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The News Media Coalition, which represents many of those currently locked out in this dispute, makes a manifesto pledge to, 'ensure that the right and duty of the News Media to report any and all matters of public interest, freely and without interference, is guaranteed and defended at all times.'
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Football is a private business carried on behind a paywall (the wall of the stadium) and rights to access are valuable.

Is this the press being self important again?

The Premier League and Football League need to wake up and smell the coffee - the days are long gone when they could control (or attempt to control) what is reported/photographed during matches. The advent of message boards, bloggers, fans with smartphones etc., mean that the Leagues are living in a self-deluding bubble.

Sorry, Leagues, the horse has bolted - but even if you'd known it was going to, you couldn't have harnessed and tethered it. Welcome to the 21st century..........

Funny isn't it that the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ are obviously part of this News Media Coalition but were quite happy to snuff out their own window of sedition 606. There is no way they can portray the FA/FL as the bad guys limiting access to information when they themselves have done the self same thing.

Even with ready access to the teams the various tentacles of the press will only ever let you know about the favoured very few.

Welcome to the £250k pw world of PL football, folks.

Stop whining.

I think clubs in Championship, League One and League Two need the media more than the media needs them.

@zen guerrilla at not606

Sedition? Get a grip - the 606 boards were flooded with libel, racism and pure abuse. I'm glad the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ no longer gives it a platform.

A very two sided argument, but one that again revolves around 'money' rather than what is good for the sport.

Football clubs obviously want a bigger share of the 'revenue' that TV/internet/tabloid subscription services bring in, but not everyone reporting the news from these clubs are 'premium services'

I was actually going to make a sarcastic point about the F1 rights, but realise there is a bigger issue at stake here.

The Championship - and perhaps League One clubs realise that there is money to be made...somewhere.

If the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳/tabloids etc refuse to pay then we all know that 'someone' will - and they will then get exclusivity.

Ultimately that will be bad for competition - and bad for the clubs themselves as they will get less free 'advertising'.

Sport, mainly football, is the only business that I can think of in the UK that gets about 10-15 pages of newspaper space every day (maybe 1-2 for lower leagues though) and has countless websites etc reporting upto the minute news - free of charge...yet they now want to be paid for more for it? Wow!!

Last year Southampton restricted photographers access over payment and rights issues - lots of fuss and the chairman was lambasted by one and all. Saints became the "South Coast Club" in The SUN etc.

Now its the whole Football League and Premier League and virtually no coverage at all. Double standards because no one wants to offend the big boys.

Yes poor coverage of football league bit rich from the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ who showed the games at 11.55 and then didnt repeat the show not even on the red button. Very poor but its to be expected from an orginisation that will soon give up on sport.

Ironic title really, the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ seems to be locking out many F1 viewers who are being locked out of their sport at the moment!

Inevitably the fans are the ones who lose out. I wrote something a bit longer on this issue over at

Agree wholeheartedly with Mighty Might Town. Tens of thousands of people have been complaining to the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ over the past 10 days. More than 30k have signed on online petition and in just a few days 14k signed a govt. epetition.

I'm a footie fan but you have a much bigger platform than F1 fans so if we have to hijack this forum then so be it. We have had 4 blogs closed to comment over the past 48 hours - two of which have been open for more than 10 months.

If you would like to lobby in favour of ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ removing their jackboots from the necks of F1 fans then we would be very grateful

Agree with #9 thatsolney

75 minutes for 3 divisions? I support a Premier League team so I'm not having a go about a particular team/match but this was ridiculous, there was no MOTD on why couldn't you start the season off with a proper show?! Especially as we now know by this blog that the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ knew that there would be very little coverage in the papers the next day.

KEEP F! on the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ and lets us beable to air our views on F1 blogs, someone needs to look at the ten commandments

@10

The ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ are locking out many sports to compete with ratings.

They should drop the drivel that is Eastenders (4-5 times a week? really?) and spend the money saved from the actors wages to fund sporting events of the nations interests.

Is it any wonder why the British are so poor at sport? Kids today don't get to see the stars on tv as much as they used to and have little to look up to. What better way to learn than to watch masters at the top of their games.

Please can we have a ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Sports channel - don't care what you call it (how about ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ 5?) - then there can be adequate timings given to all the shows, so they don't interfere with all the other schedules eg Films, News, Soaps, which are all scheduled at specific times. I venture to suggest that if, like beer, the Beeb ran a sport ONLY channel ... it'd be the most popular channel in the world ... probably!

