Originally Posted by LOSG:
“Although with Man Utd, Liverpool and Chelsea not in the CL there's a better chance of big Monday nights games this year.”
Yeah, but Sky have always tended to use Mondays very much for quota filling. One of the reasons why they make so much of the punditry on Monday Night Football is because the matches themselves are often quite weak, and not that big a draw. There is scope for bigger games this season but they will still need to do some contractual obligation fare and Monday is often the best slot to do them because there are other attractions on the programme, plus you're appealing far more to hardcore fans as casual fans are often lured away by the soaps and that, unlike at the weekend.
Originally Posted by BFGArmy:
“ It just seems a bit odd to me that since we get Sunday games why BBC don't do the Monday games? You rightly say Monday games aren't often the biggest and Sunday games often are but being a pedant it just feels odd that there are those 10 or so games where there won't be highlights on MOTD.
That said it's probably more hassle then it's worth. Roping in 2 pundits and also finding a presenter for one commentary etc. all for what would probably be a 30-minute show.”
Well, yeah, and it's the same sort of argument as to why they don't do highlights of midweek Football League games. On a Monday, even if it was allowed, you'd be coming on much sooner after the final whistle so it would all be a bit frantic to put together and it would be a bit rough and ready. In addition, the usual length of a highlights edit on Match of the Day is nearer ten minutes, so you'd either have a much, much longer edit than any other game they show over the weekend, which would be grim if it was a 0-0, or long punditry, but there might not be much to say and they can barely show the weekend's goals again, or it would have to be a very short show which would be a waste of time.
I mean, if the will was there they could do it, because they sometimes do it for the FA Cup, but at the end of the day, they're not showing the Premier League out of the goodness of their hearts, they do it to get ratings, and if they don't think enough people would want to watch it, it would be a waste of money. Certainly even if I didn't have Sky, I probably wouldn't bother watching it unless it was Liverpool or absolutely massive. You don't get highlights of the odd rescheduled game in midweek either, but over the course of the season and across the Beeb you can stay informed even if you don't get to see exhaustive highlights of all 380 matches.
Originally Posted by BFGArmy:
“As someone who didn't see it and knows it's fondly looked back on in this thread, what was different between Football Matters and all the other audience based football shows we've had?
The likes of SNF, Five's Football League show and the Premiership on Monday have all been criticised partly for having an audience so what worked with Football Matters that didn't with those? I assume the presenters helped -James Richardson and the lovely Rebecca Lowe are both fantastic football presenters - but it can't have just been the presenters.”
Well, I didn't watch Football Matters, I'm afraid, and I wonder if it mostly escaped the ire because so few people watched it, whereas the other shows were very high profile. It depends what you use the audience for, doesn't it? In Saturday Night Football, and probably Football League Tonight, the problem was they were so barely used they may as well not have been there. Certainly the audience was probably the least of Saturday Night Football's problems given that last season without them, if anything it was worse. As for the Premiership Parliament, they spent too much time on awkward banter.
I mean, there probably is a role for a football show with an audience, for something like a sporting time of Question Time. But there has to be a reason for them to be there, not just an audience for audience's sakes.
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