Originally Posted by Pizzatheaction:
“When the BBC and ITV divvy up the matches in a tournament like this, is it part of the agreement that, soaps aside, the only opposition to the other channel's evening football match will be repeats?
Soaps apart, the BBC and ITV always seem to show repeat programming against the football, even if low profile teams are playing.”
Venturing massively off-thread, but the BBC & ITV only divvy up the games once the draws are made, so they very much decide it by actual games rather than "we'll do Tuesday, you do Wednesday". And I wouldn't have expected any deal on what can be shown opposite the football - I think what you've picked up on is that after the group games (where the rights have been divvied up months earlier as the first round fixtures are all known), the knock out games are only known days beforehand and therefore who shows what can only be decided at the eleventh hour - too late for listings magazines. Hence the "alternative schedules" being published - and being subject to change, there's more likelihood of repeats being stuffed in (and easily moved).
The BBC and ITV have a contract which governs their bids for the rights to tournaments. This includes a process by which games will be shared out - broadly, consensus through negotiation and if that fails, some other process to have the games determined. Could come down to a toss of a coin I suppose. They always end up doing a deal, although the negotiations can be very protracted and take several weeks of long drawn out meetings.
What usually puts the cat among the pigeons is that England are only ever guaranteed 3 games - so they can't split that equally between them. What usually seems to happen is that ITV get 2 out of the 3 with BBC taking a punt on England getting through to the 2nd round and having the rights to that. In World Cup '06, the BBC ended up with the rights to England's round 2 and QF games, so got 3 England games to ITV's 2 overall. As a result of that, ITV took the midweek 8pm Sweden game - which won the biggest TV audience of 2006 - and the BBC conceded the rights to some other big group games to ITV. And (had England got through), the right to show both semi finals - the England match simulcast on both sides, but only ITV1 showing the other one. As they got knocked out, they took one each, with first pick to ITV.
All this is academic for next year - sadly, and tragically - so it should be a more straightforward divvying-up, with possibly more attention paid to fitting around regular schedules and a "we'll take France v Germany, you take Holland v Italy" approach.
Either way, I would think the ratings will be depressed. There just won't be the pre-tournament hype and build-up without England there. But talk of moving matches to BBC2 or ITV2 is nonsense - it will still bring in massive numbers of viewers next June, and don't forget that the BBC/ITV have together paid something like £80m (is it?) for the joint rights to this, so no way they dump any of it on lesser watched channels. And they'll happily move their soaps to do so.
