So it's Sunday night, live baseball is on 5 Live Sports Extra and it's the Braves 6 Mets 3 in the middle of the 9th (baseball has 9 regulation innings).

The clock hits 9pm...and in their infinite wisdom, we're told 5LSE MUST cut away from the baseball to start their NFL coverage.

To make matters worse, the NFL match hasn't even started yet - Nat and Neil are just previewing the night's action ahead of the kick-off.

What an absolutely shocking, awful decision - surely the bleedingly obvious sensible move would be to take the final half inning of the game and join the NFL commentary just a few minutes late.

OK, I know American football has a higher profile than baseball in the UK, but we're coming up to the end of the season in the latter, you have a highly important game for the Braves (and the Phillies in the NL East pennant race) that is hanging in the balance in its final stages - could you treat the sport in any more of a second rate manner than just ditching the end of this game?

And I fear this is a sign of things to come. It looks like we could get some stinking MLB match picks, possible dead rubbers, over the last few Sundays of the season just so 5LSEs NFL can start "on time" at 9pm. And then they'll probably pull away from those baseball games too.

It's just a really stupid point to leave a commentary. The BBC's coverage of baseball has been really good in general but to make a decision like that is just baffling, a great way to pee off an audience. 5 Live make their fair share of odd editorial calls when it comes to sport scheduling but this one takes the biscuit.

Sunday 19th September - BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra

NFL on 5 Live with Nat Coombs and Neil Reynolds (in London)

American Football: NFL Week 2
New England Patriots @ New York Jets - Howard David and Tony Boselli (commentary provided by Westwood One)

For the record, Josh Chetwynd stuck around until 9.10pm to confirm the Braves had held on against the Mets - with the baseball ending before the Patriots @ Jets match had even started. Great.


Looking back to the opening weekend of the season...

Thursday 9th September - BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra

NFL on 5 Live with Darren Fletcher and Greg Brady at the Louisiana Superdome

American Football: NFL Week 1, Opening Game
Minnesota Vikings @ New Orleans Saints - Darren Fletcher and Greg Brady (commentary)

In the build-up to kick-off in that match, Tony Husband made his NFL on 5 Live debut as he hosted a pre-recorded season preview with Neil Reynolds.

Last Sunday, San Francisco 49ers @ Seattle Seahawks was the live game with Arlo White due to be at Qwest Field. Anyone know if he was presenting or commentating, and if the latter, who with?

Sunday 12th September - BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra

NFL on 5 Live with Arlo White from Qwest Field

American Football: NFL Week 1
San Francisco 49ers @ Seattle Seahawks - Arlo White, Dave Wyman and Sam Adkins (commentary)

Wyman was the analyst during the first half, Adkins for the second half. Both are former Seahawks players who work on the pregame show for the Seahawks Radio Network.


MLB on 5 Live with Josh Chetwynd (in Tucson, Arizona) and Erik Janssen (in London)

Baseball: National League
St. Louis Cardinals @ Atlanta Braves - Jim Powell and Don Sutton (commentary provided by WCNN 680 The Fan - "The Atlanta Braves Radio Network")

So, 5LSE took the Braves commentary despite national ESPN Radio coverage being available. Does this indicate that they will continue to take local feeds during the postseason, seeing as some of them (particularly the Cubs network) have gone down very well?

Many thanks to forum member Dylan for sending me on the above details via PM.

talkSPORT are running trails for their Ryder Cup coverage: regular updates from Rupert Bell, David Brady and Bob Bubka from Celtic Manor.

There has been a change to 5 Live Sports Extra's Major League Baseball plans this weekend.

Coverage will now start just before 1am on Sunday night/Monday morning in order to cover the televised Boston Red Sox @ New York Yankees derby.

According to Simon Crosse on the Facebook group, they were originally planning to do the Minnesota Twins @ Detroit Tigers game, but with the Twins having clinched the AL Central title on Tuesday night, now all three games starting just after 6pm our time are dead rubbers. Whereas the Yankees are still battling with the Rays for the AL East pennant, with the Red Sox having an outside chance of the AL Wildcard spot.

Privately, I imagine 5LSE will have also wanted to avoid a repeat of what happened last week. One of the positives in doing a late game is that they won't be forced to cut away before the end, it's not going to be interrupted or bumped from the schedule.

It'll be interesting to see what happens on the final day of the regular season, when they can't do a late game, and during the first two rounds of the play-offs when they won't have much/any choice over timeslots.

I notice from the NFL UK article previewing their American football coverage it says they'll only start doing double headers in November and December ie after the end of the baseball season, so with their schedule for NFL Weeks 5 to 7 being clear so far, hopefully they'll be willing to do 6pm NFL games then if it makes sense to do so in order to do a commentary from both sports.

Saturday 18th September

Blues V Newport Gwent Dragons - Nick Webb and Phil Bennett (Radio Wales) Gareth Charles and Brynmor Williams for Radio Cymru with Gareth Rhys Owen hosting.

