Last year's ratings were the highest since 1999, so probably not.

Doesn't follow at all. How many changes were there from ITV? BBC/The Leg was 20 steps forward and one back.

Commentator 1: Jonathan Legard
Commentator 2: James Allen
PITLANE GOSSIP: Ted Kravitz
INTERVIEWS: Eddie Jordan
LIFESTYLE: Beverley Turnip (she's fitter than Lee or Louise)
PRESENTER: Jake Humphries
ANALYST 1: Martin Brundle
ANALYST 2: Tony Jardine

Bring It On!!!

Comparing ITV vs BBC will just give you the same results as football. People will ALWAYS watch the same World Cup match on BBC if it's on both channels, no matter who is commentating or who the pundits are.

See my thread here: http://forums.autosport.com/index.php?showtopic=112436 (in particular graph #1 a bit down)

I don't think it's total blind faith. I watch BBC sport because the entire production, start intro to end credits is far superior to ITV. They simply do a better job, end of story. Always have. And I happen to like the pundits too.. again, BBC have a habit of getting the best pundits. Michael Johnson on their Athletics coverage being a good example.

Also the lack of adverts. Nobody wants to watch a programme that's full of adverts if they can watch the exact same thing on another channel at the same time with no adverts. The fact BBC have better.........well, everything basically, compared to ITV just helps them even more (not just F1 but also things like World Cup football).

Hence the numerous shaky camera angles or complete no-brain cuts to bits of tarmac we saw on the BBC!

I wouldn't call EJ or DC two of the best pundits, but I see their value and some people like them. EJ is annoying but can entertain somewhat, DC offers bland spiel in the Blundell sense without any of Blundell's inability to string coherent words together.



It's not really answering his point is it, though. Your figures are all very well and good, but they don't give you all the answers, so stop trying to link to them whenever a question about figures comes up

Yeah, good point.

In summary, I'd say ratings went up for 2009 because of Button and the BBC as a whole. As Alexis*27 said, BBC events tend to get higher than ITV's because their promotion methods are massively wider than ITV's promotion. (internet, radio etc which ITV don't have)

Better.

It really wouldn't have been hard or expensive for ITV to do a better practice feed and an onboard feed for the internet, would it

Well as Don Humpador has pointed out, your graph shows an increase in viewing figures. Great .

But are you really saying this is thanks to the main commentary? Half of the main commentary in fact.

As opposed to the rise of new contenders, Button, Vettel, or no adverts, Jake, free practice coverage, red button...

It's not relevant data at all, as well you know

This has happened despite Legard. Whose continuing appointment as an F1 commentator remains a mystery.

BBC Red Button
Live coverage of all on-track sessions including practice sessions plus the following options:
- Network feed with choice of commentary from 5 Live or TV for qualifying and Grands Prix



Can anyone help me?
As a member of a tiny minority who chose the No commentary option last year, will it still be available this year?

I can see why they dropped the kids commentary as it didn't quite work. Perry & ? (forgotten his name) were very good but the silly inserted game bits spoilt the flow.

Will be totally gutted if No commentary is not available

well they (the BBC) get our money, so..

Well you're argument was that ratings would have been higher without Legard. People tune in to watch a race. If they don't like it, they tune out. They don't tune in to tune back out because 'they don't like the commentary'.

Turn the sound off and just screech and growl to yourself

Better promotion as well, they had trailers and promos before the season began, I don't recall ITV ever having too much of that.



I've been wondering, is it possible to distinguish the amount of people who are watching BBC1 and the number of people who have pressed the red button on BBC1? I'm guessing - just guessing - that the commentary figures on 301/302 from last year were able to be counted.

Also what counts to a "rating" - how long does someone need to be watching for it to be counted as a rating? 25% of the show? 50%? 75%?

The commentary is part of the show. PART OF .

With your argument they could just take any unpaid volunteer off this forum and save the money they waste on Legard.

Yeah, I had that on loud through the hifi and the radio with Ant & Crofty on quiet

A question, did you use a DAB radio or a standard wavelength radio?

When I didn't have radio commentary last year I had to mute the TV and put the radio on, I used a DAB one but it was a bit of out sync, is it just the DAB ones that are out of sync with the TV? I would appreciate knowing how you did it last year since I'm guessing this year I'll have to carry on muting it!

I couldn't get the "no-commentary" option, unfortunately. Would've been more useful to me than the onboard feed..

