The pictures are better on the radio, they say. Since the Canadian Grand Prix wasn’t one of the BBC’s live Formula 1 races, and the highlights wouldn’t finish until gone midnight, I put that adage to the test on Sunday.

F1: not exactly a priority for 5 Live

But first the BBC put me to the test, in a game of find the coverage. Build up was scheduled to start at 18:45 on BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra, but that was dropped due to the cricket. The start of the race was bumped up to the main BBC Radio 5 Live, before Sports Extra was finished with the cricket at 19:30.

After about ten minutes, 5 Live had had quite enough of Formula 1, and decided to concentrate on some Euro 2012 build up – with a bit of cricket, which was also on Sports Extra. Thanks for that. Cue scrabbling around to get the online stream up and running. Frustrating? A little. But by that point I had live timing open on my laptop anyway, so I coped manfully.

You could argue that a less determined fan might have been put off by that sort of farting around, but frankly you’ve got to be a pretty determined fan to listen to Formula 1 on the radio in the first place. So annoying though it was, it’s probably not going to have affected listening figures very much.

Listening & viewing figures

Indeed, those listening figures were good – almost a million, according to 5 Live’s pit lane reporter Jennie Gow. That’s not far off the reported 1.6 million average for Sky. The BBC highlights averaged 2.3 million, compared to 6.3 million live last year.

Radio verdict

So, what about following a race on the radio – alongside live timing and Twitter, naturally? Not bad, actually.

Jonathan Legard was in the commentary box in place of James Allen, for reasons which aren’t immediately apparent – which was sort of fine. Jaime Alguersuari was a fairly insightful presence but, having now watched the BBC TV highlights, less so than David Coulthard – surprisingly. Jennie Gow barely registered – were her contributions as few and far between as I remember?

Listening on the radio certainly highlighted how little seat-of-the-pants action there was. Other than the start, overtakes were pretty much signposted a mile off, and I saw them on live timing first. But Legard did a reasonable job of describing the start, and the first half of the race went by in a haze of disgruntled tweets about the 5 Live coverage being passed from pillar to post.

After that it died down a bit – as it did on TV – until the super fun final stint, when Hamilton scythed through world champion after world champion to take the win. Live timing told that story perfectly, gaps and lap times laid bare, the inevitable clear to see. Had I been watching on TV, I’m not sure I would have been paying as much attention to the timing screen, and got as much out of it.

No: the pictures are better on the television

Still, I would rather have just watched it on TV. Not a waste of time though, by any means.

Photo Credit
BenJTsunami – Flickr – Some rights reserved

ITV4 has been covering the Isle of Man TT for a good few years now, and a grand old job it’s done. Indeed, I said the channel deserved a medal in 2009. But little has changed since then, so it’s about time for some mild criticism.

Time for more timing

The coverage has always done – and continues to do – a fantastic job of conveying the madness of racing motorbikes around the island’s roads at frightening speeds, averaging up to 130mph or so. But it’s never really got to grips with how to tell the story of the races.

With the TT races being time trials, and riders setting off individually at intervals, it’s tough to convey who’s fighting who for position on adjusted time. But rallying manages, doesn’t it?

We just need more timing data on screen. All we get at the moment is a frustratingly brief look at the top six at the end of each lap, and very occasional split times. It’s got to the point now that it’s even hobbling the commentators, who at times can’t even say who’s leading the race due to a lack of data.

It might be more fundamental than that, though: the highlights need to be built a little more around the race, rather than showing off fancy camera work. That way more timing data should almost come naturally.

Not that I want less fancy camera work, just for it to be used a bit more as a means to tell the story of the race, and not as an end in itself.

Less slow motion, more on-board

After all, the stunning footage is what makes the coverage so enjoyable.

It was the first place I remember seeing high motion cameras being used to produce the astonishing slow motion shots that we now see in a lot of motorsport coverage. I wouldn’t want to lose those great slow motion shots, but it’s no longer special enough to virtually build the coverage around.

What is special about the TT is riders speeding past walls and hedges at staggeringly close proximity. On-board cameras convey that better than anything, so that’s I’d like to see more of. The technology is getting better and smaller too, so there are loads of options – gyro cams, helmet cams, and more places on the bike to put cameras.

What has improved

I don’t want to be negative though. There have been improvements over the years: what was initially a curious commentary combination in Steve Parrish and James Whitham, for example, is now completely natural.

And this year’s coverage is still essential viewing. It’s just that it could be even better.

