Every winter, cities and towns across the world see parks or sports halls graced with the presence of a temporary artificial ice rink.
But this winter, not only have I noticed these solid water bodies cropping up, but also their notability in television broadcast: especially this weekend.
Figure skating is not what one would typically explain as a mainstream sport, especially in the UK. However recently the BBC and ITV have been actively engaging with boosting the presence of the sport in ways to suit their public service remits...
In accordance with the BBC's aim to "inform, educate and entertain", November 2018 saw British Ice Skating confirm BBC were to live stream the 2018 British Figure Skating Championships for two days. The competition was to be live streamed through the British Ice Skating Facebook page for the first four days of competition, and then the final two days would be live broadcast on the BBC Sport website with a professional commentary.
British Ice Skating hoped this deal would "shine a new light on the sport of figure skating and bring a sport often deemed tradition, into the modern day". So in maintaining this objective, the BBC are also currently - as I type these words - live streaming the British Synchronized Skating Championships. Through much publicizing, including articles such as "British Synchro Skating Championships: Five reasons to watch", I feel the BBC are aiming to tackle the issues of less mainstream sports having a place in the public's interest.
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| BBC's live coverage of the competition as I write my blog post (Source: BBC) |
ITV on the other hand, being more entertainment and commercially driven, have a different approach to bringing figure skating back into the public eye. Alongside the premiere of highly successful drama Torvill and Dean on Christmas Day, this evening sees episode three of Dancing On Ice being broadcast.
Dancing On Ice is a reality show which sees celebrities figure skating with professional partners to win the coveted trophy. However despite this being their tenth series, according to the Broadcasters' Audience Research Board (BARB), viewing figures for the show have dropped from 9.12 million viewers in 2006, to 6.27 million in last year's series.
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| Average viewing ratings of Dancing On Ice (Source: BARB, including figures from ITV+1 and ITV HD channels) |
The reduction of these figures proves point of how the British public are unfortunately losing interest in this way of portraying figure skating as a sport. Nevertheless, as mentioned before, the production of Torvill and Dean, the biopic of Britian's most famous ice skaters - and also judges and coaches on Dancing On Ice - made waves with glowing reviews for its Christmas Day broadcast.
According to The Daily Mail and entertainmentdaily.co.uk, the feature grasped 2.9 million viewers attention for two hours on the 25th December 2018. I feel ITV had two main reasons for this production: first, like the BBC, is to use the power of the media to inspire us to try something new. But secondly and most predominately, in the fear of ever decreasing viewing figures for their beloved Dancing On Ice, it seems the perfect opportunity to tell the compelling story of two of the show's innovators, just before it's ready to air a new series...
Sadly for ITV however, on the 7th January 2019 the Express reported Dancing On Ice's viewing numbers "were the lowest overnight rating for a launch episode in [the show's] history", with an average of 6.4 million viewers, almost one million less than last year's opening show. Therefore, maybe ITV's attempt to boost the morale in the ice skating camp didn't go quite to plan...
I will end on this however: in conversation with a friend of mine who competitively figure skated for many years, she explained to me her thoughts on coverage of figure skating...
Ice skating is a sport that you can’t ever just switch on the TV and see some coverage. You always have to specifically tune into an event and even then the coverage is not always on TV or is only on a paid, specific channel. We have sky and even with that the skating isn’t always included. Apart from the Olympics and world championships, which I watch on TV, everything else I personally use Facebook and YouTube to watch, through figure skating groups etc.- Seren Hughes, Former figure skater
Hopefully with the action the BBC are actively taking in broadcasting competitions, and that ITV are in a more commercially entertaining approach, Seren's opinion is beginning to change.
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