The Sport Thread

In Jeff's book, Jelleyman's thrown a wobbly, he said he almost signed a deal with ITV Sport in 2005, to be precise on July 7th, and something caused him to change his mind, plus he later said he's very grateful to Sky. Although he did say TV-am was the worst place to work for as they didn't give a damn about Sport.

the BBC never went for Jeff Stelling, it was pretty well-known to be ITV.
he's not that great outside of the comfort zone of Soccer Saturday anyway (average at best on Sky's Champions League coverage) and he knows it.

ITV look to be taking their French Open coverage quite seriously, broadcasting it daily from 9.30am to 8pm on ITV4, with action on ITV1 in the afternoon on the first day (the Sunday) - but not during the week. It was also very heavily promoted during Britain's Got Talent last week - more so than Euro 2012 in fact, and I've seen no ads yet for the Champions League Final.

Can someone tell me why BBC Alba seems to have two different different sets of graphics for it's rugby?

Do they? I've only seen the one with the big ALBA in a rugby ball, designed by Gerry Slavin

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tX84RcBkNvo

S4C also covered the Leinster/Glasgow match on the weekend, with their rather boring square gfx.

Last week there was a match on iPlayer with this package being used.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsqOwgyHZAY

Basically this package used for football, is the one that was used on some Pro 12 rugby a couple of weeks ago.

Shame it wasn't a BBC Sport Scotland production, as their graphics are still fantastic.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01j0p3h/Scottish_Football_League_2011_12_Dumbarton_v_Airdrie_Utd/

Sport coverage on Alba is indeed odd, the majority of the viewers are probably English speaking everyone in the stadium and everyone involved.

I bet it really annoys some.

The same really applies to sport on TG4 and S4C. TG4 in particular, since (unlike S4C) they don't provide an English language feed on the red button (Irish broadcasters seem to have a general dislike of the red button in general), and their only sop to their mainly English-speaking viewing public is a glossary that is occasionally scrolled down the bottom of the screen ticker-style. Its a constant bone of contention among rugby fans in Ireland, even more now that TG4 have the highlights rights to the Heineken Cup.

A wierder thing about TG4's rugby coverage is that they translate the Irish teams names into Irish (so refer to Leinster as "Cuige Laighian" and Ulster as "Cuige Uladh"), but don't do the same for the Scottish teams, so they still refer to them as "Edinburgh" and "Glasgow Warriors" instead of 'Dun Éideann" and "Glaschú".

Nice graphics package used by BBC Alba incidentally ("Rugbaidh Beo", pronounced the same I imagine as TG4's "Rugbaí Beo") but I wonder how they get away with not using the generic BBC Sport graphics - presumably because BBC Alba isn't actually an integral part of the BBC but a joint venture with MG Alba.

Announced today BTW, S4C will be showing the Pro 12 final, Leinster v Ospreys, though with a Welsh region involved that's hardly surprising. Both RTÉ and TG4 cover that one (though oddly TG4 are hosts, despite the fact that the Royal Dublin Society is a five minute walk from RTÉ Television Centre).

http://www.rabodirectpro12.com/news/14094.php

But the News is very much within the style for all other BBC News output.

I'm guessing the nations don't have a requirement to use the black and gold, as BBC Sport Scotland has it's own rather nice package. BBC Sport Wales get away with sticking a Scrum V logo where the BBC Sport Wales logo should go.

I also think BBC Sport Scotland use the gold and black package when they're showing rugby.

BBC Northern Ireland use (mostly) the regular BBC Sport graphics (albeit "BBC SPORT NI" branded), but have gotten away with a custom "Ulster Rugby Live" logo instead of the normal gold bar standard font look.

Great news, according to Digital Spy members it was announced by Manish that BBC have secured the Football League Highlights rights for another 3 years.

Watched Sky 3D for the first time yesterday for the double European Cup finals (and had very sore eyes after five hours of looking at the thing) but a couple of presentation observations. The Heineken Cup graphics were pretty much the standard Heineken Cup graphics with slight jazzing up for 3D, although stats appeared as a bar along the bottom, I'm not sure of the reason for this difference. The transition graphic was a huge Sky Sports 3D logo and the Heineken Cup trophy.

The Champions League feed was a pooled feed and as such used the usual Champions League graphics but the score bar was a bit of an oddity - it was the standard Champions League score bar and not the Sky one, and weirdly, once the end of a half came, the clock froze on 45/90/105/120 and then the entire score bar disappeared! Again the transition graphic was different - a rotating Champions League logo instead of the logo wiping across the screen like it normally does.

In both games the camera crew was at the opposite side of the pitch to the normal crew, creating a weird effect in pubs like the one we were in, where the games were being screened on normal TVs as well as the 3D screen.

Some unusual idents/bumpers on Sky 3D, including one resembling a test card. No commercials to speak of, just a rolling trailer during breaks.