But this 'banter' is obviously what terrestrial companies think the viewers want. It explains the old boys golf club style on Match of the Day, the wacky 'Clem' on the Football League Show, and why ITV paid an absolute fortune for Adrian Chiles to bumble his way through some links with the hope of some funny pre or during match clips that he can provide some 'hilarious' ironic observational commentary for.
But the problem with Chiles on ITV is that he doesn't do that, there are too many pundits and too little time for him to do anything that used to make him so popular on the Beeb. Let's not forget he was a revelation on the BBC, for his first few seasons he was an absolute breath of fresh air and I thought he was fantastic. He is a proper trained journalist and he asked his guests insightful questions that people wanted to know the answers to. I remember in ITV's first season with the FA Cup in 2008/09 they did a blatant 2 Bad 2 Good rip-off, which shows how popular it was.
What I'd like ITV to do is give Chiles a proper half hour show where he can talk sport with a panel of guests and get some proper debate and chat going.
As for Match of the Day, if I had a quid for every time someone referred to "the golf club" here. The Beeb are much quicker than almost anyone in bringing in new people, Dan Walker and Mark Chapman are two examples, as well as a host of new pundits. Lineker and Hansen certainly don't dominate BBC coverage anywhere near as much as Keys and Gray dominated Sky.
And certainly I never see how MOTD is a "golf club" whereas Soccer Saturday isn't, especially when many of their pundits have far greater links to current players than Lineker and Hansen. The Steve Kean business was a great example, the Soccer Saturday pundits were talking up Kean throughout and blaming the fans.
One of the problems I had with Keys was that I think he sees himself as more of a journalist than a presenter. Hard to explain why that's an issue, but I think it made him more of a media man than a football man, and he was always looking for a story even where there wasn't one.
The worst thing about it was that he always seemed to think he was running football. There was that bit of the last day of the season and going back from half time he said "Some other matches have already resumed, and they shouldn't have", which is absolutely none of his business and none of the viewers' business. I also remember him slagging off the referee for calling off a fog-bound Liverpool League Cup match. I always found that totally unneccessary.
I will probably be in the minority after looking at twitter but I liked Michael Owen co-commentating on MOTD2 even though it was a fairly meaningless match in the context of the season and I wasn't expecting a co-commentator tonight.
I thought he was OK, he wasn't the most articulate but for his first time it was alright. Reminded me of ITV using Gareth Southgate as co-commentator on a League Cup match in 2006, while he was still playing, to get him some pratice. Although there isn't much coming up at the Beeb that Owen can do.
As for doing an MOTD tonight, why not? They've done it for one game before and if they have the rights to do it, they may as well. There's been a million threads here moaning they don't show highlights of Monday games.
Everyone in the media who think stuff like banter is important and gets people watching are totally deluded, all the stats from viewing figures show that people want to watch live sport, everything else surrounding the coverage is little more than filler.
During Sgorio tonight, it was mentioned that the 2nd leg of Wrexham's FA Trophy Semi-final match against Gainsbrough Trinity this Saturday will be shown at 7.10pm that night in a highlights package.
I see the US also suffers from the same problem of having terrible TV adverts about Car Insurance. This pleases me, along with Keith's accent making him sound as though he is saying 'Quavers' when mentioning Daniel Cuevas (scorer of the US' 2nd).
Rob Maclean presented alongside Stephen Craigan and Manuel Pascali
Celtic v Dundee United - Liam McLeod Hearts v Kilmarnock - Paul Mitchell Motherwell v Inverness Caledonian Thistle - Al Lamont Ross County v St Johnstone - Rob Maclean St Mirren v Hibernian - Jane Lewis (reporting) Aberdeen v Dundee - Al Lamont
Monday 18th February - ITV4
FA Cup Fifth Round Highlights
Matt Smith presented from pitchside at Old Trafford alongside Gordon Strachan
Manchester United v Reading - Derek Rae and Chris Waddle, with Darrell Currie conducting post-match interviews (as ESPN UK)
Ray Stubbs presented ESPN UK's live coverage from Old Trafford alongside Jason Roberts and Steve McManaman.
In other news, today's edition of The Independent has profiled BT chief executive Ian Livingston in an article that discusses the new BT sports channel. Within it this bit of speculation caught my eye: "Hence the reports this week that BT is looking to get its chequebook out again to buy up some of the UK football rights belonging to Disney's ESPN sports channel. These are said to include the German and Belgian leagues and the English FA Cup." I'm sure this will also interest a certain other poster on here. To read the whole article: click here.
