EPL Talk » through the night

Gotcha: Evidence That Sky Sports Hates Setanta

The Gaffer — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 11:27:39 +0000

Near the end of the Sky Sports news programme Through The Night, the hosts always flip through the back pages of the British daily newspapers to point out the headlines of what the morning papers are saying. It’s a standard news segment on their show. Except for what happened last night.

When the hosts last night showed the back page of The Daily Express newspaper, they discussed the main headline about how Rio Ferdinand said that England was a circus under Sven-Goran Eriksson because of the WAGs. With the Sky Sports camera zoomed in on the back page, what was very noticeable was that the bottom left corner of the newspaper had been ripped out.

Thinking this was strange, I visited the Daily Express newspaper’s website to see what was on the back page that was so offensive.

And boom, there it was. It was an advertisement from Setanta Sports advertising the Irish company’s coverage of the Belarus against England World Cup qualifier. The main picture above shows the back cover of the newspaper, while the inset picture clearly shows the section of the back page removed from the newspaper as it appeared on Through The Night.

How immature and unprofessional must Sky Sports be that they won’t even allow a tiny Setanta Sports print advertisement to be shown for a few seconds on their TV network? Part of the issue for Sky must be that they’re concerned about losing subscribers to Setanta Sports, but this isn’t the way to go about it. It makes the network look stupid, juvenile and – frankly – it shows how biased and unobjective the show is.

This isn’t the first time that Sky Sports has clearly avoided giving their competitors any publicity. When Sky doesn’t have the TV rights to massive sports competitions such as Euro 2008 or the Summer Olympics, the Through The Night show either completely ignores the massive sport news from those tournaments or relegates the news to the third or fourth story. Also, when BBC’s Panorama broke the news about the bung scandal, the Through The Night programme didn’t mention a single word about the massive story for a couple of days. And when the show did finally mention the story, it was buried deep so to give the BBC as little publicity as possible.

Why Sky Sports News Sucks

The Gaffer — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 13:26:15 +0000

Thought for the day: If you were an alien that landed on earth and were forced to watch the Sky Sports News program “Through The Night,” would you know that the biggest sporting event in the world waa taking place, the one that happens only once every four years, the summer Olympic games?

The answer is an emphatic no.

I watched Through The Night on Friday night. Not one single mention of the opening ceremony of the games in its 60 minute broadcast. I also watched it on Saturday and didn’t see the games mentioned either.

This is another example of how immature and biased Sky Sports News is.

When Euro 2008 was happening, “Through The Night” often ran with Cristiano Ronaldo transfer gossip as the main story or cricket news and relegated the Euro 2008 headlines to usually the third or fourth story of the idea in its program.

Go back a couple of years to the bung scandal that BBC’s Panorama program uncovered and it took “Through The Night” a couple of days to cover the news and then they buried it deep within the program. But if some player got into a fight or there’s half a rumor of an agent sealing a transfer deal that no one cares about, you can almost guarantee it’ll be the lead story.

The rule that Sky Sports News seems to be running is that if they don’t own the rights to the event, then they’ll ignore that news. On the other hand, if they own the rights, you can be assured that they’ll cover that news ad nauseum and hype it so much that it’ll never live up to its expectations.

Here’s a parody of Sky Sports News done by That Mitchell And Webb Look, a BBC show. This is so true:

[display_podcast]

Euro 2008 Coverage By Sky Sports Is Pathetic

The Gaffer — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 07:00:15 +0000

Right now, football fans throughout Europe and around the world are riveted to Euro 2008. But if you’ve watched “Through The Night” the past few days, you’ll have noticed that Sky Sports has led with different stories and relegated Euro 2008 news to the second or third stories of the night.

While Sky Sports doesn’t own the license rights to show Euro 2008 matches in England (rivals BBC and ITV are showing the matches instead), Sky Sports still owes its viewers unbiased news coverage.

Sure, Sky Sports is unable to even show highlights of the goals from the Euro 2008 matches, but their level of reporting is amateurish. Sky Sports should have reporters either at the grounds or in the fan zones in Switzerland and Austria. They could have recorded live or taped segments to bring “Through The Night” viewers a unique angle on the stories, but instead they get nothing other than the scoreline and a few seconds of Turkish fans jumping for joy in the Geneva fan zone.

Unfortunately this is nothing new from Sky Sports. During September 2006, BBC’s Panorama program revealed the bung scandals in English football. While it was the biggest football story in quite some time, “Through The Night” ignored the story and when Sky Sports did report about the news in their program, it was usually a short segment about midway through their show.

It’s obvious that Sky Sports and BBC are very competitive with their sports news coverage, but Sky Sports is acting like a spoiled brat. Instead of raising its standards and giving viewers the service they should receive, Sky Sports reveals itself as a poor sport yet again.