ITV Football - at the heart of the nation

BBC Sport is widescreen

Grandstand wasn't, though!

Someone was saying the BBC was to have an overhauled Sports studio - we haven't seen the old sport studio for ages now - all Grandstand's have been OBs. Maybe they'll be back on August 18th. Someone also said they were going to have a live football service that ITV and Sky are also going to be doing now...

YYEEEESSS!!!!!!!


Nah but on the subject of sport, I do wish all sport was on Sky, for the sake of sports fans.
I do love F1 and would love it if that was on Sky. The interactive coverage would be superb, the best in the world without a doubt.

Just a note, Sky actually use BBC Local Radio correspondents on Soccer Saturday/Sunday.
Obviously not all of the people are but they do occasionally pop up.

Oh please! And what about the people who don't want to pay to watch sport?! Although Sky have done a lot for sport, in particular football, the way in which they have control over the sport nowadays is just too much. In my opinion the 1990 Broadcasting Act should be changed and exclusive sports coverage should be banned - broadcasters should pay a reasonable amount of money to be able to show a sporting event so that they can reach the maximum number of people and improve the sport that way, rather than by paying huge amounts into the Premier League and negelcting the other clubs, for example.

Yes, Football Focus is going to be at 12noon-12.50pm.

The BBC News then follows, with Grandstand beginning at 1pm

Also, HTV Wales, HTV West, Central, Westcountry and Yorkshire's regional football programmes reappear on August 12th.
They are all listed as 'Soccer Sunday'

(Edited by Andrew at 7:03 pm on Aug. 3, 2001)

John Gwynne is one for example. He can also be heard on BBC GMR doing cricket.

Paul Lockett is Key 103's (EMAP in Manchester) breakfast newsreader, but on a Saturday, it's Sky!

So does this mean a brand new look for all these programmes, including Grandstand? With new studios?!!

Yes and no.
What you have to appreciate is that sport is such a massive shift in genre from regular programming on BBC/ITV/C4/C5 that there is going to be a greater confilct in it being shown in peak time.
You could say 'Not everyone likes Coronation Street but we aren't setting up a channel just for that', but the fact is... sport takes up, on occasions, an entire day's worth of a schedule. A big turn off for the non sports lovers amongst us.

Sport is (currently) the biggest drive to digital TV and I think the government might consider putting something like F1 on Sky, where it would certainly be covered better than ITV - which is truely awful, in an effort to drive more people onto digital telly.

Again, you are wrong, ITV provide excellent coverage of formula one, certainly better than anything the BBC did, they didn't even bother with qualifying. Since it moved to ITV we've had more analysis, more insight into the world of F1 and more programmes relating to the sport. It was neglected on the BBC, and ITV have given it the platform it deserves.

I don't consider good quality F1 coverage the sort of coverage that takes advert breaks every 15 mins.
We normally return with 'Well folks, you've missed probably the most dramatic part of the race so far...'

In my experience, on the rare occasion something is missed, ITV do show it as soon as they come out of the ad breaks. Is it not the case that the commercial broadcasters in other countries show F1 with ad breaks ?