On the new Bauer deal, it looks as if Frank McAvennie and Alex Rae will be Radio Clyde's pundits/co-commentators. An
article in The Herald today states: "Radio Clyde pundit McAvennie, who was helping launch Bauer Media Group's enhanced Scottish football coverage", while Rae was described vertabim in an
article in The Scotsman.
On Twitter, Lorraine Herbison has listed the following as commentators:
Tom Miller - Clyde 2 (Glasgow)
Gerry McDade - Forth 2 (Edinburgh)
Gordon Duncan - Westsound (Ayrshire)
Dave Galloway and Dave MacDermid - Northsound 2 (Aberdeen)
Dick Donnelly and Murray McGregor - Tay AM (Dundee and Perth)
Iain Auld and John Rose - MFR (Inverness and the Highlands)
The tweets in question are
here and
here.
Good to see Bauer investing in expanded commentary rights for Scottish football, it's really good news for fans in Scotland - and for fans of the Scottish game in general if they can/have secure(d) online rights like BBC Radio Scotland have - and is also an optimistic sign for the other Bauer-owned stations that cover football, Absolute and Radio City. It looks like a particularly promising area in which to establish an audience given that since BBC Radio's "delivering quality first" directive was introduced, over the past few seasons BBC Radio Scotland no longer provide commentary on every top flight match in Scotland, just those in standalone timeslots and on Saturdays one featured 3pm commentary and an Around the Grounds show. With Scotland not having the BBC Local Radio network that England has, a regional commercial radio commentary service will be very welcome indeed.
The 2005 BBC Radio Scotland deal that shut the Bauer stations out of commentary rights originally strikes me as being very similar to BBC Radio 5 Live's exclusive national radio rights deal for the English FA Cup from the late 2000s, with them previously having done a non-exclusive deal for the same set of rights at the turn of the century. A complaint about that FA Cup deal was rightly upheld by the BBC Trust, who called upon Radio 5 Live to ensure they "endeavour to minimise the BBC's negative competitive impact on the wider market" in order to provide better "value for money" for listeners. Hopefully the sensible recommendations of that BBC Trust report will have been taken on board by BBC Radio Scotland (and other BBC local and national stations where necessary) and we'll have more situations like this where both BBC and commercial radio can co-exist with extensive, non-exclusive rights.