Originally Posted by
Paul_Crawford:
“The Difference Any more news from your sources about the future of the Stan Collymore? For me the silence is deafening, and if he wants to join anoher broadcaster he needs to make his intentions known because you would think the likes of 5live are drawing up their plans for next season as we speak.
Btw another talksport vs 5live twitter spat
https://twitter.com/wallj10/status/751806765075992576
Looks like the cordial relations are a thing of the past.”
Firstly, I don't have any sources - on here I've been merely reporting back the obvious, that Stan Collymore exited talkSPORT's Euro 2016 coverage abruptly with a week of the tournament to go, having not done a couple of shows he'd been scheduled for (a post-Wales v Belgium edition of Call Collymore and a punditry stint on the England: The Inquest show) prior to his final match as well as missing out on both semi-finals and the final, which he'd publically said that he was down to co-commentate on. Anything more than that is just conjecture, but the fact that he's continued to be active on Twitter without offering an explanation to his absence from talkSPORT (or anything about said station for that matter) suggests to me that what's transpired isn't to do with something simple like an illness.
I will say that SouthCity has brought up some good points both on this thread and elsewhere about how NewsCorp's takeover of talkSPORT and The Wireless Group is yet to be formally completed and it may take a fair while for it to be approved should the regulators get involved, which appears to be likely. So NewsCorp will not have been able to act directly to oust him from his position, they wouldn't have the authority to do so at this point in time. But we all know that Stan Collymore is an emotional guy, and the fact that NewsCorp's bid has been accepted by the people who run The Wireless Group may have been enough to prompt his departure from the airwaves at such an inopportune time.
As for the supposed "Twitter spat" between Mike Bovill and Jonathan Wall, I highly doubt that it's anything more than an isolated incident and will lead to a wider, more general detriment in relations between TWG and the BBC.
For what it's worth, while it's unbecoming of Boves to raise an issue with a competitor in a public forum (and quite out of character for a generally upbeat guy) - I think Wall's response was the correct way to reply - I do have some sympathy with his stance on the matter he's brought up. talkSPORT 2, the station he manages, have only just started covering domestic cricket this summer and I am led to understand that space for ISDN lines at some county cricket grounds is fairly limited - indeed their rugby league commentator Mark Wilson's response suggests this is the case at sports grounds in his part of the world.
Yet the way in which the BBC covers domestic cricket varies from competition to competition. For the County Championship and I think the One-Day Cup, BBC Local Radio stations pool their resources to produce a single commentary on each match that feature commentators representing both of the counties in action and the local stations that cover those teams. When Radio 5 Live Sports Extra pick up these games, they add their own voices to the existing mix, but don't swell the numbers greatly. However for the T20 Blast, with many of these games airing on the BBC Local Radio stations' FM platforms rather than just online or in some cases AM and DAB, the stations tend to provide their own separate services. In addition, when Radio 5 Live Sports Extra covers a T20 Blast game, they produce a third individual BBC commentary.
So for T20 Blast matches, you are going from having BBC Radio utilise perhaps two or three ISDN lines (while the commentary team may be bigger, no more than three broadcasters will be on duty at any one time) on the same teams in the County Championship to as many as seven (both local stations, 5LSE and maybe a reporter for 5 Live too). For a commercial radio station that doesn't normally have a presence let alone the same level of resources at these grounds - and it's worth noting that the ECB fund most/all of the BBC's county cricket commentaries - I can imagine it being frustrating that they can't have as much access to radio quality ISDN lines as they'd like to, if at all (having listened to their T20 Blast coverage, there's been times when talkSPORT's reporters at additional games have had to file their updates via phone). Personally I would prefer it if 5LSE approached T20 Blast games, certainly those from the group stage, in the way they do Football League and domestic rugby union games, by taking the home team's local radio commentary - not least because I think the set-up they use on County Championship games is stronger than 5LSE's rather generic T20 Blast coverage. It would not only save money, but save space in press boxes, which I suspect may be the source of Boves' frustration here, which in my view is not unreasonable.