"In 2005, 'Twitter' was what birds did outside your bedroom window of a morning."

..... and in 2011 it's what tweeters do inside their bedrooms all day long, only coming out a night for a bit of a riot it seems!
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"15. At 00:12 9th Aug 2011, Gassing Pirate wrote:

Is it any wonder why the British are so poor at sport? Kids today don't get to see the stars on tv as much as they used to and have little to look up to. What better way to learn than to watch masters at the top of their games."

I think you'll find that the best way to learn is to get their idle little ****s off the sofa, off the computer, away from the tv and get down the local park, pool or sports centre
.... with their big fat idle dads, if they can drag them away from the self same things.

Anything that keeps soccer out of the sports pages of the newspapers is a positive as far as I'm concerned.

As for F1 going to Sky, I can't wait. The one thing that Sky does very well is sport so I'm sure they'll provide coverage that is even better than the current ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ package, although that will take some beating.

Ohhh no, poor ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ feeling hard done by ?

Owww poor diddums.

Could have given a $%# when you closed 606, changed the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ news site, lost F1 to Sky etc, so why should WE care now ?

To be honest i didn't notice much difference, may be different with the PL starting, but the football league (especially L1 &L2) seems to be seen as the unwanted addition by the press.
The link you gave to the telegraph quotes Henry Winter saying that if the press fell out of love with foootball, get real Mr Winter, jounalists hopped onto football because they know what sells.
The tabloid journalists are being the dinosaur here, don't they realise with so much access to real time data / updates, that their opinion and analysis is the old outdated mode.
A few years ago you had to get the newspaper to re-visit what happened at the match, now with the access to viewing plaforms and websites dedicated to football, you don't need their opinion forced on you during the week.

Ah, so this is what a sports blog that isn't blocked out is like.

@Normal for Nuneaton - are you really Barbara Slater? ;-)

Can't believe that the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ is happy for so much sport to be dropped by the wayside in favour of reality TV.

Was the Salford move necessary? 600 million would buy a heck of a lot of sport and quality programming, not just prop up ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳3/4 which have viewing figures in the double digits.

No more blanket coverage of football? No more headlines that stretch pages and pages into the papers and relegates 'Other Sport' to just a few column inches? No more pointless stories just to fill your football quota?

Hoo-flippin-ray for the new order!!!!!

The quicker football implodes in its own greed, the better in my view!

If that means we have less of Linekar, Hanson and Shearer then I'm all for it as they are the biggest waste of money on the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳. Luckily enough most people can watch highlights or live matches on the internet now.

At least this stand off will mean there's no more listening to Alex Ferguson bitching or complaining about reports!! Whay not give Man Utd a total media blackout!!

I agree with a few others. It's high time the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ actually did a sports channel. I mean over the next year just look at how much sport will be on and for how long during each day. If they are half decent then they could also sell it to other broadcasters to recoup costs just like it does in other areas of the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳.

Although i am a big football fan i am sick to the back teeth of constant football coverage. This is the summer season, the cricket season, rugby league season, tennis season.

What does the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ open every single sports report with, MAnchester United might be buying someone, but Chelsea also 'may' want this person or his half brother or something.

Please use this extra time to write about the County Championship (in detail and not one paragraph) and the challenge cup semi finals (which were 2 of the best sportign games of the year) and not just wall to wall football GOSSIP!!

Storm in a teacup. What counts is what happens on the pitch. I'm not all bothered about reading about it after the event.

Call me a cynic but whatever the NMC think that they have in the way of a dispute will simply melt away once the PL kicks off. Why? Because money is the major influence here and money talks.

The press were never over interested in lower league football because it does not shift newspapers in the same way that the PL does. Leave that to be covered by journalism from the principalities and let the NMC continue to ride the cash bandwagon...

It does seem that in all walks of life the media seem to think that they are more important than everyone else. The simple fact is that most media organisations are profit making entities and are in it for the money no matter what they may say. Money may not mean much to the likes of Murdoch but it's the power it brings that he craves and I'm sure many of the executives at the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ aren't much different.

9. At 21:37 8th Aug 2011, thatsolney wrote:
Yes poor coverage of football league bit rich from the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ who showed the games at 11.55 and then didnt repeat the show not even on the red button. Very poor but its to be expected from an orginisation that will soon give up on sport.

