Post by QPR Report on Aug 31, 2009 6:19:15 GMT
Not, I hasten to add, that I'm watching it!
Guardian Martin Kelner
BBC serves up its football courses in completely the wrong orderScheduled in the Hitman and Her slot, the Football League Show is the BBC's late-night concession to life outside the elite
The BBC has a slight scheduling problem with its Football League Show. It seems to be in the wrong place, following Match Of The Day late on a Saturday night, like the hors d'oeuvres arriving after the main meal. We tuck into the tasty sirloin steak of the Premier League and are then invited to loosen our belts, stub out the postprandial fag, and sample the prawn cocktail (I stopped dining out around the time Berni Inns ceased trading) of lower league football.
I realise people access TV in different ways these days, and I dare say some of you will be watching the Football League Show on the net right now while reading this, checking your emails, downloading a Spiderman movielistening to a radio station in Kuala Lumpur , and sending a tweet to Jonathan Agnew, but its placing in the schedules is still important psychologically. While the FLS languishes in what viewers of my vintage continue to think of as the Hitman And Her slot, the suspicion will persist that the BBC is less than committed to football beyond the Premier League, not least because for years it has acted as though the top division was all that mattered.
Matches like Nottingham Forest – Derby, it seems to me, would fit perfectly into Match Of The Day, while lower down the food chain one of the new digital platforms could be available for aficionados. I am not entirely sure of the economics, but I suspect every fan of Macclesfield could have match highlights beamed to their mobile phone – or direct to their synapses – for the cost of lunch for Chris Moyles.
What the BBC has chosen to do instead is operate a kind of football apartheid, with the FLS being given an entirely different look and feel to MOTD. Not that it is a bad look.
The title sequence features representatives of every race, creed, colour, generation, gender, and possibly sexual proclivity, doing keepy-uppies or other football-related activities – there is even a brief shot of someone sitting on a bench reading Guardian Sport – in a series of thrillingly regional locations, cut to a drum beat soundtrack. Trebles all round for the sheer inclusivity of it.
The set, meanwhile, is as far from the cosiness of MOTD as it is possible to get. Presenter Manish Bhasin picks his way through a landscape of steel girders and a faux brick wall to join pundit Steve Claridge (only one, not two like on MOTD) who is a cheerful presence, and handy to have around, having either played for or managed most of the teams in the Football League (I think he is currently managing at least two teams in League Two, and possibly one in the Blue Square Premier).
Interactivity is the other area in which the show marks out its distinctive territory, with Manish regularly throwing to a female sidekick – the spirit of Michaela Strachan lives on – acting as interlocutor for those fans awake and sending texts and emails at half past midnight. As you might imagine, the level of debate is a notch or two below The Moral Maze. On Saturday, however, there was a genuine story to react to; what Manish described as "sadly another unsavoury sight on a football pitch". Indeed, he was so sad about the punch-up in the Forest–Derby match, he showed a clip in his little promo slot in MOTD, another at the top of his show, replayed it after the match highlights, asked Claridge for his "personal slant" and invited viewers to give their views "on the whole Derby–Forest scrap".
The scrap – or melee, as I believe it should more properly be called –began after the final whistle when Nathan Tyson removed a corner flag and started waving it in celebration in front of the Derby fans, which Claridge reckoned showed disrespect to Forest's defeated rivals. Predictably Tyson was an ex-colleague of Claridge. "I played with him at Wycombe, and he's not a bad lad," said Steve. Derby's Robbie Savage suggested in his post-match interview that Tyson "have a good look at himself, after what happened at West Ham – Millwall".
Robbie might care to do similar in relation to an earlier incident when he went down like Billy The Kid after being pushed on the shoulder by Forest's Garath McCleary.
Commentator Steve Wilson thought initially that Savage had been punched in the face, but later conceded the lovable Welshman had "made a huge amount of it". Forest fans messaging the show came up with some unlikely explanations for the post-match brouhaha, one saying Tyson had merely passed the Derby fans on his way to wave his flag in front of the Nottingham supporters, another suggesting Savage had started it all during the warm-up, "waving various parts of his anatomy at Forest fans".
