MOTORSPORT: The blurred V8 Supercar TV picture

Seven upbeat on V8s, but is it the full story?

Television and V8 Supercars. Bit of a delicate subject this for some people in and around Australian motorsport -- especially if the numbers and the interpretation of them isn't what they want to hear, read, see or know.

We mentioned in our previous column, (more here ), some TV numbers after the V8 Supercar Championship finale at Sydney’s Oran Park. The number of particular interest came from host broadcaster the Seven Network.

"Across this year's championship 7.7 million Australians in the five major metropolitan markets watch[ed] all or part of Seven's coverage of V8 Supercars," Seven said.

We couldn't see how that reconciled in any way with the 22 million viewers V8 Supercars Australia claimed at the end of the 2007 season.

Clearly the latest Seven figure (7.7 million) didn't include any regional audience, so we added 30 per cent and that took the number to just over 10 million. A long, long way short of V8SA's 22 million from a year earlier. Indeed, indicating a 55 per cent drop in the audience if it was all that simple.

It's not, and we never thought the drop this year could be anything like half the audience, but trying to get to the bottom of it all is no easy task. It might have to become an off-season project to examine all, or as many as we can get of, the numbers for this year, last year, 2006, 2005 and perhaps even further back.

We made it quite clear in our previous column that we couldn't believe the drop could be as severe as going from 22 million viewers (if ever there were 22 million), to just a smidgeon over 10 million. We just wanted some explanation, so this week we asked Seven how its 7.7 million for this year reconciled with V8SA's 22 million last year.

"V8 Supercars add up the audience reach of each round to get to that 22 million figure. The 7.7 million figure is the total number of unduplicated viewers watching on Seven in the five major capital cities. It's not adding up reach from each round," Seven's Simon Francis told the Carsales Network.

A little later Francis told us our story (our previous column, to which there is the link above) was "completely wrong".

Hey, we weren't saying they had halved, indeed we said our gut feeling was they were down 12, 15 or perhaps 20 per cent. We were just raising the subject.

Francis would have liked us to have removed our article from our website, but we told him we were interested/prepared to revisit the subject but wanted some detail. He told us Seven's V8 Supercar audiences this year were "on a par with 2007, which in themselves were up 40 per cent on Ten's last year (2006) with V8s".

Pressed further the Seven Network rep gave some "apples-with-apples" comparative info, again mentioning "unduplicated" audience; indeed "the total 'unduplicated' audience that engages with V8s only -- that is, watch all or a bit of some of the coverage through the year".

"More than one in two Australians engage with V8s," he said. "And, from our data, we're not seeing an audience collapse as you've claimed."

We certainly didn't claim a collapse of half or more. We have suspected a decline of somewhere perhaps up to 20 per cent, while there are others suggesting it could be much more. We doubt that.

At this point we must say that TV industry people other than Seven's Mr Francis have told us they have never heard this term "unduplicated" in a viewer context and indeed have no idea what it is. One even used an expression that began with bull and had four more letters that we won't repeat here...

We can't see how there can be such a thing as "unduplicated" viewer numbers without someone (either Oztam or the TV networks) having technology that can tell very precisely who is watching what and when.

According to Francis, the Seven Network in 2007 (the year it got back into telecasting V8s) "saw total reach up 14 per cent on 2006". For the sake of clarity, 2006 was the last year the V8 Supercars were on the Ten Network.

Note that Francis was now talking "total reach".

In claiming 22 million viewers at the end of the 2007 season V8SA reckoned that was a 22 per cent hike on '06.

We can't find any mention of "reach" in V8SA's announcement then, but Francis had told us V8SA used "reach".

Now Francis was using the term "reach" to us, but he said that his numbers, whatever they are meant to be, are a different type of number to that V8SA talked about after the 2007 season. He told us that whatever the numbers Seven arrives at are "still up 12 per cent" in 2008 on 2006, the last year of the 10 Network as V8 Supercar telecaster.

"We're very happy with the audience figures. The fact that across its coverage it won in total viewers and all demographics is even better."

Our 'conversation' with Mr Francis was by email. We believe his reference to its winning coverage and total viewers and all demographics was, in this instance, specifically about Oran Park.

Very good, if that is the case. Even better if is meant to refer to the whole season.

Seven has consistently claimed that its V8 Supercar telecasts (generated by V8SA-owned V8 Supercar Television) have not only beaten rivals Nine and Ten separately in their timeslots, but combined.

