The Sport Thread

Ah, that's a point - I guess we'll wait till the autumn then. I've never really been a fan of the current generic ITV Sport look, and though this is a slight update of it it's still not that great.

I'd be intrigued to discover the production crew behind ITV's French Open coverage. It seems to be very BBC in style and am wondering whether the vast majority of those behind the scenes are usually behind Wimbledon and Queens.

Inverdale and Courier are holding the coverage together well. Am continuing to like greatly what I'm seeing,

BBC only ever aired 2 or 3 matches of the red button and those were usually hosted by her.

Sue along with Gary Lineker are the only remining BBC sport presnters who have exclusive Uk contracts with the BBC.
A few years ago she gave up Athletics because she was earning so much on The Question of Sport Tour which is surprisingly successful and lucrative ($$££)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/article-2053838/A-Question-Sport--Sportsmail-join-Glasgow.html

Yeah because I'm sure Sue who is one of the main presenters of the Olympics and earning at least 500k (including BBC WW) is absolutely gutted not to be presenting on ITV4

And because of that, ITV should be desperate for her to work for them??

Brekkie's right, ITV may have decided she's "too BBC" for the feel of the programme they were trying to put together so looked at other presenting options.

As is John Inverdale of course. I do wonder whether ITV 4 would have gone for Barker had they have been able to.

The last time Craig Doyle did any football for ITV was Euro 2008, when he did the highlights, and I seem to recall airusuk on Digitalspy, who works for ITV Sport, saying that Doyle no longer works for ITV Sport but instead is contracted by Perform, who do their rugby coverage. Of course, John Inverdale used to work for BSB and transferred to Sky Sports when that opened, while he was still working for BBC Radio, and indeed he's present on the early episodes of The Sky Sports Years.

Sue Barker was originally on Sky, of course, and there was some rancour when she joined the Beeb because Sky loaned her out to cover Wimbledon in 1993, then the Beeb realised her contract with Sky was about to expire and they'd forgotten to offer her a new one, so they nipped in and signed her full-time. A bit like when Paul O'Grady moved from ITV to C4. Sam Chisholm of Sky Sports was so annoyed that he refused ever to speak to Jonathan Martin, the Beeb's Head of Sport, ever again.

A load of BBC people are on other channels now, with Mark Pougatch doing ITV's football and C5's boxing, Gabby Logan doing that Wright Stuff spin-off and Clare Balding everywhere. And both Jonathan Pearce and Colin Murray continued to work for Channel Five's football coverage while also on Five Live. And the reverse is true, a few years back Matt Smith was combining his ITV work with presenting weekend breakfast on Five Live.

One of the main presnters?? er no he isn't. Very much on the B team with Matt Baker.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2011/dec/02/bbc-presenting-team-london-2012

Inverdale also did The World's strongest man for Channel 5.



Can I ask you how you logically came to that from what I posted.



What part of 'exclusive' contract with the BBC do you not get?

He's anchoring the flagship sport - athletics, and usually does the rowing too. Quite wrongly though he isn't being sold as one of the main faces of the games while Gary Lineker is.

He's arguably ahead of Sue Barkers afternoon job.

Yes, I believe Des Lynham may have done that athletics role in the past?

Indeed he did. In fact, look back 20 years to Barcelona 1992, and the BBC really only had two presenters - Steve Rider did 0800-1700, and Des did 1700 onwards. I think Helen Rollason popped up here and there as well.