Photo Credit
Automotive Rhythms – Flickr – Some rights reserved

In the week since Casey Stoner announced his retirement from MotoGP at the end of the 2012 season, plenty has been written about him. One of the common themes has been his somewhat reluctant relationship with the media, which is often cited as one of the reasons that many fans aren’t keen on Stoner. This has always baffled me, for a few reasons.

Stoner on camera

I wouldn’t argue that Stoner is the most entertaining television personality in the MotoGP paddock. He doesn’t have the boyish charm of Valentino Rossi, he’s not as fond of jumping into lakes with his leathers on as Jorge Lorenzo, and he lacks the ever-present dry wit of Cal Crutchlow.

He might be more prone than most to what some would call moaning, but I’d call it critical analysis. Even if he’s won, he’s always looking for better. That’s admirable, at least to an extent, isn’t it?

But he also has his moments, doesn’t he? Like his habit last year of intentionally getting BBC pit-lane reporter Azi Farni’s name wrong on camera. That was funny!

In any case, Stoner’s post race interviews and the like have never struck me as anything less than cordial and professional.

Worse offenders

The same can’t be said of the monotone, monosyllabic Kimi Raikkonen. He’s actively unhelpful in interviews, yet has a massive, vocal, almost feral fan base. Why? I’ve never really understood.

Or what about Dani Pedrosa? I’d argue that he’s the least interesting of the frontrunning MotoGP riders. Maybe because he’s not quite as successful as Stoner, he doesn’t attract the same vitriol.

Vitriol which resulted in Stoner being booed at Donington Park in 2008. What did he do to deserve that? Win the race. I still find that shocking, disgraceful, and frankly embarrassing as a British motorsport fan.

Stoner on track

So yes, I’ve liked Stoner since he entered MotoGP on the LCR Honda. Why? Because he’s a staggeringly good rider, and hugely entertaining to watch on track. He might not enjoy the other aspects of his job, but he doesn’t avoid engaging with the media. Seriously – what more do people want?

Photo Credit
Shyha – Flickr – Some rights reserved

Such is the advantage of brand new tyres in Formula 1 this season, teams and drivers are becoming tempted to play silly buggers in qualifying, staying in the garage to avoid using up that precious pristine rubber.

That’s what happened in Q3 for the Spanish Grand Prix today, when only seven times were set. Kobayashi stopped on track at the end of Q2, Schumacher and Vettel only did out laps – and Rosberg only posted what looked like a half-arsed time.

So, what can be done? I have some ideas:

• Any driver who doesn’t go out in a session, has to hand their car over to a paying spectator to give them a go. That should bump up the motivation to get out there.
• Give the teams more tyres. Hundreds of the bloody things. Happy now?
• Trial by Twitter. If you don’t go out, you have to convince the baying hordes on social media that it was for a good reason. Good luck with that.
• Award points for pole position – or the front row, or top three.
• It doesn’t have to be points. Hand out sweets for pole position. Or a yacht. Whatever it is modern F1 drivers like.
• Whoever comes last in Q3 has to do a forfeit – wear stupid overalls for the race or something. You know, like the McLaren drivers had to for qualifying last season.

There, all of those would definitely work. FIA, you’re welcome.

Photo Credit
richjjones / Rich Jones – Flickr – Some rights reserved

As already mentioned today, the Bahrain Grand Prix was the BBC’s first prime time Formula 1 highlights show. So, I thought it’d be interesting to have a look at the viewing figures.

For this sort of thing, we must consult The Guardian.

Live coverage on Sky averaged 0.7 million viewers. At teatime, the BBC highlights grabbed an average of 3.6 million. That’s a ‘total’, for what it’s worth, of 4.3 million viewers.

Of course, there was no Bahrain Grand Prix in 2011. But if we go back to 2010, that had an average of 4.8 million viewers for the BBC’s exclusive live coverage.

So, it looks like the combination of live pay-TV coverage and prime time free-to-air highlights hasn’t yielded the increased viewing figures that some expected.

Or it hasn’t yet: this is an inexact science, and one data point does not make a trend. Increased ratings could come as viewing habits adjust to the new model. Or could not. Either way, it’ll be interesting to keep an eye on.

Photo Credit
Kevin Simpson / videocrab – Flickr – Some rights reserved

Four races into the 2012 Formula 1 season, we’ve now seen each of the three forms that the BBC coverage will take this year. That’s live, and the two types of highlights – which were trailed as 120 minutes at lunchtime for early morning races, and 90 minutes at teatime for European time zone races.

Seems like a good time to shovel out some opinions, then.

