From: Adam Bowie wrote: > > It's worth noting that NBC's "special contributor", Gary Lineker, is the > main sports presenter on the BBC. He presents "Match of the Day" the BBC's > long-running Saturday night highlights programme. I note that NBC Sports > Network will also air a "Match of the Day" and "Match of the Day 2" as per > the BBC. But these programmes look shorter than the BBC versions, so I > assume it's just branding that will be shared. >
That will be the case, the BBC will still keep their coverage exclusive. Of course the name will be as inaccurate on NBC as it has been on the BBC for many years, because they haven't shown a match, singular, for over forty years, but several matches. I'd be intrigued as to how that goes down in the US because I think I'm right in thinking that the concept of highlights is not that common on US TV - you'd either see the whole match, live or on a delay, or just brief clips on the news, as opposed to a ten- or fifteen-minute edit. Up until the eighties that was how 99% of football was shown on British TV, for many years only a handful of matches were ever broadcast live and all the football authorities hated TV because they assumed it would stop people going to the games. With this, NBC will of course be showing far more Premier League football than you get in the UK. Of the ten matches played of a weekend, we only get five at the most shown live, the others are only broadcast as highlights. To be honest it's not such a hardship and for many I think the highlights format is a popular one, you get to see everything that happened in all the games in one package. While I have Sky Sports and hence access to live Premier League games, unless it's Liverpool I usually just have them on while I'm doing someting else, watching out of the corner of my eye for goals and other incidents, and then properly watch Match of the Day later. And of course none of the live games are FTA. There are also limits on how many times each team can be shown live so they show a spread of all the teams. The idea is to avoid overkill and stop people going to the games. It works both ways and we get to see more or less every Spanish match live, presumably more than you get in Spain. As for the personnel, I am madly jealous that you get The Lovely Rebecca Lowe, to give her her full name. She's an excellent presenter and I'm a bit in love with her so I'm sad we'll no longer see her in the UK. It's intriguing to see Robbie Earle involved because he was part of ITV's team for many years but was dismissed in 2010 after he was caught giving his free tickets to the World Cup to an ambush marketing company, which isn't allowed. He went off to the USA to start afresh and he seems to have landed on his feet, so well done to him. Lee Dixon is one of the better analysts (he's on ITV who don't have Premier League rights so he can combine the two jobs) though Graeme Le Saux is a bit boring, he was on the BBC a few years back but quit when he found out they were going to demote him from the big games for not being very interesting. Not heard much of Arlo White, he was a mid-ranking commentator on BBC Radio before going off to the US. Robbie Mustoe is another US-based pundit who we don't see or hear much of in the UK. The UK-based commentators on the matches White doesn't do are presumably going to be the commentators who do the international coverage of the Premier League - the likes of Peter Drury, Jon Champion and Martin Tyler who do them when they're not commentating for UK viewers (of a weekend, Tyler will usually do a match live for Sky viewers in the UK and then another match for international viewers - they can't use his Sky commentary as it features promotions for Sky programming). The good news as far as UK viewers concerns is that it sounds like we're going to get Ian Darke back on British screens as the rumour is he's going to be the main commentator for the new BT Sport channel that's just acquired ESPN's Premier League rights and will be showing a live game every week. -- -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to tvornottv@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to tvornottv-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to tvornottv+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