Based on figures I seen last year, about 200,000 to 400,000 watched practice. Britain was a bit higher, an average of 522,000 watched the sessions. Alternative commentary options had approximately the same amount.



Apologies if the following sounds complicated. Ratings are measured minute-by-minute by BARB. The minute-by-minute averages gives the 'average' rating (or viewership) for the entire programme from start duration, i.e. at 12:10 and end duration at 15:00. Let's take the following 10-minute programme, as an example, i.e. a news bulletin.

18:00 - 2.1m (19.0%)
18:01 - 2.2m (18.9%)
18:02 - 2.3m (18.4%)
18:03 - 2.4m (18.2%)
18:04 - 2.5m (18.6%)
18:05 - 2.6m (19.0%)
18:06 - 2.7m (18.8%)
18:07 - 2.8m (18.2%)
18:08 - 2.3m (15.4%)
18:09 - 1.9m (09.9%)

So say in the above, 18:00 represents the period between 18:00:00 and 18:00:59, and 18:09 represents the period 18:09:00 to 18:09:59. (which is the reason that 18:10 isn't on there, as that covers 18:10:00 to 18:10:59, which is outside of the broadcasted period). So just as an example, 2.1m people were watching between 18:00:00 and 18:00:59, which was equivalent to a 19.0% viewing share at that time. A viewing share is the 'share' of people watching at that time, which is a reason why Formula 1 usually has very high viewing shares, as it is on at a time when only 10 million people. So it may have 4.5m viewers, which is relatively low, but it'd have a 45% viewing share, which for its timeslot would be brilliant. Normally, viewing is in 5-minute portions (for whatever reason the 1-minute portion like the ones I gave above are rarely reported). Using the same example above:

18:00 - 2.3m (18.6%)
18:05 - 2.5m (16.5%)

18:00 this time represents 18:00 to 18:04:59, otherwise known as a 5-minute breakdown. Same data as above, except it has been 'merged' into 5-minute chunks (for an F1 Qualifying breakdown of a similar nature click here). The whole broadcast from 18:00 to 18:10 would give an average of 2.4m (17.5%).

I don't know who it's actually done technically as I don't have a BARB box (whether a signal is sent at every half minute or something), I've probably gone into way to much detail there, but that's an overview of how ratings are calculated.

I used a DAB radio and FreeSat. I can't remember about any sync problems TBH, I had the volumes so different that the speech was just decipherable. The hifi drowned out any similar noises coming from the radio, only the different ones came though . But might be worse with terrestrial, not sure.

Should be even better this year with no football news. I plan to experiment some more if they give us a no commentary option.

Thank you, that's actually higher than I thought it'd be. For practice I imagined a figure of around 50,000-70,000. Surprisingly good!

Are the alternative commentary figures calculated separately from the BBC1 figures or are they lumped together (when you publish the BBC1 figures, are the alternative commentary figures included within that, is what I mean)?




Again, thanks for your answers, no problem about the complexity, I asked the question so it's my can of worms to open!



Hmm, okay, thanks, I'm on Freeview so I don't know whether that would make any difference with regards to the sync issues..



Hadn't heard about this. I knew Swayles was mentioning he'd wanted to do something last year but I hadn't heard more about it. Did I miss it in the press release? Do we know who it will be available to and how it will work?

Thanks both of you for your answers

I just read on here from 'a BBC member' that the Ant&Crofty show would no longer be plagued with the interruptions for football news. So sensible I'm just believing it for now.

Just as a FYI, that hasn't been finalised yet, but is currently under discussion with 5 Live bosses.



They're not lumped together. The alternative commentary figures are straight from BBC. Also, it'd only cover the actual race, whereas the figures I have (4.3m, 4m, 4.2m etc...) are for the entire programme, so its not a simple matter of doing 4m + 0.4m. Besides the fact that I don't think it'd make too much difference I don't think.

they are not "measured" minute by minute (in fact anything to do with BARB ratings or Nielsen in the US, the term measure is massively generous, most everyone in broadcasting uses the phrase "wildly crude guesstimation")

the box records when the TV is switched on and what channel it is tuned to ... when some family member comes into a room to watch the program, they press their respective button on BARB handset, pressing it again when they leave for a piss or go out for the night ... you genuinely believe that sorta old fashioned nuclear-family, watch with mother, everyone crowded round waiting for the valves to warm-up, sorta system really captures the current nuance of a multi-channel, multi-room, multi-media, multi-tasking 21st entertainment consumption type situation ... that it genuinely qualifies as realistically "minute-by-minute".