Who says the Championship lacks entertainment value? I was at the rugby league cup final and all we got was a brass band, and an opera singer performing Abide With Me.
www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2009/aug/31/martin-kelner-football-league-show
Guardian Martin Kelner
BBC serves up its football courses in completely the wrong orderScheduled in the Hitman and Her slot, the Football League Show is the BBC's late-night concession to life outside the elite
The BBC has a slight scheduling problem with its Football League Show. It seems to be in the wrong place, following Match Of The Day late on a Saturday night, like the hors d'oeuvres arriving after the main meal. We tuck into the tasty sirloin steak of the Premier League and are then invited to loosen our belts, stub out the postprandial fag, and sample the prawn cocktail (I stopped dining out around the time Berni Inns ceased trading) of lower league football.
I realise people access TV in different ways these days, and I dare say some of you will be watching the Football League Show on the net right now while reading this, checking your emails, downloading a Spiderman movielistening to a radio station in Kuala Lumpur , and sending a tweet to Jonathan Agnew, but its placing in the schedules is still important psychologically. While the FLS languishes in what viewers of my vintage continue to think of as the Hitman And Her slot, the suspicion will persist that the BBC is less than committed to football beyond the Premier League, not least because for years it has acted as though the top division was all that mattered.
Matches like Nottingham Forest – Derby, it seems to me, would fit perfectly into Match Of The Day, while lower down the food chain one of the new digital platforms could be available for aficionados. I am not entirely sure of the economics, but I suspect every fan of Macclesfield could have match highlights beamed to their mobile phone – or direct to their synapses – for the cost of lunch for Chris Moyles.
What the BBC has chosen to do instead is operate a kind of football apartheid, with the FLS being given an entirely different look and feel to MOTD. Not that it is a bad look.
The title sequence features representatives of every race, creed, colour, generation, gender, and possibly sexual proclivity, doing keepy-uppies or other football-related activities – there is even a brief shot of someone sitting on a bench reading Guardian Sport – in a series of thrillingly regional locations, cut to a drum beat soundtrack. Trebles all round for the sheer inclusivity of it.
The set, meanwhile, is as far from the cosiness of MOTD as it is possible to get. Presenter Manish Bhasin picks his way through a landscape of steel girders and a faux brick wall to join pundit Steve Claridge (only one, not two like on MOTD) who is a cheerful presence, and handy to have around, having either played for or managed most of the teams in the Football League (I think he is currently managing at least two teams in League Two, and possibly one in the Blue Square Premier).
Interactivity is the other area in which the show marks out its distinctive territory, with Manish regularly throwing to a female sidekick – the spirit of Michaela Strachan lives on – acting as interlocutor for those fans awake and sending texts and emails at half past midnight. As you might imagine, the level of debate is a notch or two below The Moral Maze. On Saturday, however, there was a genuine story to react to; what Manish described as "sadly another unsavoury sight on a football pitch". Indeed, he was so sad about the punch-up in the Forest–Derby match, he showed a clip in his little promo slot in MOTD, another at the top of his show, replayed it after the match highlights, asked Claridge for his "personal slant" and invited viewers to give their views "on the whole Derby–Forest scrap".
The scrap – or melee, as I believe it should more properly be called –began after the final whistle when Nathan Tyson removed a corner flag and started waving it in celebration in front of the Derby fans, which Claridge reckoned showed disrespect to Forest's defeated rivals. Predictably Tyson was an ex-colleague of Claridge. "I played with him at Wycombe, and he's not a bad lad," said Steve. Derby's Robbie Savage suggested in his post-match interview that Tyson "have a good look at himself, after what happened at West Ham – Millwall".
Robbie might care to do similar in relation to an earlier incident when he went down like Billy The Kid after being pushed on the shoulder by Forest's Garath McCleary.
Commentator Steve Wilson thought initially that Savage had been punched in the face, but later conceded the lovable Welshman had "made a huge amount of it". Forest fans messaging the show came up with some unlikely explanations for the post-match brouhaha, one saying Tyson had merely passed the Derby fans on his way to wave his flag in front of the Nottingham supporters, another suggesting Savage had started it all during the warm-up, "waving various parts of his anatomy at Forest fans".
Who says the Championship lacks entertainment value? I was at the rugby league cup final and all we got was a brass band, and an opera singer performing Abide With Me.
www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2009/aug/31/martin-kelner-football-league-show