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Nick_L

By Nick_L
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Meers

Meers

Posted
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Karthikeyan slams Vettel.

"For a world champion to say things like that is really shameful," Narain Karthikeyan told HT. "It is really unprofessional. For a driver who has achieved so much to take out his frustrations on me just because he is having a difficult year is really sad. One does not expect a profes sional sportsman to be such a crybaby."

What's got India's first Formula One driver speaking so frankly is this comment from defending double world champion Sebastian Vettel; "Just like on the normal roads you have some idiots driving around, it seems like there is also one driving here."

Vettel's comments came in the wake of an incident on lap 47 of the 56-lap Malaysian Grand Prix, where the German punctured his Red Bull's left rear tyre after clipping the front wing of Karthikeyan's HRT. After dropping from fourth to eventually finish 11th, Vettel vented his frustrations on live television while speaking to the BBC. He didn't mention Karthikeyan by name, but it was very apparent who Vettel was referring to.

Karthikeyan found an unlikely supporter in Vettel's compatriot and Force India driver Nico Hulkenberg, who had seen a replay of the incident. "I've seen the incident," Hulkenberg told reporters at a promo event at the Buddh International Circuit. "It wasn't Narain's fault."

Karthikeyan, whose car suffered massive wheelspin on the still wet kerbs just as Vettel came up to lap him, made it clear that he couldn't have left any more room for Vettel to go past. Vettel also made a slight move to the left where Karthikeyan's car was placed following the exit of turn eight.

Karthikeyan made this abundantly clear when he was summoned by the FIA stewards and was disappointed that his side of the story fell on seemingly deaf ears.

"They didn't care about what I had to say because Mr Vettel told them god knows what when he went and talked to them," said Karthikeyan.

Getting support

Former 13-time Grand Prix winner, Red Bull driver and current BBC television pundit David Coulthard has also gone on record as calling the incident a racing incident where neither driver was at fault. Coulthard, in fact, even alluded to an incident when Vettel and Mark Webber were involved in an accident in the 2010 Turkish GP where Vettel was seen as weaving to the left as he tried to defend his position against the Australian.

Karthikeyan stopped short of blaming Vettel for the incident, calling it a racing incident in which neither driver was at fault. Karthikeyan was having a good race, running as high as 10th place, when the race was red flagged on lap eight due to atrocious weather conditions. His advantage lay in having started on full wet tyres while the majority of the drivers on the grid were on intermediates.

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Headache

Headache

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The TV viewing figures for the first GP are out.

http://www.guardian....lian-grand-prix

More than a million viewers watched the climax to the first grand prix of the season on Sky's new Formula 1 channel but its overall audience was down 75% on BBC1's coverage last year.

Season opener the Australian Grand Prix, the first to be broadcast exclusively by Sky, had an average audience of 526,000 viewers between 4.30am and 9am on Sunday, with a five-minute peak of 1.02 million as Jenson Button took the chequered flag.

http://www.f1fanatic...-first-f1-race/

]However multiple sources have reported their first F1 broadcast attracted a peak audience of 1.02 million viewers. This represents a fall of over 2 million compared to the figure recorded by the BBC for last year’s live race.

The BBC reported a peak of 3.2 million people watched their highlights programme, over one million more than their repeat of the race in a similar time slot attracted last year.

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McCoy

McCoy

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I think they are remarkably good viewing figures for Sky. I'm not sure any program on Sky regularly gets more than 1 million viewers does it? For instance, Glee which can be considered a popular program gets less than 400k viewers a week.

I would expect most people will be fairly happy with these results. Sky would have been pleased with the good viewing figures and if I read it correctly more people watched the BBC 1 Broadcast than did when they were showing the complete race. All in all over 4 million viewers combined, which sounds broadly similar to previous viewing levels.

Oh, and for the millionth time, Sky didn't take away F1 from the BBC. The BBC actively wanted to get shot of F1 and preferred to agree to a joint deal with Sky rather than letting Channel 4 have the exclusive rights.

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John0

John0

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I think they are remarkably good viewing figures for Sky. I'm not sure any program on SKy regularly gets more than 1 million viewers does it? For instance, Glee which can be considered a popular program gets less than 400k viewers a week.

I would expect most people will be fairly happy with these results. Sky would have been pleased with the good viewing figures and if I read it correctly more people watched the BBC 1 Broadcast than did when they were showing the complete race live. All in all over 4 million viewers combined, which sounds broadly similar to previous viewing levels.

