Nearly 10 mins or so of zilch sound from New Douglas Park! Barbara doing some damage to Sky's coverage of Hamilton v Celtic. The comm box looked ropey at half time!

EDIT: Sound has came back only through the comms mics, virtually no crowd noise, and changed from main feed/graphics to only the main camera being used. 3rd goal just showed the players running back to half way!

EDIT EDIT: At full time literally a quick sign off from Crocker to end the coverage.

Indeed-significant technical problems in the last 25 minutes, as described by pakokelso93 above.

Fair play to those involved for maintaining visual coverage to full-time, despite awful weather conditions and obvious technical issues!

If that's what you want from Premier League coverage, maybe it is, but I don't care about seeing every game live. Most of them are better as highlights. I want quality coverage, not quantity. Also, I can go to the games.


Well, you say that, but we hear so much about why England perform so badly in tournaments due to the lack of a winter break, and Italy has one and the players are travelling to the other side of the world to play a friendly. Not that I agree with the theory, mind, given the likes of Messi and Suarez play about a thousand matches a season. We should have a longer summer break, not drag the season out longer.


Lots of moaning about it on social media, mind, not that Sky could have done much about it by the sounds of things. I wish I'd postponed my trip home to see it. Lots of people on Twitter, as always seems to be the case when Sky show Scottish football, are suggesting Sky's coverage is much worse than BT's Scottish coverage. I don't watch either but BT seems to get loads of praise on Twitter. Seemingly the exact opposite of the Premier League.

That was a bit of a miserable post for Christmas Eve. Merry Christmas.

I suspected there would be, but I'm old enough to recognise that the volume and reliability of live sports coverage is as high as it's ever been. The majority of criticism of BT or Sky is presentational, in my view. They rarely disappoint by losing visual coverage for significant periods. I was enjoying today's match and was happy to see it to the end, regardless that Sky couldn't deliver their normal quality.

Sky's problems today are clearly being brought up by clueless folk on twitter who've not got a scooby. Weather played it's part.

As for Sky v BT Scottish football coverage - I've now started to see why and now consider BT coverage to be superior. As I pointed out on the SPFL fixtures thread - Sky have first picks obviously but have only showed 4 games so far this season that haven't involved any Old Firm games. BT have made Friday night match their thing and the recent extra programme for 30 mins before the main match build up is brilliant. They are not as fussed if they don't show Celtic or Rangers. The likes of Darrell Currie is outstanding and you've regular pundits but a variety of them with Stewart, Craigan, Sutton, Butcher etc. Obviously it depends on how some view the tastes of one or two of those. Obviously Rae is outstanding as a commentator and Eilidh Barbour is a great reporter.

I'm not a great fan of the 3 man commentary teams but some how I'm finding it at least palatable on the SPFL coverage when used.

If you look at Sky it is very bare-bones. Constant Old Firm team picks. Also Crocker and Neil McCann are the only real outstanding personnel. McCann is so underrated, obviously up here the poisoned nature of the Old Firm sees him and Walker get abuse just for their previous team history. Although Walker states the obvious for me anyway! I've always enjoyed Crocker, he is brilliant and Tanner is as cheesy as they come. Often for a run of the mill game or on the rare games with no Old Firm presence it is Just Tanner and Walker or McCann in the studio with the other alongside Crocker. Even for other games it is the one regular pundit, Tanner and one other guest. two guests for Old Firm games.

You final point I do actually agree with. I love the traditional Xmas football in this country and anyway, what happens if there's really severe weather late in January or February - much more likely of course - if there's already been a "winter" break at this time?

On the Italian League point they have only just broken up; it's just been an extra couple of days for the players of the two teams involved.

A round-up of commentary details since last Sunday night. Apologies for any duplicated information:

Sunday 18th December:

Monaco v Lyon (BT Sport 1) - Adam Summerton and Stewart Robson
Lazio v Fiorentina (BT Sport 3) - Seb Hutchinson and Clive Allen
Barcelona v Espanyol (Sky Sports 1) - Rob Palmer and Gerry Armstrong
Sporting Lisbon v Braga (BT Sport 2) - Tim Caple

Monday 19th December:

Nuremberg v Kaiserslautern (BT Sport 1) - Dan Mason
Athletic Bilbao v Celta Vigo (Sky Sports 2) - Jon Driscoll and Gerry Armstrong
Everton v Liverpool (Sky Sports 1) - Rob Hawthorne and Alan Smith

Tuesday 20th December:

