16/04/2019
NEWS STORY
First off, the deal which has seen live F1 coverage all but disappear from British TV screens this year was agreed under the sport's old ownership.
This year marks the first year of said deal which means that all races, qualifying sessions and practice sessions are shown live only on Sky, Britain's main subscription broadcaster.
The one race that remains free-to-air is the British Grand Prix, though with the Silverstone event in the final year of its contract and a new deal yet to be agreed - not to mention Cardiff failing to agree to a race in time - fans in the UK may soon lose event that.
Due to an anomaly in the way TV viewing numbers are collected, the available data for the season opener gave little insight, however this was not the case with the second round of the world championship, in Bahrain.
To explain, viewer numbers are collated by the Broadcasters' Audience Research Board (BARB), which is joint-owned by six networks, including Sky, Channel 4 and the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA), the trade body for advertising, media and marketing agencies in Britain.
Such is the regard in which BARB's data is held, it is referred to as the ‘gold standard' and is the official measurement of TV viewing that British networks use to sell their advertising spots.
However, the system that BARB uses sees the broadcasting day begin at 06:00, seemingly because from the early 1980s this became the traditional time that breakfast programming began. As a result, though it is rare, when a broadcast is spread across the 06:00 threshold it tends to confuse the figures.
According to Forbes, "this is because there is a risk of the BARB log entry being cut off at the 6am threshold thereby making the programme appear shorter than it actually is".
Understandably, this can often prove to be a problem, particularly for sporting events, the Australian Grand Prix, which got underway at 06:00 (GMT) being one of them.
Not so Bahrain, which kicked off at 16:10 in the UK.
In a bold move, it was agreed that Channel 4's highlights show would be broadcast at peak viewing time, a move that FOM was confident would prove popular with fans.
Indeed, F1's global research director Matt Roberts had claimed in December that the new agreement would see a dramatic increase in viewing number.
"Channel 4 will have the highlights next year and we have worked with them to ensure they show the races in a favourable prime time slot," he said. "We estimate that we will actually have more viewers next year in the UK (thanks to this prime time slot) than we had this year."
In fact, according to Forbes, BARB's figures reveal that Channel 4 attracted 1.6 million viewers on TV, 16,869 watching on PC/laptop, 4,881 on a tablet and just 3,987 on a smartphone.
"It gives the highlights show a total of 1,658,137 viewers which was lower than the audience for other programmes shown in the same time slot in the week leading up to the race, lower than Married at First Sight, 24 hours in Police Custody and Gogglebox, which was watched by 3.5 million people.
Indeed, the show attracted Channel 4's lowest audience for the Bahrain race since it started showing F1 in 2016. Previously, its live broadcast of the event had steadily increased from 2.42 million in 2016 to 2.85 million in 2017, reaching a peak of 2.94 million in 2018.
Fact is, no matter how incident-filled the race was, no matter the controversy or the amount of overtaking, despite Mr Roberts confidence, who really wants to tune into a highlights show several hours after the race, especially when the BBC is showing the highly popular Line of Duty and ITV is showing Victoria.
The dramatic crash reveals two core flaws in Liberty's thinking.
While the first is that putting a highlights show up against some of your rivals most popular peak-time shows is never going to be a winner, the second is that it is the (live) racing itself that attracts fans, for once the result is 'out there' - especially following a yawn-fest as that witnessed this Sunday - what's the point in tuning in several hours later to see the best bit?
As for Sky, though quick to boast about its figures for the opening race, it has yet to reveal its figures for Bahrain.
Then again, collating Sky's figures is far from easy, a situation not helped by the fact that the opening three races have not only been shown on the dedicated F1 channel but also - effectively for free - on Sky One.
And talking of Sky F1, has anyone else noticed that this year, if you record the majority of the F1 weekend coverage, your box also records - and series links - those programmes you didn't necessarily want to record?