Fixing the link for you:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/foo...an-Robson.html (It doesn't work at my end) Thanks for posting the article.
Interesting report, first of all its news to me that Stan Collymore is on a three-year contract as it was well documented that the first deal he signed with talkSPORT was a two-year one.
But on further thought this would make sense, as Stan's current deal covers the duration of the three-season contract the station has with the Premier League, whereas his previous one would have covered the remaining two seasons of their previous 2007/08 to 2009/10 contract as well as the World Cup when he joined the station in the summer of 2008.
Because of this, I wonder how feasible bringing in Andy Gray to a co-commentary role over Stan's head would be. Given the offers he is said to have received, including one from the BBC, when his last contract expired, I would not be surprised if he has assurances guaranteeing him a certain number of live matches (and editions of Call Collymore) per season written into his contract that might be difficult for them to get around.
Maybe putting Gray onto Champions League and Euro 2012 games would be more straight forward for talkSPORT at this stage, given that the rights status of those matches are not set in stone like the Premier League radio rights are. But then again, the contract Stan agreed to may be far less prohibitive than I think.
It's worth noting this is all newspaper talk at the moment. While I've never been one to denigrate Charles Sale as some in the Football Commentators thread in the Broadcasting section do, as he does have a good track record of reporting sports commentary news before it goes public (his exclusive about Guy Mowbray commentating on the World Cup Final for BBC One springs to mind), he doesn't always hit the mark and indeed his past report about Stan Collymore looking to leave talkSPORT last summer never came to fruition. I've no doubt that there's an interest in moving Gray to commentaries at talkSPORT's end but as Sale says, they are only "looking" at the moment.
If talkSPORT were to move Andy Gray to Premier League co-commentaries, I think they would opt to move him - and possibly Richard Keys as well - to the Sunday Exclusive games. With Neil Warnock being unlikely to commit to being a regular voice on Sunday Exclusive this season due to QPR's promotion, now is a good time to refresh the show's line-up and by, at the very least, having Keys and Gray as it's presentation pairing would make good commercial sense and would be a good way of introducing them to their live coverage ahead of Euro 2012.
Whatever happens, I think Stan Collymore should (and in all likelihood will) keep the Saturday teatime co-commentaries, given that these games are typically less attractive fixtures to the Sunday matches and are infrequent. The flexibility of his Call Collymore phone-in is key here, in that you can run it either after a live game or between 5-7pm if there's not one without the schedule having great disparity from week to week.
Whereas on Sunday you could have Gray co-commentating on the Sunday 1.30pm game (or the first game of a double header) with him and Keys then anchoring post-match reaction from 3.30-6pm with Stan Collymore chipping in from the 4pm game and then presenting Call Collymore from there between 6-7/8pm. They could work it in a way where Collymore would not lose out in terms of his phone-in and still keep a fair chunk of Premier League commentaries as well as Champions League matches.
