Coronavirus | Schedule Changes

Do you think we'll see something similar to I Am Team GB in 2016?

What is with the EBU then for the UK? The actual press release (not the broadcast sport article) talks about the BBC response, so I would assume they have access to some of the material the EBU has now negotiated.

World Athletics and European Athletics would be two of them I think. The BBC deal for 2014, 2016, 2018 and 2020 was originally done directly with the EBU. That was followed by the sub license to Discovery for 2018 and 2020, and the license from Discovery for 2022 and 2024.


What may be the case is that if the EBU have negotiated extra rights, that sit outside of the extra rights agreements, that might include countries not included in the original deals. Or maybe the EBU used the BBC as a prominent example who'd put replacement programming in place?

I understand that the EBU has been clearing rights collectively with sporting bodies and others (Discovery) on behalf of it's members WITHOUT significant reference to who had the historic rights for the event. It's then up to the broadcasters themselves to make use of these or not. I am assuing therefore that the BBC 'licence' to use the historic London 2012 and Rio 2016 coverage in advance of the now rescheduled Tokyo 2020(+1) has been obtained via the new collective EBU deal.

I notice next week’s TV mags have pretty much caught up with the schedule changes, particularly the late reduction in Emmerdale episodes meaning out of next week’s 3 they’d already talked about 2 of them this week.

Episode 4/6 of Griff Rhys Jones’s travelogue on ITV has been billed for 3 weeks now, as those Martin Lewis specials haven’t made it into a schedule yet.

One omission I note is that the Coronavirus Daily Update on BBC One is still not scheduled, it’s a late change every day, even though on weekdays at least it’s always at 3:45-6:00. They’ve still got Pointless etc airing as normal.

BBC iPlayer schedule is only updated each morning with the daily press conference, Radio Times is going to be behind that

I wouldn't say the post-news slot was a bad one, Mrs Brown's Boys and Citizen Khan both successfully launched in that slot, and it is a fact that because sitcoms are so relentlessly slagged off these days the Beeb do feel the need to give them all exceptionally soft launches and start them on BBC1 in off-peak slots.

As you say, it did move from 8.30 on BBC2 to 8pm (it wasn't 7pm) mid-run, but obviously the ratings had come in at 8.30 and it wasn't doing much, and although as we know sitcoms take a bit of time for the audience to really embrace them, you can't really expect the audience to persevere with them for several episodes if they're not enjoying it. The Beeb would probably have been well within their rights to have dropped in after series one judging by the ratings, which were pretty hopeless, but they were willing to recommission it.

I enjoyed Count Arthur Strong but it was pretty esoteric viewing. There were some very funny bits in it, but also some bloody awful ones, and despite running for three series they never really managed to make any of the other characters memorable or funny enough to ensure it didn't flag massively every time Arthur wasn't on screen. The fact they did three series is impressive enough, I think.

Maybe, but I think the general consensus is that the last few have been a bit pointless and little of interest has come out of them, so it may well be that in the next week or so they decide they can shuffle them over to BBC2 or just the news channel unless there's a particularly big story likely to come out of them.

It reminds me of how they did hourly news bulletins on BBC1 on weekend mornings during the Gulf War, and the week they finally started billing them in the Radio Times, the war was over.

Is there a schedule for the sports channels?

Not picked up a guide yet considering I don't really need to brave the shops.

Well I’m not sure as they are still starting the bulletin at 3:45 even though the press conference is at 5:00 and also airing an hour at 9:00 so I don’t think they’ve seen any loss of interest yet


Yes BT Sport 1, 2, 3, Eurosport and Sky Sports Main Event, Football, Golf, Mix and Prem have schedules. Cricket, Action and Arena don’t have a schedule.

In the Radio Times, there are schedules for Sky Main Event and Premier League, with a note saying there are no schedules available for the other Sky Sports channels. BT Sport is in there but with their original schedules - including live Premier League - with a note saying the schedules were still being updated as they went to press. And Eurosport and FreeSports have seemingly accurate schedules.

Having monitored the sport channel schedules for the website I run, they do seem to be changing some of them late as they acquire rights to things, so the existing repeats are spread more thinly.