we think you've made the fundamental schoolboy error of confusing precision with accuracy ... they are not the same.
BARB is notorious for over-estimating the mainstream and underestimating the minority,
(even accounting for early adopter skews, the iPlayer stats show how crude and statistically-smeary the basic BARB extrapolation methodology is)

it's a nice little fetish you've got going on with these BARB numbers, and that's cute, you knock yourself out, don't let anyone here stop you, but don't kid yourself that the data is going to reveal anything of any sort of fundamental interest or insight, or something useful or persuasive in this sort of thread, it's a crude simplistic array of numbers, it's an inaccurate reply to the wrong question.

My comment was a response to someone else, I wasn't 'planning' to put that in here. I'd say the ratings are pretty accurate for the main channels, which F1 is of course on. I'm not saying that there are 100% accurate, but I think there's a 2/3% margin error.

And they do actual reveal things, as it goes.

That would infer they'd be two feeds. It would be great if we could have the same quality of sound and lose the muffling of the cars as well.

http://www.autosport.com/news/grapevine.php/id/81317

The selfish part of me says: "Yay! Woo!"

The other bit says: "Oh rubbish. Deserves to be driving in F1."

Shame, I thought Ant deserved another chance. I was hoping he might take over from Pedro and be on the inside at McLaren , at least.

Trust you

http://www.football-league.co.uk/features/...2249035_1956112

Well Lee, I'd like to see you ask a question which isn't utterly shit.

I can't believe they're having her back, she's dreadful.

To be honest, all she does is ask for people's opinions and thoughts... it's not like she has a massive wide range of questions to ask.

What would like to see - well her asking the questions in just her undies would be a step forward....

we could sort out what she actually asks them later.

Then she shouldn't be there. Someone else could be used. Why not Holy Samos? It's not like when they interview a driver after he's retired (and "must be bitterly disappointed") it's beamed out live anyway.

Glad to see the BBC is continuing with the same team as last year....well apart from Legard...but thats to be expected, its not like the BBC to admit to mistakes....oh well, one day we may see James Allen back in his rightful place.

He's already in his rightful place, he is a brilliant journalist

He is a good journo. However (when not in fanboy mode (even though it was plainly ITV fanboy)) he wasn't a bad commentator. In fact this year would have proven interesting to see which mode he would be in. Hamilton, Button, Schumacher or Alonso. In fact I think he'd be less bias this year. At least his voice was enthusiastic.

If it wasn't for Brundle, I'd listen to Ant and Crofty. They come across as a proper double act. They bounce off each other well, they have chemistry. Thats what Brundle and Legard dont have. You can slate James Allen (and trust me I have as I couldn't stand him) but he and Brundle had chemistry.

I'll say, last night I watched the opening credits to the Australian GP. After I realised how close it is now getting, I started to get really excited.

(runs off to watch it again )

But he's always been a journalist even before he started doing commentary.

there aren't many guys up to the job of commentating for F1, and Allen is probably only second to Edwards

http://twitter.com/Original_Stig/status/9054668845

Just came across this article on BBC F1:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/motorsport...one/8516386.stm

Why aren't the BBC reporting these stories themselves? Is it open acknowledgement that their F1 website is article light and media heavy? I think BBCs coverage is excellent, a big improvement over ITV but ITV-F1.com still has arguably better and more articles written on it.

For example this is an excellent round up of testing from last week with times http://www.itv-f1.com/Feature.aspx?Type=General&id=47793

That would be because ITV-F1.com is run by the Autosport guys. see: http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/showpos...;postcount=4325

You have any other source of this?

Haymarket look after the ITV-F1 website...

http://www.haymarket.com/itv/itv-f1com_website/default.aspx

Yes Haymarket, but "Autosport guys"?

If I'm to quote from the Haymarket page:

'A dedicated team of experienced motorsport journalists provide comprehensive and in-depth news, analysis and comment on the latest events in the F1 world from each race.'

...which would suggest that Autosport guys look after the page, and that is one of the reasons why ITV would have more articles on their website compared to BBC.

Autosport and ITV-F1 work completely independently, Autosport and it's staff have absolutely nothing to do with it.