I imagine John Lloyd didn't take much persuading.

Interested to see talk of a new interactive red button service. Seems they are building on what they did during the Tour de France.

The BDO packs in in jan after their World Championship and the only televised PDC tourn. will be the Finals of the Players Championship

Yeah but did you see their interactive coverage of Tour? No commentary and a picture that took up about 1/8th of the screen with no way of making it full-screen.

Yeah i know, hopefully with their own production crew doing the broadcast they may do a better job, but the fact that their willing to try putting more things on the red button is a step in the right direction.

Simon Reed too. He is very good. I am suprised it took the BBC so long to use him after his years on Eurosport. If I remember rightly, Reed was ITVs tennis and ice skating commentator back in the 1980s

Not an ITV production though - it's being made by TWI.

Apologies didn't quite phrase it right. I'm guessing ITV will be getting the feed straight from TWI like with the BBC and snooker as supposed to the Tour which French television produce for their own channels and then gets distributed internationally through a network of other channels like Versus.

No, it's a TWI production from start to finish. They will deliver programmes to ITV, not feeds.

Yesterday's Rugby Union:-

Scotland 'A' V Georgia - Evelyn Coull as presenter, with Hugh Maclllinnein and Ailean Domhnallach commentating for BBC Alba.

During half time they showed highlights from Scotland - New Zealand the Saturday previous, but had Gordon Townsend as a Co-Commentator (It was Andy Nicol as usual).

Wales V Canada - Gareth Lewis, Gareth Rhys and Ieuan Evans as Studio Guests with Commentary from Gareth Charles and Stuart Davies for BBC 2 Wales.

England vs. Australia

Commentators: Miles Harrison & Stuart Barnes

Scotland vs South Africa

Nick Mullins and Andy Nicol

On another note, interesting to hear Peter Drury today on the Grand Slam of Darts, if John Rawling is there too then it'll be interesting to see who'll be commentating on the Championship football games for ITV

Ireland vs. New Zealand

Commentators: Eddie Butler & Phillip Matthews

Unbiased as usual I'm sure! (am PVR-ing it for later use)

I'm sure Brian Moore is more biased towards England than Phillip Matthews is for Ireland.

Quite the opposite - he's been massively critical of some parts of England's play.

I'm one of the minority - I like him!

I think Moore is good too. I wouldn't have said that Matthews is particularly biased. They are both far superior to Guscott & Davies who really get on my nerves!

All of the rugby union co-commentators are biased to their home nation, Brian Moore included? But what's wrong with that? They have one from each country... it all balances out.

Anyway, Phillip Matthews wasn't biased today... the ref had a shocker and he told it like it was.

Agree with you about Jeremy Guscott. JD makes me laugh so much.

'Numbers'


Yep. bad, bad call with the Tommy Bowe penalty try (although the referee did 'assist' him by not forming his question correctly)


England Rugby on ITV.com

Cardiff v Palace - Jon Champion; Doncaster v Ipswich - Roger Tames; Norwich v Swansea - Someone but don't know who.

ITV commentators this weekend:
Sale v Worcester - Martin Gillingham
Bath v Leicester - Bob Symonds

Was it simply an editing issue that meant Bob didn't mention the thirteen minutes of injury/added-on time at the end of the second half?

Loved the 'Scoreboard' that Saracens used!

Gloucester vs. Bristol

Commentators: Will Chignell & Ieuan Evans

Scotland V Canada (Bank of Scotland Corporate Test RU)

BBC One Scotland / BBC Online:- John Beattie and David Sole (originally thought it was Davie Callum)


indeed. Was confused for a bit, as David Sole did a few commentary pairings with someone for the RWC2007, and thought he may still have been doing that.

Most broadcasters (apart from New Zealand/South Africa) will take the originating English language commentary anyway.
Last edited by Ian Cleverly : 22-11-2008 at 15:09

David Sole.

I remember David Sole working on ITV during RWC2003, think he was paired a few times with Nigel Starmer-Smith. Of course that was in the good old days of John Taylor and Steve Smith as main comms, before ITV started to loan comms from Sky