Anyone else watching the Champions' League coverage on STV? They've put a horrific squeezed STV logo on the top right corner, on the opposite side of the ITV Sport logo and clock.
What's the point? It looks like they've tried to make it as small as possible so as not to offend anyone, but as a result it looks horrendous, doesn't plug the website or anything, and is probably unseeable on a small TV.
Took me a while but I've figured it out. ITV1 is showing the Liverpool game whilst STV, for reasons unknown, is airing the Chelsea match, taking the ITV4 feed. That hideous STV DOG is covering the equally hideous ITV4 DOG.
Seems a very odd decision that STV would show the Chelsea-v-Valencia match as it's effectively just a friendly - Chelsea were group winners and Valencia were knocked out of the next stage before the match had even begun.
The Liverpool match on the other hand is a make-or-break match.
I'm amazed they can't get a clean feed from the satellite truck supplying ITV4
I wonder if it was a last minute thing. The EPG (on DSAT) is wrong too.
Are they really getting an off-air feed of ITV4? The picture looks very soft and is delayed slighty compared to ITV4. What has been happening when the ads are shown? A nice clean opt out or otherwise?
On a slightly different but still presentation-related note, has anyone noticed the Carlsberg logo is missing from Liverpool's shirt, and the usual Heineken hoardings around the pitch are replaced with the words "Champions Planet" in Heineken's font and branding.
This is because it's illegal to advertise alcohol in France.
Edit: All over now. They obviously didn't have as many adverts as ITV4, so continuity did a live(?) trail for Tonight with Sir Trevor over a STV ident that went on for ages. They then cut back to the ITV4 feed early (it looked like it was showing a promo) and then back to a STV logo for a couple of seconds. Now back to the ITV4 feed complete with STV logo.
We came to the conclusion that as STV showed the Celtic v AC Milan match last week, when no Champs League was shown in the rest of the UK, that Sky stepped in at the last minute to stop them effectively screening a 'third' game. As I understand it, ITV are allowed two tuesday games per matchweek, with STV 'opting out' to show Scottish games where concerned. As the Scottish team game was on a differrent week, they probably just should have showed the previous weeks ITV1 programming in the place of the Liverpool game, but instead opted for football. However, as Chelsea v Valencia was already being shown on ITV4, STV showing Liverpool v Marseille would effectively given viewers in Scotland an extra free game, which is perhaps why STV had to change to show Chelsea last minute. Don't know this for sure though.
stv do this a lot. It's unfortunately a "Scottish thing" of thinking Scottish people will somehow back the brand more if it's is overtly Scottish.
During the rugby world cup a dog was permanently in the top right corner for "stv.tv/rugby" despite of course the presenters advertising the full national world cup website "itv.com/rugby". It's quite pathetic really.