Every now and then S4C (who were showing the game live) would switch to a shot of Blues head coach Dai Young, and you could see Brynmor Williams and the balding head of Gareth Charles in the row underneath.

Friday 24th September - BBC Radio Scotland 810MW

Rugby Sportsound presented by Simon Cross from Firhill

Glasgow Warriors v. Munster - Bill Johnstone & Peter Wright
Edinburgh v Leinster - Graham McGregor

--

Simon admitted at the start of the show that this was his first presenting job. Personally I'd never heard of him but I thought they may have drafted in one of the other BBC Scotland sports hosts to cover the game?

There's a guy called Simon Crosse who produces BBC 5 Live Sports Extra's NFL and baseball coverage, and also Absolute Radio's live Premier League commentaries, on behalf of a company called USP Content.

Could it have been him? It's probably more likely we're talking about two guys who share the same name I imagine, given that this game took place in Glasgow and the guy I'm thinking about is based in London.

It could be the same guy as he definately has a London accent, All he said at the start was it was his first hosting job, and it definately sounded the case, his handovers to Murrayfield failed twice. He though they didn't get sound but there was. He seemed really nervous but settled down.

BBC Radio Leicester

Charles Dagnall presenting Radio Leicester Sport from Welford Road.

Rugby Union Premiership
Leicester Tigers v Leeds - Bleddyn Jones and Steve Johnson (commentary)
Harlequins v Exeter - Andrew Titheridge

FA Cup: Second Round Qualifying
Hinckley United v Coventry Sphinx - Andy Gibbs

Sunday 26th September - BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra

NFL on 5 Live with Nat Coombs, Neil Reynolds (in London) and Greg Brady (in Toronto, Ontario)

American Football: NFL Week 3
Indianapolis Colts @ Denver Broncos - Larry Kahn and John Robinson (commentary provided by the Sports USA Radio Network)

Ted Sobel was in the Sports USA Network studio to round up the rest of the night's action.


MLB on 5 Live with Josh Chetwynd (in Tucson, Arizona), Liam Carroll and Alan McKinlay of the Mirror (in London)

Baseball: American League
Boston Red Sox @ New York Yankees - John Sterling and Suzyn Waldman (commentary provided by WCBS 880 - "The New York Yankees Radio Network")


Confirmed on Facebook - 5LSE are only planning to do Sunday night games between now and the start of the World Series, where every game will be live.

Next Sunday may be a headache for them, but judging by the play-off schedules I reckon this late night/early morning slot could become the norm for the postseason. They will have a choice of between 2 to 4 Divisional Series games on October 10th, but on the 17th and 24th they'll only be able to do a game from the National League Championship Series.

Fox hold the US TV rights to the NLCS and they also hold the rights to 6pm and 9pm (our time) NFL games. I guess Fox won't want to clash the two sports and with the baseball more likely to overrun for a longer period of time, I guess they'll put the Sunday NLCS games in a later timeslot ala the World Series.

Monday 20th September - BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra & BBC Radio 4 LW

Cricket: Fourth One Day International (The Oval)
England v Pakistan - Jonathan Agnew, Simon Mann and Simon Hughes with Phil Tufnell, Alec Stewart and Rameez Raja (commentary)


Wednesday 22nd September - BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra & BBC Radio 4 LW

Cricket: Fifth One Day International (The Rose Bowl)
England v Pakistan - Jonathan Agnew, Simon Mann and Christopher Martin-Jenkins with Vic Marks, Angus Fraser, Rameez Raja and Alec Stewart (commentary)

Jack Bannister was the reporter on both one-dayers for talkSPORT.

I notice 5 Live Sports Extra have opted to go with a 6pm (our time) game from Major League Baseball next Sunday - Milwaukee Brewers @ Cincinnati Reds - which is the last day of the regular season.

Two potential problems -
1) The Reds are one win (or one Cardinals loss) away from winning the NL Central, meaning it's highly likely that this game will be a dead rubber.
2) 5 Live Sports Extra are due to do live on-site commentary from Washington Redskins @ Philadelphia Eagles in the NFL at 9pm, meaning if the baseball overruns it's likely to be abandoned whilst in progress.

If both factors are realised, there's no way they'll see the baseball through to its conclusion. If 5LSE were "unable" to do commentary on the bottom of the ninth in a tight, important game in the play-offs race the other week when they were only taking an American radio NFL commentary, then there's absolutely no chance they'd delay crossing to Philadelphia to do an NFL commentary they've gone to the expense of flying a team out for, especially if the MLB game is a dead rubber.

