Yes, Livingstone really is an A category presenter - I hope Sky switch him back more towards the US Tour as being both of higher quality and in prime-time it must surely generally get higher ratings than the European Tour.
But keep him on some European Tour - ie the biggest events.
To much woffle for me when it is the live Golf most people tune in to see. They sometimes didn't seem to be aware when Golf Channel had come back from commercials and talked over the commentators. This did not happen with Eurosports basic coverage last season!
Well HD is a bonus and i much prefer the sky presenters so its a thumbs up from me although there was a bit too much talking last night and they could of started the programme around 2015 rather than talk about Woods for soo long.
Yeah i agree about the talking. However I guess they hadn't done the US PGA Tour for awhile so they wanted to give it a bit of a preview. I guess that is all the 3o mins was really!
So long as when the US network is back with live coverage they stop taliking and hand over immediately. Sky's presentation seems similar to Setanta's who made similar mistakes. I preferrred Eurosport's as they took the complete PGA package which had extra coverage of non US players during American tv's commercial breaks.
yes as i posted earlier sadly sky do it again too much talk and adverts and when they show the highlights 6 mins golf followed by more bloody adverts at least when setanta had it they did not plug tons of ads in the highlights show plus when the u.s went to ads which we know is too much they used to show highlights and talk etc which made it better than sky.The only good thing from sky is of course the presenters and picture quality but the ads and talk a bit too much for me.
But you have to please a lot of people and just by this forum alone, this is never going to be the case and you have to have a balancing act.
Sky will have to fill 10 or so breaks which is clearly why they have studio chats.
Breaks - Well - sky choose to have breaks - otherwise your subscription would be higher.
Setanta - Well they would do a long build up at the top so they would put the golf on a (up to 10mins) delay.
They would then miss the vast amounts of American Breaks.
Lot of people moaned that they didnt like there golf so out of date - they could see on pgatour.com the live scoreboard - and it could be 5-10mins out of date (tv)
Eurosport - Well - they did the simple thing - the cheapest thing.
just took the world feed and went to a break sometimes.
To much woffle for me when it is the live Golf most people tune in to see. They sometimes didn't seem to be aware when Golf Channel had come back from commercials and talked over the commentators. This did not happen with Eurosports basic coverage last season!
To be fair they were aware of The Golf Channel and David Livingstone did state that he was not trying to turn it into a chat show but its the start of the 2010 Tour plenty of topics to catch up on.
David Livingstone is a fantastic host and a real professional operator and Mark Roe with Butch Harmon was a great combination. I hope David will host each round of the Tour.
I couldn't really fault Skys coverage, beats Eurosport with sharp HD pictures a great team in the studio and still covered some of the discussions on The Golf Channel.
Couple of bonuses with the US golf back on Sky, is that as they have an HD studio set up for presentation it means that they can use it for the European tour too. This means we're guaranteed 16:9 pictures, whereas last year they often only used a 4:3 studio.
Also means evening highlights of European tour can now be in HD,
What's everyone's opinion of the coverage after a few weeks watching?
Personally speaking the HD coverage and pictures have all been excellent, but it's been clear who has and hasn't been following the tour while Sky didin't have the rights. At times it looks likes they've just transferred everyone over who used to work on Golf Night, hopefully as the season goes on we'll see more of the likes of David Livingstone back in the studio
Butch Harmon in the first week and Peter Oosterhuis last week were excellent, especially when Oosterhuis showed up Rob Lee and Mark Roe with some unfair comments they made about Rickie Fowler.
My main hope though is that they learn to reduce how much they are talking over the US comms
David Livingstone is covering the Middle East swing of the European Tour. The 3 events in Abu Dhabi, Qatar and Dubai have much stronger fields than the tournaments on at the same time in the USA.
Livingstone is obviously their top presenter (I agree) so he gets the most prestigous events.
Comments
Roe keeping it very much 'all golfing buddies together'.
But keep him on some European Tour - ie the biggest events.
Oh sorry, just noticed that.
Di Stewart
Class act imo
Could listen to the fella all day
Sky will have to fill 10 or so breaks which is clearly why they have studio chats.
Breaks - Well - sky choose to have breaks - otherwise your subscription would be higher.
Setanta - Well they would do a long build up at the top so they would put the golf on a (up to 10mins) delay.
They would then miss the vast amounts of American Breaks.
Lot of people moaned that they didnt like there golf so out of date - they could see on pgatour.com the live scoreboard - and it could be 5-10mins out of date (tv)
Eurosport - Well - they did the simple thing - the cheapest thing.
just took the world feed and went to a break sometimes.
To be fair they were aware of The Golf Channel and David Livingstone did state that he was not trying to turn it into a chat show but its the start of the 2010 Tour plenty of topics to catch up on.
David Livingstone is a fantastic host and a real professional operator and Mark Roe with Butch Harmon was a great combination. I hope David will host each round of the Tour.
I couldn't really fault Skys coverage, beats Eurosport with sharp HD pictures a great team in the studio and still covered some of the discussions on The Golf Channel.
Presenter: Rob Lee
Guests: John Hawksworth, Denis Pugh
Di Stewart doing European Tour event again.
Let's hope Sky continue using the strongest presenters on the US Tour where they are needed as much more time required to fill during US ads.
Pity they don't fill in some of the US ad time with content provided by the PGA Tour which is geared to international audiences.
Also means evening highlights of European tour can now be in HD,
This is interesting news. Sky seem to be hoovering the former sports rights that Setanta held.
Does anyone know if Sky (or another sports broadcaster) have bought the UK rights for the 2010 IPL cricket season?
I don't believe anything has been signed yet. Eurosport and ESPN are rumoured to be the most interested, but then again that is just rumours.
Personally speaking the HD coverage and pictures have all been excellent, but it's been clear who has and hasn't been following the tour while Sky didin't have the rights. At times it looks likes they've just transferred everyone over who used to work on Golf Night, hopefully as the season goes on we'll see more of the likes of David Livingstone back in the studio
Butch Harmon in the first week and Peter Oosterhuis last week were excellent, especially when Oosterhuis showed up Rob Lee and Mark Roe with some unfair comments they made about Rickie Fowler.
My main hope though is that they learn to reduce how much they are talking over the US comms
Disappointed to have Di Stewart presenting this week as she isn't strong enough.
David Livingstone is by far the best presenter. Rob Lee is somewhere in between but perfectly acceptable.
So far we've had:
Livingstone - week 1
Lee - weeks 2 and 3
Stewart - week 4
I suspect we will get Livingstone on the biggest events - ie approx the biggest 5 or 6 events + majors and WGCs.
Livingstone is obviously their top presenter (I agree) so he gets the most prestigous events.