Oh, and for the millionth time, Sky didn't take away F1 from the BBC. The BBC actively wanted to get shot of F1 and preferred to agree to a joint deal with Sky rather than letting Channel 4 have the exclusive rights.

Big plus 1 for this post. Spot on.

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McCoy

McCoy

Posted
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It's from a Gamefaqs thread so take with a huge pinch of salt but here we are:

2.7m - Football (Super Sunday)

980k - Golf (Ryder Cup)

920k - Darts (PDC WC Final)

850k - Cricket (Ashes)

570k - Rugby Union (England v SA)

370k - Rugby League (Four Nations Final)

350k - Boxing

340k - Tennis (US Open)

240k - NFL

230k - WWE

210k - Sailing (Americas Cup)

http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/584743-football/62373412

If those are typical figures then Formula 1 has slotted in right behind football. Which considering the presence of the BBC highlights package and the early time of the race is not a bad result at all. Do we know if the quoted Sky F1 figures take into account people who Sky+ the race or watched it on Sky F1 during one of the repeats throughout the day?

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McCoy

McCoy

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I've managed to answer my own question, apparently the figure does include time shifting.

Sky drives up the ratings

BSkyB's coverage of the second grand prix of the year, in the slightly more time zone-friendly Malaysia, managed an average audience of 964,000 from 7.30am.

BSkyB claims that coverage on its new Formula One channel saw a peak 15-minute audience of 1.5 million at 11.30am.

Overnight ratings include both live and timeshifted viewing on the day of transmission, so it is likely that a considerable proportion of the F1 audience came from people watching a recording of the race later in the day.

The satellite broadcaster's coverage of the first grand prix, in Australia, managed an average audience of 526,000 vieewers between 4.30am and 9am on Sunday 18 March.

Live coverage of the race itself, which ran from 6am to 7.40am, was watched by an average of 874,000 viewers.

BBC1's Malaysian Grand Prix – Highlights averaged 2.7 million viewers and a 27.8% share on Sunday afternoon from 2.45pm.

All ratings are Barb overnight figures, including live, +1 (except for BBC and some other channels including Sky1) and same day timeshifted (recorded) viewing, but excluding on demand, or other – unless otherwise stated. Figures for BBC1, ITV1, Channel 4 and Channel 5 generally include ratings for their HD simulcast services, unless otherwise stated

http://www.guardian....ers?INTCMP=SRCH

So even better results for the second race for Sky then. It will be very interesting what happens when the first Race is shown Live on both channels.

I also doubt that that the above figures include people, like myself, watching through Sky Go or online since I don't think Barb monitors such viewers but again I could be wrong.

In fairness, Sky don't really care about the viewing figures. The only figures they care about will be internal and it will be of how many new subscribers they have gained due to having the F1. The race could be watched by 10 million people and it would still be considered a disappointment if they were 10 million existing subscribers. Conversely, 100,000 people could have watched the race but if all 100,000 were brand new subscribers paying at least £30 a month it would be considered a major success.

Of course, I am sure that Sky are also making a pretty penny from the commercials surrounding the race. Take for instance the commercials after the race has finished but whilst the post race coverage is still ongoing. You've got a lot of eye balls probably glued to the screen all of which will be probably mostly male, fairly affluent and with an interest in cars. I'm sure there are many companies who have products they really want to sell to that particular market.

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McCoy

McCoy

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It is, but they got 500,000 not 1 mil.

Peaked at over 1 million and the lower figure was the average of the entire program, e.g. the entire build up and the post race analysis including the actual race. I'm a pretty big fan but even I skipped most of the pre-race bollocks for Australia due to the early time it was on. I would imagine if they stripped out just the race that it was fairly consistently near that 1 million mark. I can't imagine many people thought they would just turn the TV on for the final lap to see who wins...

And the second race the average of the entire program was near the million mark, with the high point being around 1.5 million (again, going on my logic, meaning that most of the race would have been around this figure as well).

I'm not an apologise for Sky, I just think the figures that we are seeing are figures that Sky will be very pleased with and are pretty much in the ball park that I was expecting (slightly higher in all honesty). Sky is never going to compete with the BBC figures because BBC is free to air and the races so far have been early morning races. As I say, I want to see figures for the first race screen live on both Sky and the BBC. That will be the interesting one.

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