My solution would be to look at switching the game if the Reds win the division before Sunday (as they did with the Twins game yesterday), and with no 1am game scheduled, see if they can do a later game by splitting the platforms to incorporate any overlap with the NFL onto an extra '5 Live Baseball' channel on DAB and online (commentaries are now being streamed and archived on the IPlayer), something which they did during the summer when international football, cricket and F1 commentaries were all taking place at the same time.

talkSPORT


Sunday 12th September

Rugby Union: Premiership
Saracens v Sale Sharks - Russell Hargreaves

Formula 1: Italian Grand Prix
Autodromo Nazionale Monza - Graham Courtney

Saturday 18th September

Rugby Union: Premiership
London Wasps v Leicester Tigers - Simon Ward

Saturday 25th September

Rugby Union: Premiership
Harlequins v Exeter Chiefs - Andrew Titheridge

Sunday 26th September

Formula 1: Singapore Grand Prix
Marina Bay Street Circuit - Geoff Peters


In addition, Jack Bannister reported on all five One Day Internationals between England and Pakistan, but disappointingly they had no reports on any of the season ending games in county cricket.

With the exception of the weekend of the 11th and 12th September, when there wasn't a Sunday 1.30pm commentary game and on the Saturday Matchday Live had reporters at 17 football games, talkSPORT have started taking reports from Talking Rugby's featured Saturday afternoon Premiership rugby union games and have stopped taking updates from Talking Rugby's main Sunday games.

I guess the logical reason for this change is that talkSPORT are now doing Around the Grounds on Saturday afternoons and a football commentary on Sunday afternoons, a reversal from the past three seasons.

Tuesday 28th September - BBC WM

Mike Taylor presenting WM Sport from Monmore Green

Speedway: The Golden Hammer
Dudley Heathens (individual riders meeting) - Mike Taylor (commentary), with Richard Wilford in the pit lane

Football: League One
Leyton Orient v Walsall - Rob Gurney

Sky Sports and talkSPORT commentator Nigel Pearson, who is also the chairman of the Heathens, is contributing analysis to WM's coverage tonight.

Rugby union from Saturday:-

Ospreys V Airioni (Magners League RU)

Gareth Charles and Rhodri Gomer Davies for Radio Cymru with Gareth Rhys Owen hosting

Ryder Cup preview:-

Steffan Garerro hosting, with James Pontin, and er, the Golf Correspondent from The Independent on BBC Radio Wales.

Gareth Rhys Owen is out in New Delhi ready for the Commonwealth games starting Sunday.

Hmm, I wonder if Sky are doing 3D / HDTV coverage of the Ryder Cup this weekend, I've seen no mention of it on any billboards or local newspapers.

</sarcasm>

BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra are doing commentary on the annual NBA pre-season match at the 02 Arena - which this year is Los Angeles Lakers v Minnesota Timberwolves - this coming Monday at 7.45pm (according to the commentary schedule page on their website).

Last year, the 02 Arena game was broadcast on 5 Live but I guess Sports Extra is the more logical platform for it since it has become BBC Radio's home of North American sports. I wonder if we could get live regular season and play-off basketball on Sports Extra to compliment their baseball and NFL coverage?

Thursday 30th September - BBC WM

Mike Taylor presenting WM Sport from Brandon

Speedway: Elite League Knockout Cup Quarter Final Second Leg
Coventry Bees v Wolverhampton Wolves - Mike Taylor (commentary), with Richard Wilford in the pit lane

WM were due to cover Birmingham v Newcastle in the Premier League KO Cup on Wednesday night, but that was rained off.

IRN - Saturday 2nd October

RUGBY UNION Aviva Premiership
Harlequins v Newcastle - Elliot Cook

GOLF Ryder Cup
Europe v USA - Rupert Bell

Ryder Cup Radio
online at rydercup.com and on course on 87.7 FM

Presenter: Richard Kaufman
Commentators: Ron Jones, Dave Farrar and Matt Adams
Summarisers: John Hawksworth, Gordon Brand Jnr, Paul Eales and Peter Baker

This is the list as detailed on the Ryder Cup website, but talkSPORT stalwart Bob Bubka has also been heard on the coverage.

Nick Dye, the regular European Tour Radio reporter, is providing post-session updates and audio interviews on the website and may well pop up on his regular radio stations during the course of the weekend.

Bob said on Hawksbee & Jacobs yesterday that he'd be doing a commentary stint on Saturday afternoon (not mentioning who for), and with talkSPORT concentrating on Around the Grounds in the football between 12-5pm today it makes sense for him pick up some commentary work for someone else as I imagine they'll be fewer golf reports on talkSPORT today than on Friday and Sunday.

Since tuning in to talkSPORT this afternoon I've only heard Rupert Bell and David Brady reporting, although Bob was the most prominent of the trio yesterday.

GOLF Ryder Cup

RTE Radio 1
Reports from Greg Allen

Today FM (Ireland)
Reports from Nathan Murphy

Scarlets V Ospreys (Magners League RU)

BBC Radio Wales - Nick Webb and Phil Bennett (All platforms)
BBC Radio Cymru - Gareth Charles and Rhodri Gomer Davies

Friday 1st to Monday 4th October - talkSPORT

Golf: The Ryder Cup
Celtic Manor, Newport - Rupert Bell, Bob Bubka and David Brady

Rugby Union: Premiership
Harlequins v Newcastle Falcons (Saturday) - Elliott Cook
Saracens v Leicester Tigers (Sunday) - Phil Blacker