Borussia Dortmund v Augsburg (BT Sport 2) - Derek Rae and Don Hutchison
Atalanta v Empoli (BT Sport 3) - Jon Champion and Chris Perry
Peterborough v Notts County (BT Sport 1) - Steve Bower and Adam Virgo

Wednesday 21st December:

Benfica v Rio Ave (BT Sport 2) - Seb Hutchinson
Bayern Munich v Red Bull Leipzig (BT Sport 3) - Derek Rae and Owen Hargreaves
Inter Milan v Lazio (BT Sport ESPN) - Steve Bower and Clive Allen
Newport v Plymouth (BT Sport 1) - Jon Champion and Adam Virgo
Bordeaux v Nice (BT Sport Extra 2) - Matt Spiro

Thursday 22nd December:

Gent v Anderlecht (Premier Sports) - Will Downing
Fiorentina v Napoli (BT Sport 1) - Dave Farrar and Chris Perry
Roma v Chievo (BT Sport 2) - Jonathan Pearce

Friday 23rd December:

Juventus v AC MIlan (Sky Sports 1) - Gary Weaver and Garry Birtles, (World Feed) - Richard Whittle
Motherwell v Aberdeen (BT Sport 1) - Derek Rae and Stephen Craigan

Saturday 24th December:

Hamilton v Celtic (Sky Sports 1 & 5) - Ian Crocker and Andy Walker



Merry Christmas everyone!

Merry and a very Happy Christmas to everybody on here, fast approaching our 12th year on here!

Merry Christmas Casinoman and everyone! Not quite the 12 years but feels like a life time ago...7 and a half years roughly... Since I started looking and posting here as a 16 year old school kid, now in the early stages on the bona fide freelance commentary/media ladder.

Have a good one all!

Merry Christmas everybody. Great work on the forum. I'm glad to contribute to it.

Happy Christmas everyone

Merry Christmas everyone!
Having only discovered this forum a year ago, I have since tracked back through the archives to see the topic of conversations from years past.
Great work by all the posters to keep the information flowing all these years later!

All the best over the festive period to all, and a very Happy New Year, hope everyone enjoys 2017!

Merry Christmas to all those who contribute to and read the thread

Merry Christmas to everyone who reads and posts on the thread.
Always a joy to contribute to.

Have a great day everyone.

Merry Christmas folks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Puq-Kaovps

Merry Christmas everyone.

Don't post as much as I did in the early days of the thread but still check it on an almost daily basis. Have a good one!

Merry Christmas.

Here's to another year of surprises and shocks!

Sky Sports News HQ HD OMG has a large clock behind the presenters counting down to Watford v Crystal Palace.

A clock. Counting down. To Watford v Crystal Palace.

Geoff Shreeves and Alan Smith both at Vicarage Road.

Someone at SSNHQHD24HRS seems to have discovered large clocks this year (glad I spelt that correctly) and to want to use it whenever and wherever they can even days before matches - particularly on that newswall

The same person also clearly works on FNF where on the first show we had a "countdown to team news" graphic - only for them to then miss the announcement as they were showing adverts.

I'm sure we're all hoping for the annual festive Dwight Yorke appearance. Boxing Day isn't Boxing Day without Dwight Yorke.

One of the women on SSN has a right frog in her throat, maybe it's the big clock

It's probably difficult to fill time on Boxing Day. I can see why they are counting down to the game with the big story around it

I'd imagine the crap seasonal guest (E.g. Dwight Yorke) will more likely be at Hull due to the short program and I can imagine ' Boro vs Leicester next Monday having a poor line up

And for it to really count he'll be the only pundit.

Interesting story I heard from someone who works at a North West PL club (generally realisable source of transfer news). PL 'urged' Sky/BT to avoid NYE fixture moves (moving to NYD was deemed as OK though) but BT decided to go with a game on the basis that it's a usual time slot and 'local' teams playing each other. Sky then planned a PR story of how good they were not moving NYE games but there's an FL game moved so they decided against it.

Nissan Football Special - Watford vs Crystal Palace

Presenter: Dwight Yorke
Pundits: Dwight Yorke
Commentators: Dwight Yorke
Play by play (WTF is this?): Dwight Yorke

Reporter: Dwight Yorke

It is in fact Simon Thomas in the studio with Jamie Redknapp & Thierry Henry

EDIT: Interesting to see if Sky use the same pundits for both games. You'd expect Carragher at Anfield tomorrow. I don't think we'll hear/see GNev at all over Xmas/NY