Blank-et Coverage

Regular readers of these blogs, which statistics suggest numbers a bakers dozen, will be well of Final Third's disapproval of ITV's football coverage, and whilst I would love to pen a blog on another subject unfortunately the nation's third channel just keeps throwing balls up in the air, and subsequently I'm afraid just have to hit them. You see ITV began hammering nails into their football coverage coffin at the turn of the Millennium. Given a chance to show what they could do with the rights to Premiership highlights they went all giddy with power. They stuck their main programme in the coveted Blind Date slot, wedged Andy Townsend in a horse box full of monitors and gave the cockney Irish buffoon free reign to bully Ugo Ehiogu with slow motion replays.

Having shown they could not be trusted when left alone with anything the majority of the nation's football fans wanted to see ITV were suitably punished and banished to seven years hard labour covering matches that either had financially and commercially less significance (the Football League), or ones which were already so heavily glossed in hyperbole that they were beyond even ITV's hegemonic corporate football leanings (the Champions League). And everything was fine with the world; yes ITV's coverage and editing process was still disappointing when it came to football, but at least it bothered less people.

Unfortunately Setanta Sports rode into town to fight the good fight against Sky Sports blanket coverage, but when they needed to select a free-to-air channel to partner them in their FA Cup coverage, they chose the bumbling clueless deputy sheriff of ITV to join their side. Channel Five may have spent much of its formative years working as a showgirl in the local saloon, but at least they've proved capable of simple and decent sports coverage now they've put their knickers back on. Anyway, Setanta chose ITV and the rest as they say is a seemingly constant stream of poor editing, ill thought out match choices, tedious punditry and dissatisfied football fans. In short, when you find yourself pining for Gary Lineker and Alan Hansen's club house in-joke banter something must be terribly wrong.

Last night ITV sealed their own fate with a monumentous error, the type, as Dennis Norden would invariably remind us, "for which the term cock-up was invented". After barely acknowledging the 3rd round's key results in their highlights programme and apparently filming Swansea's victory over holders Portsmouth on a cheap pitch-level camcorder, they manage to top, or rather bottom, those acheivements spectacularly during their live 4th round replay.

With two hours of inconsequential football and a sending off failing to separate Everton and Liverpool the match at Goodison Park looked destined for a penalty shoot-out. So destined in fact that as the home side mounted one last attack someone on the ITV gallery got all trigger happy with ad-break button. And so millions of viewers were detached from the coverage and instead shown an advert from E-on, which with unwitting irony boasted of how they and ITV were bringing families closer to football. A terrible cock-up, still things would be OK if ITV could just restore the pictures before anything significant happens... there... done it... hang on whats all that noise? ...why are all those Everton players piling on top of that other lad? Oh for the love of God! After screening one hundred and twenty minutes of football ITV managed to cut away and miss the game's only goal.

It didn't get much better for ITV post match either as they came back from a genuine ad-break this time straight into the midst of an already begun interview with the scorer of the unseen goal Dan Gosling. And then as Steve Ryder offered empty apology after empty apology like an uncovered love rat ("its the first time its happened I swear", "I was thinking of you the whole time we were off air") ITV's world went blank, replaced by a black screen and a ticking clock as presumably the fight taking place in the production gallery ended with a slain broadcast trainee slumping against the wall and inadvertently knocking out the plug.

At the end of their later highlights show ITV's Matt Smith went out of his way to plug The Big Match Revisited, which for the uninitiated is basically a re-run of a thirty year old football highlights show. Smith encouraged Manchester City fans to tune in and relive a 3-0 win over Tottenham, although he would probably have been better off encouraging his colleagues turn to ITV4 and take notes on simplistic and effective football coverage. ITV have a key lesson to learn; the FA Cup does not need to be over hyped, but if you must big up your coverage then you need to be able to back up your boasts as there are few people less forgiving than a football fan scorned.