US Edition
Some peculiar communications in the world of F1 recently, and I’m not talking about Christian Horner’s text messages. Sky Sports had announced, with some fanfare, that it would be covering the next three Formula 1 races from the UK studio rather than the track, and this weekend’s Melbourne Grand Prix was anchored from an unfashionable bit of west London, as will be the forthcoming Japanese and Chinese Grands Prix.
This, however, was presented as a special treat, because Natalie Pinkham and company would be doing their stuff from the same studio the broadcaster uses for Monday Night Football.
Sharing the studio with the football boys was sold by Sky as being both impressive and exciting for F1 fans, as if it were to be broadcast from the Royal Albert Hall or Madison Square Garden or some other legendary entertainment venue, rather than the place where Gary Neville criticises bungled offside traps and out-of-work football managers come to further their job searches.
It is a large studio, no question about it, and they have lots of screens onto which they can project graphics. But then they’ve got that in Euston Station as well these days, and people are not so easily pleased as they once were. For many fans, the drama and immediacy provided by the hosts being at the track was lost, and many were not happy. If it’s just a studio, it could be Melbourne, it could be Rotterdam, or anywhere really. Surely one of the major appeals of an international sport like F1 is the different flavours, sights and sounds from each country? And one of the reasons to tune in, particularly at anti-social hours, is the little frisson of the exotic.
With no disrespect to Pinkham and her in-studio colleagues Karun Chandhok and Naomi Schiff – and while acknowledging that Sky did have boots on the ground in the shape of Martin Brundle, David Croft, Rachel Brookes and Ted Kravitz – there was an unmistakable feeling of shrinkflation in the many, many disgruntled comments I saw online.
“How bad is the studio concept? Feels cheap and no race atmosphere. How can Sky get it so wrong?” asked one fan.
“Should be in the pit lane presenting so you get the buzz of the weekend and the paddock. Feels detached. Like the early 90s when Grandstand threw to the Grand Prix five mins before the start,” said another.
“Disgracefully selling cost cutting as an exciting new benefit,” alleged a fan online, while another fumed: “We don’t pay egregious prices for Sky Sports F1 just for you to not bother presenting the races from the actual races.”
You get the picture. Particularly in the gloomier UK months, one of the joys of televised sport is to be transported to far-flung lands: the lurid green and blue of a Gabba Ashes Test match, the red clay courts of the French Open, the lush, fastidious manicure of the Augusta Masters. You can put all the graphics of Carlos Sainz or Red Bull you want up on a massive digital screen but it’s not quite the same, is it?
And while there will be people who think that Chandhok mucking around with a giant iPad is the last word in entertainment, there will also be people for whom that doesn’t quite cut the mustard. To call it all “augmented reality”, as Sky does, seems to be a stretch; and I’m not even sure there are words to describe the bizarre children’s TV-esque spectacle of presenter Craig Slater running around the studio pretending to be a broom-broom motor car.
Motor racing fans may or may not be happy to pay Sky a couple of hundred quid a year for their F1 but they have a reasonable expectation of getting a Rolls-Royce product for their money if they do. This doesn’t quite come off like that, and, as with any used-car purchase, there’s that distinct, sinking feeling of having been sold a lemon.
F1 fans sold a lemon by Sky Sports’ house share with Monday Night Football
Broadcasting from a staid studio does not come close to reporting from trackside and viewers are left worse off as a result