Only the British Grand Prix will be on UK terrestrial TV next season as F1 cuts itself off from the massesWhile Lewis Hamilton performed his doughnuts in front of the grandstand and then removed his fireproof vest in order to display his tattoos on the podium in Abu Dhabi on Sunday night, Channel 4’s lineup of commentators, presenters and analysts were packing their bags, having broadcast the race to an average audience of 2.3 million, as live grand prix coverage in Britain prepared to disappear behind a paywall. Related: F1’s halo device not under question after Nico Hülkenburg’s Abu Dhabi crash Continue reading...
A lack of broadcast coverage has left female fighters underexposed and underpaid. But the Olympics and talented athletes have changed the status quoWhen Heather Hardy and Shelly Vincent met in the ring in New York City’s Madison Square Garden last month for the WBO featherweight title, there weren’t any measured jabs to start off the fight. They came out swinging. After all, they had no time to lose. Hardy and Vincent had 10 two-minute rounds to prove that women’s boxing deserved to be on center stage, that it deserved to be televised.The rematch between the featherweights was the first fight of a prime-time triple-header on HBO, kicking off the night before the main event between Daniel Jacobs and Sergiy Derevyanchenko....
Showing Premier League and European midweek matches live causes a dip in attendances that hits smaller clubs’ revenuesDuring the early 1980s, when English football began its slow-shuffle towards showing one live game a week, the Guardian’s venerable correspondent David Lacey warned of the potential consequences. In a column titled “The death threat of live television”, Lacey predicted: “Matches shown on the small screen, warts and all, far from stimulating interest, would be more likely to have the opposite effect,” and suggested: “A televised match would become the complete alternative to paying to watch football and more fans than ever would have reason to stay away.”Lacey was far from alone. Years before the dawn of the Premier League Brian Clough thought...
Joe Root is light years away from the visibility David Gower enjoyed and, away from terrestrial TV, some team-mates in Australia might as well be in a witness protection programmeAt the risk of making myself a hostage to fortune, it is very possible that Australia has already delivered its most withering put-down of England before an Ashes ball has even been bowled. I may come to regret this rash statement when this year’s exquisite causal link between someone’s girth, someone else’s wife, and some form of baked goods is made. But given how much of modern journalism seems to be about “calling” things in the comical belief that functioning as Earth’s wrongest bookmaker makes one relevant, let’s give it a whirl:...
Twenty-five years ago the station unleashed a new age – and Richard Keys – on the nation but it may now be time for some fresh thinking about football TVA quarter of a century has passed since ITV offered the new-fangled Premier League an outlandish £262m for the rights to continue producing Elton Welsby vehicle The Match. At which point agitated Spurs owner and set-top-box mogul Alan Sugar nipped out of the negotiating room, bellowed “Blow them aht the water!” into a nearby payphone, a Sky apparatchik appeared in a puff of smoke carrying an extra £42m, and Super Sunday became a thing. All together now: “Here we go! Hee-ee-eere we go! Here we go, here we go, here we...