Very interesting news - indeed I have said in the past the Pro League should sell these to a British TV station for free or a nominal fee. What gets me is the article seems to imply these rights already belong to ESPN - that's surely not the case?
It's generally common knowledge but its time to move on!
Isn't Neville brilliant?
ahhh, so you don't know what you're talking about then and are just essentially re-tweeting, an opinion and classing it as your own.
Anyhow, I wasnt actually berating Neville to be honest. The natural progresson of chat had started with others talking about Keys and Gray and I offered my two penneth worth. As you point out with posts taking a pop at me, opinions are like arse holes
I see that Sky Sports' coverage of the League Cup Final is scheduled to finish at 6.30, which is a bit hopeless - that means there'll be the same length of post-match coverage as a bog-standard Premier League match, even though they've got all the presentations to do.
They've done that quite a lot with that match in the past - when Chelsea vs Arsenal in 2007 had about an hour of injury time and that huge fight, they barely had any time at all for analysis, and when it went to penalties in 2009, they had rugby league scheduled straight after it so they had to put the penalties on Sky Sports News.
I don't know why Sky are so quick to get off air after this match. I know there's a La Liga match at 6.30 but it's neither Real nor Barcelona so that could go on the red button. If they must show it live, they should ask for the Final to be a three o'clock kickoff, or arrange the Super League game on SS3 to kick off some time other than 6.15. But even if it's over in ninety minutes, it'll be a tight old squeeze.
Well, considering how they treated the aftermath of the Champions League final they won't care a jot about the aftermath of this one either.
Indeed, which was also down to bad scheduling as they had a fight scheduled for straight after it so by the time they ended the coverage - without even getting an interview with Roberto di Matteo - the fight was over an hour late. And of course there was that farce with the Women's Cup Final.
I know Sky have a lot of sport but their scheduling is extremely iffy at times, especially when it comes to stuff where they're the host broadcaster and therefore have presumably a lot of leeway over the start times. The League Cup Final is a case in point, it's been at 3pm many times before.
And on ITV it's Chiles with Dixon, Southgate and Strachan. Busy period for ITV, we're currently in a spell of football on seven days out of ten from last Tuesday.
Comments
Thanks to everyone for not pointing that out.
But the problem with Chiles on ITV is that he doesn't do that, there are too many pundits and too little time for him to do anything that used to make him so popular on the Beeb. Let's not forget he was a revelation on the BBC, for his first few seasons he was an absolute breath of fresh air and I thought he was fantastic. He is a proper trained journalist and he asked his guests insightful questions that people wanted to know the answers to. I remember in ITV's first season with the FA Cup in 2008/09 they did a blatant 2 Bad 2 Good rip-off, which shows how popular it was.
What I'd like ITV to do is give Chiles a proper half hour show where he can talk sport with a panel of guests and get some proper debate and chat going.
As for Match of the Day, if I had a quid for every time someone referred to "the golf club" here. The Beeb are much quicker than almost anyone in bringing in new people, Dan Walker and Mark Chapman are two examples, as well as a host of new pundits. Lineker and Hansen certainly don't dominate BBC coverage anywhere near as much as Keys and Gray dominated Sky.
And certainly I never see how MOTD is a "golf club" whereas Soccer Saturday isn't, especially when many of their pundits have far greater links to current players than Lineker and Hansen. The Steve Kean business was a great example, the Soccer Saturday pundits were talking up Kean throughout and blaming the fans.
The worst thing about it was that he always seemed to think he was running football. There was that bit of the last day of the season and going back from half time he said "Some other matches have already resumed, and they shouldn't have", which is absolutely none of his business and none of the viewers' business. I also remember him slagging off the referee for calling off a fog-bound Liverpool League Cup match. I always found that totally unneccessary.
I thought he was OK, he wasn't the most articulate but for his first time it was alright. Reminded me of ITV using Gareth Southgate as co-commentator on a League Cup match in 2006, while he was still playing, to get him some pratice. Although there isn't much coming up at the Beeb that Owen can do.
As for doing an MOTD tonight, why not? They've done it for one game before and if they have the rights to do it, they may as well. There's been a million threads here moaning they don't show highlights of Monday games.
Here you go
http://www.dangerhere.com/ronglish.htm
Did you freelance for ITV Sport (<- my link) on the weekend as well?
