Senior Sky Sports executive Barney Francis is to leave the broadcaster after more than 20 years.
Francis, who will leave later this year, was managing director of Sky Sports for ten years until he was appointed as chief executive of future sport last May. The move was part of a management restructure which followed Sky’s £30.5bn acquisition by Comcast, and saw Rob Webster take over as Sky Sports managing director.
Francis’ departure comes at a time of heightened broadcaster competition for sports rights, with streamers such as Amazon and DAZN increasing their investment in sports.
It’s also the latest in a number of senior departures from Sky following the Comcast deal. Chief operating officer Andrew Griffith was hired last July as a business adviser to Prime Minister Boris Johnson and is now an MP. Marketing chief Luke Bradley-Jones left in August to run Walt Disney’s new European streaming service.
Not the first time that the feed has been dodgy this test match. There was also an error whereby one of Ian Ward's post-match interviews for Sky was cut off by a South African advert, the feed presumably having been erroneously switched to the dirty host broadcaster's feed.
How do Sky get their feeds back from South Africa? Is it implied in posts above that it is fibre? If that is the case, do Sky's interval inserts (single camera at the ground, hosted by Ian Ward) also come down the same fibre line with somebody switching it at the stadium end, or do Sky have a different feed for their unilateral presentation?
It was even better / worse than that - England won three tests in that series (on the way to retaining the Ashes). All three were during the Shipping Forecast!
Given it was (and is) an automated switch at that time of night - and as the blog says it’s very difficult to move it by much without several hours notice - there was nothing that could be done. Jonathan Agnew was desperately warning in the run up for people to retune to 5 Live Sports Extra on various platforms, or 5 Live- who as the blog says also carried the climax of at least one of them live.
They should use whatever is most cost-effective and resilient for the material. But both satellite and fibre connectivity can go down, and even if you have one backing up the other, there may still be some reaction time to switch between the two.
It was even better / worse than that - England won three tests in that series (on the way to retaining the Ashes). All three were during the Shipping Forecast!
I seem to remember More or Less, having calculated the odds of ITV accidently going to an ad break during a football match and missing a goal, then had the good grace to work out the same for Radio 4 being in a shipping forecast during the climax of a cricket match.
I don’t have a problem with betting companies sponsoring events, but giving them exclusive content which fans need to place a bet to watch is a step to far. What about religions who forbid gambling, surely it discriminates against those that can’t watch their team.
It was even better / worse than that - England won three tests in that series (on the way to retaining the Ashes). All three were during the Shipping Forecast!
Given it was (and is) an automated switch at that time of night - and as the blog says it’s very difficult to move it by much without several hours notice - there was nothing that could be done. Jonathan Agnew was desperately warning in the run up for people to retune to 5 Live Sports Extra on various platforms, or 5 Live- who as the blog says also carried the climax of at least one of them live.
No, the shipping forecast was not an automatic switch, it was manually done, but was always at the allocated time.
It is when the shipping listened to hear it, and you cannot play around with that for a cricket match!