterly. My gym, now irritatingly owned my M. Branson, tries that trick occasionally, so I hand them cheques. They claim every time that they do not accept cheques, and every time I point out that they are breaching the basic offerance and acceptance of the contract by refusing to receive payment in what remains legal tender. Sometimes I am nice and give them a card, but that only enriches the VISA network . .
(I am a bit personal about these things, not merely socially, but also because it’s tricky to retain a nigh perfect credit rating when you borrow not a penny. Experian amusingly say I’d get a perfect score if I just had a overdraft of 200 quid! Nope, no thanks.
Before all this actuarial bullying came in, my dad would assess a mortgage borrower by hanging around their neighborhood and having a look see how clean they kept house, and having a good chat. He had virtually no delinquents on his books, ever, in nigh 60 years. Well, amusingly, it was the landed classes who were going bust, in later years, but that’s a whole fun other story)
Sky’s market is really not a great demographic. (Dog and the dish) If I work out through a bit of local survey, that they like to black mark people’s credit files, I am never touching them again. Not for my sake, but because their demographic is low income, and does not need that kind of treatment.
In fact this weekend, I shall be in my gym, not watching the race. I need that even more than a potentially exciting wet / damp Hockenheim, having been surgically connected to a headset for two weeks.*
May it be, please, for once, that Pastor has a clean race. I want to stop thinking “thug”, as I called him early here (he reminded me of a Columbian merc I once had the fun of sharing my flat with), and I bet the rest of the paddock want to forget that connotation also.
. . .
One thing I cannot get over is the inability to simply do what I please with the Sky signal. I can play tricks with old receiver boxes, component cables and the fact I have some fancy (now cheap) video capture cards. But I keep trying to re-size the video window, on the telly, like the screen is a computer!
Yes please, Karen, get that IPTV feed going, cut out the middleman!
Please also let us pay for higher bandwidth, if out feed can handle it. BBC HD feeds are 1.5MB/s approx, and look every bit as good as the Sky SAT feed. I can draw down several times that, easily.
To add to this, a little German company called Quato (which I assume is a reference to Paul Verhoeven’s Total Recall movie) now sell 42″ calibrated screens. What do I want to watch my F1 on? A screen designed to nail the color specs in full on daylight, or a amateur plasma?
FWIW Pany took back my well off spec plasma, sent me a new one and handed me the price difference, as it halved in price since I bought it originally. But it still will not work well with the many times more expensive calibration kit I use. For me, though not most people, that induces headaches, as i used to “red out” when moving between differing kinds of light, literally fall over.
There is a trick in camera equipment manufacturers, that what counts as “Pro” is often the same, but with better arranged buttons. So, if I want a camera I can use quickly, without distraction, it costs me 6 grand, not 800 quid. Forget good lenses. But you’d be hard pressed to note the results. (and Nikon just played a whole new set of tricks again, and Canon met them by another way, ignoring the deep dark colors few people get to display, but making their system easier, just as Nikon messed with their controls) – - I believe the similar is the same with tellys. Sure, if I paid a thousand or so more, maybe it would be easier to use!
Sorry Boys and Gals, for another long comment. Bottom line is this: Bring ON Direct Internet F1. Then my REC 709 calibration spec option will tell me things like what happened to “Marlboro Red” and I can sling the feed to any monitor I like, have live timing wherever I like, and more money will feed back into F1. ESPN do it. Sky has a option, but it sucks, is aimed at low spec screens. Oh, and I did not enjoy dealing with a Sky installer and dropping two sat cable feeds through my cabling conduits. This: this specialized thing, is what the internet is for. I think it once had a buzzword: narrowcast.
*Maybe avoid McDonald’s franchises on the Champs-Élysées: http://eyetap.blogspot.ca/
P.S. for rpaco: I am amused at Ol’ Rupe’s “Good Bank, Bad Bank” plan, but I wonder if he can do it emotionally. You can also find RTL or TF1 on Freesat if you can tweak your dish, or low res on fiddly streaming websites. The only commentary I’ve enjoyed this year has been from Gary Anderson on the beeb . .
And….. he’s back!
If Bernie is working on IPTV then I am afraid it won’t penetrate into Lincs. My max download rate is around 1.800Mbps average on mybroadbandspeed.com. This is not cable country, thought with the RAF station here it might just be worth putting it in. My son says “Sky sports channels are free this weekend, even via Virgin Media” mind he is down in Romsey.
So this morning I did finally find the bbc live online commentary which was actually delayed by around 20sec to the FOM F1 live timing page.
Ironically the video clips on the bbc site had the sound 2 sec ahead of the pic.
I don’t have freesat, am still struggling with the internet video on my Tosh tv, which I am sure has not got the right firmware for streaming vid as the new channels 100-110 etc wont work.
Waiting for quali with my DAB radio. Looks like it will be persisting down with electrical accompaniment according to http://www.wunderground.com/q/zmw:00000.6.10734
I would be interested to see if Karen can look at the viewing figures after the German GP, and see if there is an increase, given the current economic situation in Germany is not all that great. Forget about what the newspaper say, it is tight, and if there own home GP is in financial trouble, it could mean that the race isn’t a sell out like say Silverstone, and people just stay at home and watch it on TV, that is if it is free to air, or included in their current package.
My gut tells me that the figures will be down on those going to the race, even with 5 German drivers on the grid, and that viewing figures could hold or increase a little bit, as it is cheaper to sit at home with a beer than actually go to the track. (Sorry Joe, I know it’s your blog and not Karen’s)
Another thing to look at, and it means digging into the data, would be to see if ticket price increases and viewing figures are moving in the same or different direction to each other over say the last 3 to 5 years. We have seen this in some sports, where the ticket prices become just too expensive, so people stay at home or go to a pub and watch it there with friends and a drink. A lot cheaper than a day out.
Watched Sky (free online via thefirstrow) and jeeze it’s driving me mad. Every segment is over run with soddin muzik it becomes unbearable to listen then adverts everywhere
Now race is on and it’s as it should be but confirms I will never actually pay money for their sports coverage or anything else.