ITV At It Again

No mention or sympathy to Flannery and his injury just Sheridan and England

Perhaps the highlights programme was produced before Flannerys injury was announced. Sheridans injury was announced over 24 hours ago.

They did go on and on about it, but I suppose a lot of people join in throughout the programme as they get up for work. Still, massive English overkill considering it's broadcasting to the United Kingdom, which includes Northern Ireland, and should therefore give all four nations equal coverage.

Dont be too harsh.We know that they are crap,they know that they are crap.
Just a shame that the BBC would rather pay bucket loads of our money to massive egos and little talent like Ross and that fella that replaced Wogan.Cant remember his name which tells the tale.

Martin Gillignham (or something similar) the Sky commentator is honest to God the worst sports commentator I've ever heard. Worse than listening to Americans commentate on 'soccer'. If he describes another fairly decent break as 'clarse' again, or brings back any player assessment to something involving England or the Premiership, I may have to mute.

On the plus side, in Alan Quinlan they have found a decent pundit, a bit like Jim Beglin from the soccerball; knows what he's talking about, and is easy to listen to. It's just a shame this Martin Tinkywinky decided to have ridiculous digs at him all game, culminating in the embarrassing 'some say you were born offside', resulting in an awkward silence and Quinlan quite clearly holding his tongue when he wanted to tell him to stfo.

They just dont care its one of the reasons the English are loathed around the world they think they are the bees knees and the centre of the universe ITV are meant to be a British channel but do as little as they can to service the the rest of the UK

marty2086 wrote:They just dont care its one of the reasons the English are loathed around the world they think they are the bees knees and the centre of the universe ITV are meant to be a British channel but do as little as they can to service the the rest of the UK

ITV is a commercial channel and they have a target audience which they utilise in order to maximise their advertising revenue, it's called business.

As 80% of their audience is based in England who the hell do you expect them to target in terms of audience?

Jeez, I'd rather be loathed all over the world than laughed at for being simple.

marty2086 wrote:They just dont care its one of the reasons the English are loathed around the world they think they are the bees knees and the centre of the universe ITV are meant to be a British channel but do as little as they can to service the the rest of the UK

You do know that ITV is a commercial channel ? You do know about marketing and appealing to the mass market ? Thought not.

He probably thinks Jesus was a horse because he was born in a feckin stable Nottins.

PJHolybloke wrote:He probably thinks Jesus was a horse because he was born in a feckin stable Nottins.

And in this case the mass market being rugby fans from all over the UK.

Cymroglan wrote:And in this case the mass market being rugby fans from all over the UK.

The vast majority of which live in.......

How do we know what the majority is it certainly wont be 80%

PJHolybloke wrote:

Cymroglan wrote:And in this case the mass market being rugby fans from all over the UK.

The vast majority of which live in.......

Let me guess, is it the "richest rugby country in the world with the most registered participants" ?

Nottins stop that please you know full well I'm not a wum,

Honestly? I've lost count of the amount of times that England have been labelled under-performers due to the fact that they have such a MASSIVE player base, enormous resources, infrastructure blah, blah, blah and now you're actually trying to suggest that despite all of that, the rugby following in England is not equally as large?

Do me a favour, pinch yourself right now.

Is that any better?

Did you pinch yourself?

PJHolybloke Just take forums like this for instance the Celts will outnumber the English fans so why should the TV viewing figures be any different.

Don't have a go at me because I'm not having a go at you.

Cymroglan wrote:Nottins stop that please you know full well I'm not a wum,

Of course you're not.

RWC 2007, over 13 million people in the UK watched the final betwen England and South Africa. What percentage of those viewers do you think were English ? Do you seriously think that 2.6 million people from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland watched that match ?

A world cup final that had England in it how many of those few million would have normaly watched any games.

I'm not having a go at you Cymroglan, the population of England is about 50 million, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland adds about 10 million to make the UK total population of around 60 million.

By that rationale ITV's likely audience at any given time will be over 80% English regardless of what is being broadcast.