The early fly aways: a good start

The first two fly away races were both highlights only: 120 minutes for the Australian Grand Prix; 115 minutes for the Malaysian Grand Prix. Having seen only these highlights, I didn’t feel like I’d missed anything significant.

The BBC hadn’t forgotten how to do live coverage by the time the Chinese Grand Prix came around; the 195 minutes didn’t strike me as noticeably out of place compared to the last three seasons.

The Bahrain Grand Prix: a bad job

Then we get to the first race of the year in a European time zone: the Bahrain Grand Prix. For that we got 80 minutes of highlights. Now, I hate to agree with the BBC blogs angry mob, but it wasn’t good.

The running time was a bad start: ten minutes less than the expected hour and a half. Whacking 11 percent off the duration of a highlights show is no small matter.

Then there was the curious decision to include only 50 minutes of actual race coverage. Devoting half an hour of the already shorter than expected show to build up and post-race interviews is pretty much inexplicable.

Funnily enough, I’m not sure that a lack of time was the real problem. Last season, the 60 minute highlights show was all I saw of a number of races, and without cause to complain.

No, I think the highlights of the Bahrain Grand Prix were just badly put together. It was, to my mind, a matter of ‘action’ taking priority over ‘story’: so you saw the overtakes, but got no sense of one driver catching another. Maybe it was a difficult race to cut down, but whatever the reason, the result was quite unsatisfactory.

And the air of inconsistency wasn’t helped by the wildly varying light levels of the post-race segments, which had obviously been recorded at different times.

But I’m not convinced that the rest of the ‘90 minute’ highlights shows will be a similar mess up. Hopefully this weekend was just a bad job, and the rest of the European highlights-only races will be more satisfactory. I think they will be.

The new boys

A couple of quick thoughts on the BBC team to finish with.

I found Martin Brundle and David Coulthard a little dry as a commentary team last year. Ben Edwards has, as I’d hoped, injected a bit of excitable enthusiasm into proceedings, and he’s gelling with Coulthard faster than I would have anticipated.

Gary Anderson strikes me as a bit of an untapped resource at this stage though. He’s clearly got a lot of good stuff in that big old head, but it doesn’t feel like he’s popping up in the commentary anything like as much as Ted Kravitz did. I’d like to hear much more of what he’s thinking, please.

Photo Credit
DumbYellowDog / Cameron Rogers – Flickr – Some rights reserved

Plato is very ironically named really. He could do with thinking things through a bit sometimes. #BTCC

— Peter Allen (@PeteAllen_) April 1, 2012

The BTCC continues this weekend at Donington Park, so I thought I’d answer the question we’re all asking: how does Jason Plato compare to Plato?

	Plato	Jason Plato
Born	Sometime between 429 and 423 BC, probably in Athens or Aegina, Greece.	14th October 1967, in Oxford, England.
Education	Student of Socrates, mentor to Aristotle. Founded the Academy in Athens, the Western world’s first institution of higher learning.	Public school educated at The King’s School, Tynemouth. Former BTCC and WTCC driver Harry Vaulkhard – now in the Euro Racecar Series, incidentally – also went there.
Achievements	Helping to lay the foundations of Western philosophy and science.	Twice BTCC champion, in 2001 and 2010. 1996 Renault Spider Cup champion, 1991 Formula Renault Eurocup champion.
Works	36 dialogues and 13 letters, on subjects including philosophy, logic, ethics, rhetoric, and mathematics.	A weekly column in The Sun; Fifth Gear for Channel 5, Driven for Channel 4, Mission Implausible for Sky One. Mainly on the subject of cars, though the latter on the subject of stunts.
Criticism	Carl Sagan: “Plato expressed hostility to observation and experiment. He taught contempt for the real world and disdain for the practical application of scientific knowledge. Plato’s followers succeeded in extinguishing the light of science and experiment that had been kindled by Democritus and the other Ionians.”	Just keep an eye on #BTCC on Twitter on a race weekend and you’ll see plenty. Generally not quite as eloquent as Carl Sagan, mind.

Quite similar, then.

Credits
Source: Wikipedia. For everything. Always.
Plato photo: Marie-Lan Nguyen – Wikimedia Commons – Some rights reserved
Jason Plato photo: CraigMoulding – Flickr – Some rights reserved

I don’t have a problem with the MotoGP coverage on the BBC – I actively enjoy it, most of the time. But trying to nail down exactly what is on and where can be… challenging. I’ve lost count of the number of posts like this I’ve written, attempting to clearly lay out how to catch the coverage.

