index of screwocity

Obviously I don't generally blog over the weekend, but the beeb announced just how badly they're going to screw us F1 fans on Friday night, so I figured a special blog was warranted.

My overall feeling is that the news is very mixed.

Firstly, they've announced two types of highlights packages - a 90minute version and a 120minute version.  Obviously we will have to wait and see what this actually means, but in theory they could actually show all of the race is a 120minute "highlight" package, because races are limited to 120minutes.

In reality guess is that really this means that the 90min package will feature half an hour of flannel (the "analysis" stuff) and then 30 mins f racing and the 120min package will also have 30mins of flannel and 90 mins of racing.

~The other announcement is a bit weird in that it says those races in the "eastern time zone" will be the 120mins and those in the "European time zone" will be 120mins.  This is complicated because some races are shown in the evening/night in order to bring them into the European time zone.

But also, of more importance, what about the races in the "western time zone", which is to say those races in Canada and Texas, but also Australia - what time zone is that in?

So really it's about as clear as mud as to how good/bad the highlights will be.  Certainly I'm slightly relieved that they also seem to be saying that they will be showing a separate highlights show for qualifying.

But what about the races they will be showing in full?

This is where it become a real mixed bag.

The first thing to note is that there is a new race next year - Austin.  There's some doubt if it will go ahead, but what it does mean is I have no idea if it will be any good or not.  Also, on a similar note, although Bernie insists Bahrain will go ahead, it might not; however, it has been run before so I do have some idea how good it will be.

What I've done is compile the date, location, type of coverage (full or highlights) and my personal rating (a score out of 5 so 1=awful, 2=poor, 3=okay, 4=good, 5=great).  It should of course go without saying that other people's opinions will vary (well, except for Valencia - everyone hates Valencia) and by showing half as highlights they were never going to be able to please everyone (not even people who hate the sport, because they're still showing it).

So here's how it breaks down:

date              race             coverage    rating
18-Mar        Australian        high        4
25-Mar        Malaysian        high        3
15-Apr        Chinese           full           4
22-Apr        Bahrain           high          2
13-May       Spanish           full           2
27-May       Monaco          full            1
10-Jun        Canadian          high         5
24-Jun        European          full          1
08-Jul        British              full           5
22-Jul        German             high         3
29-Jul        Hungarian        high          2
02-Sep        Belgian           full           5
09-Sep        Italian              high         3
23-Sep        Singapore        full          1
07-Oct        Japanese          high         5
14-Oct        Korean           full            4
28-Oct        Indian              high         3
04-Nov       Abu Dhabi       full          2
18-Nov       United States   high        unknown
25-Nov       Brazilian          full         5

Now obviously the BBC has a bit of a difficult job in that presumably they want to have a bit of a spread of full coverage of races across the year, but then as you can see from my scores, it's not like all the great races are one after another - they're generally quite spread out.

An easy way of highlighting my point about it being mixed is if you simply add the scores for the highlights and for full races you get 30 points in each case.  However, if you include Austin as a presumed average, the highlight scores is just about the full race score.  Sol we're getting screwed, but only just.

The real problem is highlighted by the great races and the awful races:

The picture for the great races is like this:

race         coverage
British        full
Belgian      full
Brazilian    full
Canadian    high
Japanese     high

So we get 3 of the five great races in full.  But note we don't get Canada or Japan.  Who the hell though that was a good idea?  Especially when you look at the picture for the awful races:

race           coverage
Monaco     full
European   full
Singapore  full

So we're getting full coverage of all three of the races that are awful.  I mean okay, I can understand Monaco, it has the tradition and all that, but the European Grand Prix?  Valencia?  Seriously?  I mean, even with the new tyres, DRS and KERS it was fucking awful.  Plus they're showing Spain in full?  What - did the BBC fancy a couple of holidays on the Costa Del Sol?  And we get these instead of Canada, which was by far one of the best races this year and is almost always good.

And Singapore?  Oh, right, but that's the race at night, and there we see the exact thing I was afraid of.

Singapore - night (and street) race in full.
Bahrain - evening race in full.
European - street race in full.
Monaco - street race in full.

The "novelty factor" has had too much sway.  At least some sense has prevailed - we get Belgium and Brazil (they'd have to show the British Grand Prix, so that was a given).

What makes this worse is Canada is right before the European Grand Prix and Japan is right after Singapore!

But what about the middling ranks?  Well we get China & Korea but not Australia and we get none of the races I've given a 3 to (Malaysia, Italy, India and Spain).  We also get half of the races I've given twos too.

Which pretty much brings me back to the point - it's going to be a real mixed bag.