ITV once the football goes
Glenn A
Posts: 23,877 Forum Member
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This May ITV will lose the FA Cup to the BBC and BT, and the following May all their European football goes to BT( apart from an hour of highlights on Wednesdays). This means Saturday and Sunday afternoons will be devoid of live football next year and Tuesdays and Thursdays( mostly for ITV 4) will be football free from May 2015 onwards.
While the FA Cup matches can easily be replaced by You've Been Framed and a family film, I wonder what ITV will do with Tuesday nights once the Champions League and FA Cup replays go. ( ITV 4 will probably just stick on action films on Thursday nights). Will ITV, who struggle badly on non football nights, now turn Tuesdays back to showing two hour dramas, or an entertainment format like All Star Family Fortunes followed by a light drama like Benidorm? I do hope for non football fans ITV use Tuesdays to provide a real alternative to dreary Holby City and grim police dramas on BBC One.
While the FA Cup matches can easily be replaced by You've Been Framed and a family film, I wonder what ITV will do with Tuesday nights once the Champions League and FA Cup replays go. ( ITV 4 will probably just stick on action films on Thursday nights). Will ITV, who struggle badly on non football nights, now turn Tuesdays back to showing two hour dramas, or an entertainment format like All Star Family Fortunes followed by a light drama like Benidorm? I do hope for non football fans ITV use Tuesdays to provide a real alternative to dreary Holby City and grim police dramas on BBC One.
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I think you may be overestimating the amount of broadcasting time that ITV spends on football. There are something like 13-14 weeks of champions league football and maybe 6-7 weeks of FA cup ties. And as they overlap it means ITV are only showing either 1/3 of the weeks of each year. Of course it will make them rethink their approach as Champions league bought in large advertising revenue and it now being on BT Sports means there's a large football audience who won't be able to watch it full stop.
I think you are overestimating the amount of soaps on ITV: ITV shows more regional news than it does soaps.
ITV actually removed their exclusivity on Chiles' contract months before the respective announcements of the rights losses.
Are you including the regional news in Daybreak in this calculation?
Away from the 3 or 4 stand out shows, ITV don't show a lot of reality television on a day to day basis. They've also improved drastically high quality drama in recent years and documentary output. It's not a technically untrue statement to make even if he is. They'll still need someone to host the live England games, the two highlights programmes on European weeks and major championships. If he was to do the Europa League highlights he could still have a similar amount of work to now from ITV. Not really sure I think your tone is fair there, he was available and it makes perfect sense for him to do such a gig.
ITV, 11.05 pm Saturday January 4
Says it all really......
Or get England Rugby internationals to complement the England football.
But don't let logical thought get in the way of an ftv post. It's been said many times ITV wouldn't make their money back on it.
I appreciate it's a bit of a coup to get Dr Who to present the highlights but I was drawing attention to the time it is scheduled.
Who cares what happens to ITV as long as we get Tv from someone,:)
It's only 35 minutes later than the MOTD start time last night (and only 15 minutes later than the New Year's Day start time for MOTD).
11.05pm on a Saturday is ideal for people coming in from a night out.
Aren't BT looking at a FTA game each week?
So no different to the Champions League currently??
Taggart was killed by the decision to reduce it to one hour episodes and the fact English audiences were no longer interested. The Bill had also reached the end of its shelf life.
I think with the football gone, ITV have a golden opportunity to rebuild Tuesdays and having two and a half hours free of this boring game is an ideal opportunity.
I would say the best way to go about a football free Tuesday would be to have a game show at 7.30 as an alternative to Eastenders, then a two hour drama on the lines of Midsomer Murders at 8.
"home of sport and cult classics"
Also this might sound like I'm living in the past, but ITV should never have dropped racing and dropped out of wrestling just as the American version was taking off.
ITV4 doesn't claim to be "home of sport" - I think you'll find that's Sky Sports' tagline.
ITV4 is "the channel for real fans", and the loss of 23 Europa League games won't make a massive impact in the number of hours of sport it shows over the course of a year.
ITV4 has loads of sport regardless of the EL.