The Sport Thread

BT Sport has unveiled their plans for the 2016/17 Premier League Season. BT have a new results programme callled BT Sport Score with Mark Pougatch from 2.30pm alongside the likes of Jermaine Jenas, Robbie Savage, Harry Redknapp, David James, Harry Kewell and Howard Webb.

BT Sport live Premier League coverage starts at 5.00pm with kick off at 5.30pm on Saturdays presented by Jake Humphrey. A new show called Premier League Tonight follows from 8pm-9pm which is a review of the day presented by Humphrey and the pundits from the live match.

BT will also cover a match from the Scottish Professional Football League or National League every saturday kicking off at 12.15pm. As a result of the new line-up the coverage of other sports such as Premiership rugby union games will now move to BT Sport 2.

A review show with no footage of the earlier 3pm games other than the pooled mangers interviews in the tunnel or press conference after the game? Radical idea.

Sky Sports new EFL titles

https://www.behance.net/gallery/41379949/EFL-Opening-Titles-2016-Sky-Sports

New titles aside, not much to note graphics wise from tonight's EFL game - seems much the same as before. Though the graphics seem to have gone missing at the moment.

Meanwhile over on BT Sport 1, the first live action since yesterday's changes, from the 2nd Bundesliga and it seems the DOG is now transparent (except for the "1HD"), but the graphics don't seem to have changed. Yet.

In an absolutely bizzare move, Virgin Media have allocated Sky Sports Mix Channel 105 on their Irish EPG. It's a big coup for Sky and I'm not sure why their biggest competitor has been so magnanimous except to placate those annoyed by the loss of Eir Sport 1 (nee Setanta Ireland).

I doubt that will alleviate angry customers who are disappointed with the removal of the Eir/BT Sport channels. But I'm absolutely surprised. With EPG number 105 vacant, you'd expect an entertainment channel to be moved up the EPG. Despite that, for years a sport channel has occupied that EPG position, so I think Virgin didn't have much choice but to fill in a slot for a new channel.

I'd have thought they'd have moved up their wholly owned channel 3e to 105 (where it is on other platforms) and moved their soon to be owned channel UTV Ireland to 106. Either way giving a PSB slot to a channel which is effectively a 24 hour advert for a premium service owned by their biggest competitor (and one which still won't supply them either Sky Sports F1 or Sky Atlantic) is just bizzare.

Looks like channel 5 hds football highlights are based on the international feed efl graphics, btw the international efl feed scoreboard whilst it's ok when it goes beyond 90 minutes the clock goes red and on a purple background it's unreadable

Dosent sound promising for the premier league season, in days gone by when a new premier league season came along you would see new graphics too.

But definitely big graphics changes(from what little we've seen so far) from the premier league, will have to see how it's adopted by the various broadcasters

Sky have announced their Premier League coverage this morning, with Gary Neville announced as returning (though apparently not to Monday Night Football). Other changes are pretty much as reported - the only other new thing to note is that Hayley McQueen, who is presenting the Irish 3pms also takes over from Sarah Jane Mee on the artist formerly known as Football First, which is being renamed again this season to "Nissan Game of the Day" and "Nissan Match Choice".

Rachel Riley is also joining to co-present Friday Night Football and Fantasy Football Club.