The game in England is more geographically widespread and financially much better supported, the AP has 12 professional teams, the RFU Championship has another 12 teams that are (with the odd exception) also professional.

If the RWC broadcasts on ITV show a 5% increase in the UK as a whole, it stands to reason that 4% of that increase will be based in England.

As for the posters on 606 question?

Well I guess that boils down to passion doesn't it?

I would agree that the Celtic nations may have a more dense (by population) base of passionate supporters that would be naturally more inclined to write about the sport they love, but that doesn't cut it in TV land, the only thing they're interested in is viewing figures.

The vast majority of ITV viewers will be English, the figures are monitored every hour of every day with absolute veracity by the broadcasters, it is after all what pays their wages and it wouldn't pay if they were broadcasting to the wrong audience would it?

It's just economics, and if some of your compatriots choose to make it some sort of quasi-racist issue, they should get what they deserve.

I've got no axe to grind here.

You really don't get marketing and largest target audience do you ?

PJHolybloke reasoned mature response Well done mate.

It's easy when you really care though isn't it?

Cheers mate.

I understand the argument here, from both sides. It's less infuriating that the BBC giving too much coverage to England, because, as mentioned, it is a commercial channel.

However, this is about the reality which was this was on a morning when England were not playing, and Scotland were, and nothing was made of Scotland until the Canada game was over, whereas the featues on England were played, and repeated, throughout the segments between all three games.

It's also not helped by the absence of rugby knowledge from certain commentators and pundits about anything outisde of England. Gillingham and Gommarsal (sp?) come to mind. However, I have to say, I'm mightily impressed with Lynagh, Fitzpatrick and Pienaar as pundits; they really are brilliant. Dallaglio is the same as always; will back England to the hilt, but demands respect from simply being there and having done it. Gareth Thomas seems to be on the brink of another Eddie Butler moment, seems constantly riled, especially after the SA loss, and interrupted everyone to get his point across. Very passionate, as is his way, not sure he makes a great pundit.

I think they brought in Thomas for a laugh. He's come out with some rubbish.

Whoever was commenting on the Samoa game tried to claim a spear tackle when the guy landed on his backside and his head never came close to touching the ground. After watching the slo-mo replay he says "You can't do that". Yes you can.

Regarding the coverage, that's life unfortunately. There's plenty wrong with the coverage. It depends what you think the worst bit is. I would happily give up all the coverage of England if the commentators/pundits we any good.

Supersport in Africa, has different channels to target different audiences across africa.

Even though SA is their biggest market, they are doing it right by realising there is a big market for them to tap, I guess it is the population sizes that limits ITV's flexibility and focus.

I see it a similar to general sport coverage focusing on Football. The Welsh football clubs probably get more coverage than the English rugby team. It makes sense as the proportion of football fans is much higher than rugby fans. I'd prefer it if it wasn't but that's they way it works.

I was watching the BBC Breakfast sports news this morning and in this order they covered:

All Champions League Football matches from last night.
Jerry Flannery's injury and Ireland's match.
A brief piece about Wales' forthcoming match with Samoa.
An even more brief mention about today's Russian game.
A brief mention of the cycling which took palce is mid-Wales yesterday.

Cari wrote:I was watching the BBC Breakfast sports news this morning and in this order they covered:

All Champions League Football matches from last night.

I assume they brushed over Ryan Giggs' goal though, ignored Fergusson and focussed solely on Jonny Wilkinsons drop goal?

There seems to be a heavy celtic bias to that.

I was shocked and horrified to see interviews with Welsh players before the Russia game. They even interviewed some Welsh bloke about Russia. Some guy called Jones. It makes me soooooo mad

Id rather have Dai the Steam commentating on England games than Phil Vickery though. This is one of the things that bugs me abouttthis whole " England bias"thing...its like youre missing out on something interesting.
You already knew that Flannery was injured, so why be upset that it wasnt mentioned on the TV?
We already knew that Wales lost (again) so why be upset that the TV companies dont keep asking random ex Welsh players to make a banal point like "on their day they can beat anyone"?
Exactly what in depth and interesting analysis do you think ITV are giving English rugby? Vickerys witterings are hardly something to be jealous of, nor is the constant site of LOLs chin trying to fight his ego to be the biggest thing on screen.

