2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa

All of that is irrelevant. My point was that it's no good suggesting that the one thing that is done manually.... the starting of an ad break.... should be done manually!

The playing of an adbreak is never going to be done by the programme's production team. It might be done by an 'ad insertion point' like in the US but they're not going to be sitting there with manual mixing desks and digibetas. The ad insertion point as described by Noggin is just another automated playout area.

The BBC is strangely showing the warm up to the next match on the red button. It's bizarrely relaxing.

But in essence it can be pre-compiled, and treated just like any other three minute recorded segment.

Forget any compliance issues about who is actually playing the ads, and what is 'normal' operation, I'm just suggesting for events with the profile that Saturday's match had, (which are actually very rare on ITV these days) a different approach could be adopted.

It would be expensive, but it's money well spent if it reduces the likelihood of what happened. You must admit, it was a PR disaster for ITV ?

This is the first of the BBC coverage I've seen so far and it's absolutely dire. The commentary team have been whining about the game constantly, whining about negative tactics. I look forward to that being rebranded as 'brave defending' should England meet Brazil.

We were then treated to a piss-poor safari trip enjoyed by one of its journalists, a great use of money and a gift to the Murdoch/Daily Mail camp.

It's self-indulgent and terrible. If they don't want to be at the World Cup then I'll go instead.

ITV's panel, if not their transmission suite on the other hand are in my opinion having a far better tournament. Adrian Chiles is ideal - he's grounded, knows how good it is to be there, and is nowhere near as smug as Lineker. And he seems less likely to get overexcited and jingoistic as the event goes on. As an added treat it's easier to predict when the 'news from the England camp' is coming up so you can time when to go for a piss. Result.

The commercial integration areas I saw were "semi-automated". The transition from the live feed to the advert was under manual control with a conventional vision mixer and sound desk - but the actual pre-recorded content was usually played out from a single playout port. Most decent server systems will have internal vision + sound mixers allowing you to do "internal cross rolls".

The point was made to me that the guys operating the commercial integration area only had one thing to concentrate on doing, and that was why they did it, because any mistake with a sponsorship bumper or commercial playout will cost millions on a high-profile programme. (Clipping 6" off a Nike commercial would be unthinkable). They didn't have to worry about programme timing, schedule timing or deal with programmes either side of them (so no distractions lining up a news bulletin before or after etc.).

Sure they were using automation systems to schedule and compile the break - you physically couldn't deliver the required scheduling flexibility and quality of break doing that manually - but the actual playout and vision mixing/sound mixing to and from the break was manual - and FULLY controllable. If the automation system decided to play the sponsor bumper early (or was told to) it wouldn't have been cut to line.

The Match is dire though, so that has to be considered, as for the panel composition Chiles is adopting the matey style which inevitably will grate at the end. As for the bus trip, it's clever and enables the BBC to do reactive commentary from throughout the Country as the competition progresses AND give viewers a flavour of the nation's wildlife and story too. It's certainly provoked me into reading up more.

Blimey, this back half hour of the BBC live coverage is painfully padded.

I agree . . . especially when the 30-minute highlights show which follows immediately afterwards on BBC Two is expected to carry highlights of all three matches, plus the BBC Bus features and all the rest.

IMO it may have been a better idea to end the BBC One programme at 9.30pm, then start an hour-long highlights show immediately afterwards on BBC Two. Then the highlights show could cover further analysis of the live game, and would have more time to show the other two games, plus would keep all the fluff off BBC One.

It would, of course, be a scheduling nightmare for both channels in their 9pm-10pm slot, but it would solve the padding issue.

In terms of 'boring' matches . . . lets see how the BBC cover New Zealand v Slovakia today. Should be a hum-dinger.

They've deemed it un-important enough to put on alternative commentary on the red button by Chris Moyles and Comedy Dave

Did the BBC show highlights of the earlier games too after 9.30pm last night as they did on Friday, which made the highlights show rather pointless.

It does seem an odd decision though by the BBC - especially when they've got the obvious half-hour filler in the displaced episodes of EastEnders. Ironically though over on ITV they could probably do with the full back half-hour due to the ads, and it would be far less padded too.

Notice too ITV4 are airing an extra half-hour of build up from 6.30pm for any ITV evening matches. I think really they missed a trick there and should have put a daily highlights show on at 6pm covering the daytime matches.

Some good points in there to be honest. I see the point with the BBC bus to some degree - getting an audience to read up on something they normally wouldn't.

But Lawrenson seemed to have made his mind up on the game before it had even started, and while it may not have been the most exciting tie it ended in an historic result for Japan. When Italy started playing their usual defensive style for the first half hour I didn't hear the same complaining - it seems to be ok for the big teams.

As for Moyles and Comedy Dave - they made a fair point this morning when they joked that Lawrenson had stolen their job. It's alright for them to come on and rip the p, but for the match commentary team who have been sent over there at a hefty price to us as licence fee payers (bloody hell I sound like a Daily Mail reader ) and are doing a job millions would kill to do, it just sounds bloody ungrateful frankly.

Moyles' commentary is good so far:

"Good move from number 7....whoever he is..."

"Vuvuzelas sound like Adrian Chiles...."

and they have jingles.