What we suspect in all of this is that there are considerably less people watching free-to-air television than previously. But let's not digress down that track, at least today.

Mr Francis, as the Seven spokesman, gave us these numbers for V8 Supercars for the past three years:

2006 -- 10.3 million viewers

2007 -- 11.7 million viewers

2008 -- 11.5 million viewers

So that is Seven saying that its numbers are down 200,000 this year. That perhaps wouldn't be a bad result. And, on these numbers, 2008 is still 1.2 million viewers ahead of '06, the last year of Ten's telecasts.

As we have pointed out before, Seven is not only now the number one commercial network in the country, it has a broader regional reach than Ten. That partly explains why it would/should be ahead.

The Australian Football League telecasting arrangements the past two years also have worked in a way that meant Seven should get more viewers than Ten did.

 

Mr Francis had clearly warmed to the subject by now, and barely 20 minutes later gave us "some more apples with apples, to put some further perspective on all this".

"We'll talk only metropolitan markets here," he said. "V8s 'reached' 7.7 million while our total coverage of motorsport (V8 utes, Fujitsu series, V8 Championship, etc) reached more than 8 million viewers.

"AFL on Seven with 26 weeks of coverage and more than 321 hours of coverage and the Grand Final reached 10.8 million.

"Our horse racing coverage, including the Melbourne Cup, reached 4.6 million. Rugby, including the Bledisloe Cup, reached 4.4 million. Tennis, including the Australian Open across 235 hours of coverage, reached 9.7 million.

"The Olympics are the Godzilla of sports and they (the Beijing Games) reached 12.2 million viewers over 298 hours of coverage, much of it in primetime.

"Nearly 8 million for V8s only on Saturday and Sunday afternoons across 15 weekends [ our comment: there were only 14 rounds in the championship telecast on Seven ] spread across February-December is in the zone of our AFL and tennis coverage and ahead of other major events, including the Melbourne Cup carnival and the Wallabies' rugby test campaign.

"We're very happy with V8s."

So are we. We enjoy watching them on TV. Don't always get to see as much of them as we would like, but generally like what we do get to see.

Particularly the Bathurst 1000, although this year we were concerned the field was barely half that of the good ol' days, and worry that it's becoming a bit like basketball ? all decided in the final few laps/minutes after the last safety car (which, incidentally, won't be a Chrysler any longer, with that deal over).

We don't share the concerns of others who lament that V8 Supercars has only two manufacturers participating, although -- as anyone with an interest in the sport, and the broader motor industry, indeed the health of the national and global economies -- we fear for the future of those manufacturers, Ford and General Motors.

Nor have we been greatly bothered that V8 Falcons and Commodores represent an era of big/bigger cars that appears to be passing its use-by date, although again perhaps that ought now be a much greater concern for everyone.

Our interest, apart from watching the V8 Supercar races on TV, has been in observing the state of the sport -- and its TV numbers are a very big part of that health.

We've set out, at considerable length, the Seven point of view expressed by its Mr Francis. It is a far rosier picture than that painted in the research of the Mitchells advertising agency to which we have alluded numerous times this year.

As we said earlier in this column, perhaps the whole matter is worthy of our attention in greater detail over the off-season. Certainly one of what might be described as the country's audience delivery experts has told us Seven's 7.7 million figure is "very rubbery".

In particular, this expert said he had never heard of the use of this term "unduplicated" in a TV context.

"It's a currency that means nothing, is not relevant," he said. "The true measure is the average audience. The other is the peak figure in 15-minute brackets."

Let's consider the matter a work in progress. Not only do we need to take a closer look at all the numbers, but go back over a few years.

Consuming Televsion

Television audiences have consumed most of our available time this week, but there have been other things happening...

In particular V8 Supercars Australia approving Tom Walkinshaw taking over 100 per cent of Holden Racing Team (after getting the remaining 50 per cent from Mark Skaife), as well as the okay for Walkinshaw to hold two more V8 Supercar licences.

And there's lots of talks going on about F1's future, particularly cost-cutting, much of which we are coming to suspect is a smokescreen intended to lower the financial expectations of the teams and distract them from the fact the sport's commercial supremo and his private equity shareholders have no intention of lowering theirs.

Look for an update on these matters in the next day or so, but in the meantime an eloquent perspective, as always, from Federation Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) president Max Mosley is here .

And, for those who follow dual V8 Supercar champion Marcos Ambrose's progress in NASCAR in North America, a backgrounder on the still relatively new partner among his backers is here .

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