Cari wrote:I was watching the BBC Breakfast sports news this morning and in this order they covered:

All Champions League Football matches from last night.
Jerry Flannery's injury and Ireland's match.
A brief piece about Wales' forthcoming match with Samoa.
An even more brief mention about today's Russian game.
A brief mention of the cycling which took palce is mid-Wales yesterday.

How dare they not mention the England rugby team and their match at the weekend.

PSW has a point there. I get bugged (and I'm English) by the English bias. As covered before, it is due to population and viewing figures. Trust us though, you're really not missing out. I'd like to see far greater breadth of coverage of ALL teams. A piece about the Russian pro leagues and their build up to the WC would be interesting for instance. As PSW says, we get loads of England coverage that tells us very little of any interest.

Lets face it a high percentage of viewers would not have a clue what club the players played for.
The ITV coverage is geared toward the occasional viewer who has very limited rugby knowledge.

Cymroglan wrote:Lets face it a high percentage of viewers would not have a clue what club the players played for.
The ITV coverage is geared toward the occasional viewer who has very limited rugby knowledge.

+1

The rugby fans in the UK will watch anyway. The 'floating' viewers are the ones they're trying to grab. They're the ones who want to know what Jonny has for breakfast.

Or that Dan Carter has a left foot.

Im still not sure who they are pitching for with Phil Vickery though, aside from fans of the Kings Speach

Did we really need a lego based re-enactment of JW's 2003 drop goal in the build up to USA v Russia?

Of course. That pulls both part time rugby fans AND lego fans

nottins wrote:Perhaps the highlights programme was produced before Flannerys injury was announced. Sheridans injury was announced over 24 hours ago.

Stop using logic to diffuse rampant anti-English sentiment Nottins or I'll be forced to unfoe you.

I was disgusted by the 10 min piece on Welsh rugby before the Russian v USA game this morning...DISGUSTED!

Wales don't have a match until Sunday, and where was the balance for the other home nations?

If they think balancing things out across the course of a week or the tournament as a whole, or adressing newsworthy stories as they come up is good enough, well they are wrong. Every nation must have its alotted 5 mins every day, anything else is sheer arrogance.

I'd rather a see ‘The Amazing Adventures of Morph’ version of the Haka

Quick question and observation. Who watched the Wales v South Africa game? Who was in the studio before the match and at half time, full time, etc??? I had a Welsh broadcast (ITV Wales) presented by that Welsh woman off the news, and with Mike Hall, Michael Owen and someone else as pundits. This was different from the other matches where it has been Dallaglio, etc.

Shouldn't this region coverage be the way forward to stop these arguments?

If they think it's worth the extra money then they'll do it. If not then they won't. I watched it on S4C so I couldn't understand (or care) what they were saying. But they did show the match

I think ITV's coverage has been pretty good actually, nothing like as English-focused as the Beeb in the 6 Nations.

Sky focus on England more because they only buy the rights for the England internationals, so that's fair.

Some chips need to be removed from shoulders here I think. I get as angry as the next Scot when the Beeb (a station expressly required to represent the entire UK) spends 20 minutes prior to a Scotland v Ireland game discussing England's match against Italy the following day, but I don't think ITV have been particularly unbalanced this time round. Coverage of Scotland from my perspective has been good.

Griff - yeah I got ITV Wales for the Wales v SA game but I didn't like the commenatry team so switched over to S4C - much better coverage on there.

I'm beginning to feel sorry for the Celts having their rugby spoon-fed on terrestrial TV because they don't have a viable product for the commercial broadcasters.

You shouldn't. It's far better having your rugby on a channel without adverts and Dewi Morris.

Portnoy wrote:I'm beginning to feel sorry for the Celts having their rugby spoon-fed on terrestrial TV because they don't have a viable product for the commercial broadcasters.

You're such a bore.