The Qatar GP and the Dutch TT at Assen tend to be the problems, falling inconveniently on Sunday evening and Saturday lunchtime respectively, rather than the regular Sunday lunchtime. Like it or not, for a mainstream – not to mention public service – broadcaster like the BBC, making room for them outside of the regular MotoGP slot is tricky.

2012 Qatar GP on the BBC

Onto the practicalities of this weekend, then. I’ve tried to spell it out as clearly as I can in the panel on the right.

In short, qualifying for all three classes on Saturday will be on the BBC Red Button and online, from 15:55 to 19:00. The BBC Red Button schedule is a bit vague, but it looks unlikely that it will be available on Freeview.

The MotoGP race on Sunday is straightforward, if not entirely satisfactory: 19:30 to 21:00 on the BBC Red Button, including Freeview, and the BBC Sport website. Then there will be a full repeat on BBC One and BBC One HD from 23:25. Yes, MotoGP will be in HD all year on the BBC.

Where it gets complicated is the support races. The BBC Red Button and BBC Sport website will carry coverage between 16:55 and 19:05. The Freeview stream, however, will finish at 18:30. With the Moto3 race at 17:00 and Moto2 at 18:20, only the very start of the Moto2 race will be on Freeview.

Why?

This is where I start to get agitated.

Masters Golf has a stream on the Red Button 18:15-23:00. An hour of this, 18:30-19:30, is on Freeview. And for that, the BBC chops off the majority – but not all – of the Moto2 race.

Surely there are two logical options here: leave Qatar after Moto3, and show the Masters Golf from the start of the stream; or show the Moto2 race in full.

Cutting away from the Moto2 race to join the golf coverage late seems nothing short of perverse. Who exactly is it meant to satisfy?

Ho hum. At least it’s all online.

Photo Credit
Alex Simonini / Absolutely Simple – Flickr – Some rights reserved

Italics

It’s lovely that McLaren have a new sponsor to put on their rear wing, but the Lucozade logo irks me slightly every time it catches my eye. It’s the use of red and a italics. It looks… American. A bit NASCAR, in some unquantifiable way. Not that there’s anything wrong with looking American – whatever that actually means. It just clashes with the refined – for want of a better word – style that McLaren go in for.

The Cube(s)

Then there’s the BBC’s new title sequence. The pulsating car is curious in itself, but it complements ‘The Chain’ as it builds. Fine. But why, as the car pulsates, does it shed little cubes? It just looks… weird. Not in an interesting or artistic way, just baffling. Or am I missing something?

Photo Credit
McLaren: Dawin Wongsodihardjo /niwad25 – Flickr – Some right reserved

Pick TV is a funny channel. It exists pretty much as a means for Sky to advertise their wares to a free-to-air audience, hence its place on Freeview et al. When it was known as Sky 3, it even had a few shows that people might actually want to watch, to boot.

Now, however, it’s anything but funny, consisting almost exclusively of ageing fly-on-the-wall series and blooper shows. To glance at its schedule is to peer into a cold, dark chasm of creative bankruptcy. It’s mainly awful.

Sky Sports F1 HD launch

However! Sky do occasionally still use the channel to give non-subscribers a little sniff of what they’re missing on the other side of the wall in the perfumed pay TV garden – the Free Weekend Pass, for example.

Now, you might not have noticed – they’ve been pretty subtle about it – but Sky launched a little something called Sky Sports F1 HD on Friday night. The first programme was a 2012 preview edition of the imaginatively titled The F1 Show, the channel’s regular magazine show presented by Georgie Thompson and Ted Kravitz. It seemed to go down quite well.

Wisely, that show is being pumped out on Pick TV – on Sunday night at 10pm (hat tip to @f1zone via @wtf1couk). What better way to convert the undecided viewer?

That’s being preceded by a Grand Prix Greats edition of Time Of Our Lives at 9pm, featuring Nigel Mansell, Damon Hill and Murray Walker looking back at the British success of the ’90s. That’s also being broadcast on Sky Sports F1 HD a number of times this week, though from what I can gather the programme is a couple of years old.

BBC counter punch

It’s been amusing to watch Sky and the BBC manoeuvring around each other in the off season. Sky welcomed selected bloggers through their doors, so the BBC felt it had to do the same, for example.

So on Friday, an hour before Sky launched its F1 channel, Jake Humphrey and David Coulthard appeared on The One Show. Probably not a particularly effective counter punch – it was all rather panto.

But it goes to show that this competition between broadcasters is clearly making them both try harder, which can only increase the quality of coverage for viewers – wherever they’re watching.