UEFA Euro 2012

I know this may be slightly controversial, but I'm fairly sure the BBC's decision to base themselves in Salford is as political as it is economical.

BBC Sport know they are being beaten in terms of presentation by basing themselves in Salford, and they expect to get some negative comments from it. All those negative comments will be ammunition when it comes to BBC Sport bosses arguing for their chunk of the BBC budget come the next review.

They're only in Salford for the group stages.

That's only if England or Ireland get through and I have thought they'll be at the grounds in a studio when/if they get there.

Quite surprised that the BBC are not airing Football Focus on Saturdays during the tournament. They aired one as a preview episode the Wednesday before, but even with the schedule clashes on the next two Saturdays (Trooping the Colour, F1) I'd have thought they'd keep it on air, either on BBC2 or in a different slot.

Glad to see RTE consider their viewers to be 'adult' enough to find a primary national sporting event on a 'secondary' channel (RTE 2).

Can you imagine the BBC showing an England match on BBC 2 ?

I think all sport more or less is shown on RTE 2, so it's a bit different if everyone has always been used to it.

The fact is, if you stuck Euros on BBC 2 the ratings to whatever reason would still probably go down.

It'll be on RTE Two because the only HD channel RTE has is a simulcast of Two.

Does that matter for a non commercially financed broadcaster ?

We're back to the 'Andy Murray/Regional News/Wimbledon' issue

Football fans will find a match they wish to see, regardless of ' EPG position', any extra ratings resulting from a match being on BBC 1 will come from the zombies that will watch any old crap

RTE is funded by both commercials and the license fee.

I'm confused, are you saying it's OK for RTE to screen football on Ch 2 or not ?

I guess you could argue that if something is prestigious enough to pay the money the BBC and ITV do, you'd have to show it on the flagship channel, to justify that cost. This is after all a flagship event it would just seem odd to stick it on BBC Two.

Oh wait now I read it back I originally thought you were talking about RTE when you made the non-commercially financed comment!

I understand that people think it's weird to have it on the second channel because we wouldn't do that in the UK but this is the broadcaster of another country and although culturally the UK and Ireland share a lot, the structure of RTE clearly isn't one of those things so presumably in Ireland it's not that odd for it to be on Two rather than One and, unlike it probably would in the UK, the ratings wouldn't be affected by it being there.