Why not?
In premier league terms it WAS the "Match of the day" - actually the Match of the weekend.
Al Jazeera Sport +3 - Richard Keys with Glenn Hoddle & Andy Gray.
Commentary - Martin Tyler & Stewart Robson
World Feed - Owen Neilson
Sky Sports 1 HD - Daniel Mann & Don Goodmam
World Feed - John Roder
ESPN HD - Derek Rae & Chris Waddle
You obviously know more than me unless you're another keyboard warrior who thinks he knows more than he actually does.
It's generally common knowledge but its time to move on!
Isn't Neville brilliant?
ITV's highlights were presented by Matt Smith, with Gordon Strachan. Commentary from Derek & Chris as ESPN.
JP Dellacamera and Keith Costigan for Fox Soccer
I see the US also suffers from the same problem of having terrible TV adverts about Car Insurance. This pleases me, along with Keith's accent making him sound as though he is saying 'Quavers' when mentioning Daniel Cuevas (scorer of the US' 2nd).
Sportscene
Rob Maclean presented alongside Stephen Craigan and Manuel Pascali
Celtic v Dundee United - Liam McLeod
Hearts v Kilmarnock - Paul Mitchell
Motherwell v Inverness Caledonian Thistle - Al Lamont
Ross County v St Johnstone - Rob Maclean
St Mirren v Hibernian - Jane Lewis (reporting)
Aberdeen v Dundee - Al Lamont
Monday 18th February - ITV4
FA Cup Fifth Round Highlights
Matt Smith presented from pitchside at Old Trafford alongside Gordon Strachan
Manchester United v Reading - Derek Rae and Chris Waddle, with Darrell Currie conducting post-match interviews (as ESPN UK)
Ray Stubbs presented ESPN UK's live coverage from Old Trafford alongside Jason Roberts and Steve McManaman.
In other news, today's edition of The Independent has profiled BT chief executive Ian Livingston in an article that discusses the new BT sports channel. Within it this bit of speculation caught my eye: "Hence the reports this week that BT is looking to get its chequebook out again to buy up some of the UK football rights belonging to Disney's ESPN sports channel. These are said to include the German and Belgian leagues and the English FA Cup." I'm sure this will also interest a certain other poster on here. To read the whole article: click here.
ahhh, so you don't know what you're talking about then and are just essentially re-tweeting, an opinion and classing it as your own.
Anyhow, I wasnt actually berating Neville to be honest. The natural progresson of chat had started with others talking about Keys and Gray and I offered my two penneth worth. As you point out with posts taking a pop at me, opinions are like arse holes
Thank you very much! I'll delve into that when I have the time.
In other matters I'd like to hear Stewart Robson commentate on an Arsenal match. He slates Wenger every time he's on ESPN FC Press Pass.
Al Jazeera Sport +3 - Gary Lineker with Ian Wright, Terry Venables and Graeme Souness.
They've done that quite a lot with that match in the past - when Chelsea vs Arsenal in 2007 had about an hour of injury time and that huge fight, they barely had any time at all for analysis, and when it went to penalties in 2009, they had rugby league scheduled straight after it so they had to put the penalties on Sky Sports News.
I don't know why Sky are so quick to get off air after this match. I know there's a La Liga match at 6.30 but it's neither Real nor Barcelona so that could go on the red button. If they must show it live, they should ask for the Final to be a three o'clock kickoff, or arrange the Super League game on SS3 to kick off some time other than 6.15. But even if it's over in ninety minutes, it'll be a tight old squeeze.
Indeed, which was also down to bad scheduling as they had a fight scheduled for straight after it so by the time they ended the coverage - without even getting an interview with Roberto di Matteo - the fight was over an hour late. And of course there was that farce with the Women's Cup Final.
I know Sky have a lot of sport but their scheduling is extremely iffy at times, especially when it comes to stuff where they're the host broadcaster and therefore have presumably a lot of leeway over the start times. The League Cup Final is a case in point, it's been at 3pm many times before.
Host John Strong joined by pundits Warren Barton, Eric Wynalda, and Brian McBride.
Commentary team of Gus Johnson and Ray Clemence, shown in-vision.
Ignoring Ben S, Trevor Francis & John Collins did a great job. If only terrestrial channels could do the same.
Did I really just hear Lee Dixon say "They've not got anyone who will rip you apart"?!