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Absolutely. I was shocked to see The Football League show listed at 23.55 on my tv guide - it's not like it had MOTD on beforehand bumping it back.

That said, the Football League show is pretty woeful. You wait for your teams match to come on and get to see about 35 seconds of it.

There should be 3 separate shows - one for Championship, one for League 1, and one for League 2. This assumption that if you're in the football league you must want to watch all three divisions is nonsense, and just ends up compressing all the content into a fairly pointless show.

Hell, the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ have the rights for highlights, so can't you make a worthwhile program out of them?

#17 Ramilas1 - Just about my favourite post I have ever read. Spot on sir.

My belief is that in sensitive matters it should be a requirement for the would be publisher of information to obtain from the courts a Certificate of Public Interest. It should not be necessary for the target to take out an injuction at his/her expense.

Stop bleating about F1. If you care that much about "your" sport go and buy a sky subscription. Don't like the fact that the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ can no longer afford sports broadcast rights? Don't vote Tory. One of Murdoch's conditions for supporting them at the last election was that they slashed the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ budget so that they could no longer compete with Sky.

Bernie really doesn't need our money anyway.

I'd like the papers to give the Football League some better coverage, as it's frustrating that the Premier League gets massive double page spread of facts etc. Then the Football League is crammed into every space they can find on about 4 pages.

The Football League also need to address the issue of listening to football games online radio, when I was a student in London I couldn't listen to Portsmouth play because for 'copyright reasons' I could not listen to the match live online. However if I payed a ridiculous fee for a 'premium' TV service with the club I could. Time to change things to make it more accessible to fans who may not be able to visit the game.

It's the way the business develops. Love him or loathe him, Murdoch is so successful because he identified a good way of exploiting it:
Step 1, Identify what people like, and what they are currently not being charged (much) for.
Step 2, deprive them of it, or restrict access, so that they will then pay (more) for it.
It happened with football, and it's happening now with Formula 1.

Many years ago I used to go rock climbing on some cliffs for free, and the landowners didn't much care (you can't farm sheep on a vertical cliff). At some popular sites, some landowners later started to charge money for access or car parking. Some people also set up cafes near such sites. I'm not angry or resentful about that. It's the way the business develops. There were plenty of other pieces of rock for me to go and climb on.

The ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ needs to find other sports to report on, and popularize. It's already done it with F1. It could do it with other sports/activities. (And please try looking a bit further than Olympic sports/competitions.)
As others on this blog have said to the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳: Stop chasing ratings. Create them!

Further to my comment #33, about finding other events to cover, and popularize.
The ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ did a wonderful job, over decades, with Formula 1. Just because F1, like PL football, is now being removed from your financial grasp doesn't mean that the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ should give up on some good principles. Similarly, Channel 4 also did a fine job with Italian Serie-A football and the Tour-de-France. Neither of them got much TV coverage, that I saw, beforehand.
Why doesn't the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ get Tim Vickery to start doing some TV football coverage from Brazil? Rumour has it that the Brazilians are quite good at football.

I wouldn't want the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ to take me too literally, though. Through excitable TV coverage, you have done an excellent job at increasing the ratings for English Summer Riots, and spreading them to the provinces. It seems like you didn't need to move anybody to Manchester to do that effectively.

This isn't about media trying to rule the roost. It is about Football allowing the reporting of the sport to keep up with modern technology. How does it benefit football to tie the hands of trained journalists with multi million readerships and club staff on hand in the press box to provide details whilst allowing fans to tweet updates from the stands.

That several clubs made sure that reporters were assisted last weekend to cover their clubs matches shows that they can see the benefit of working with all the media rather than just a select few.

Seeing a live update mentioning a great goal or some controversial refereeing decision is more likely to make me want to see a match (or any other sport) than being kept in the dark.

In the meantime maybe the members of the News Media Coalition should get out and fill their pages with some other sports. I am sure they and their sponsors would be very grateful and the sponsors of football may be able to persuade the sports rulers that we are in the 21st Century and that their financial planning is built on rocky ground. Unlike in football we have world champions in several other sports who deserve better if not just some coverage showing their success.

the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ is sliding down the slippery slope, putting their eggs in all the wrong baskets

Private businesses like the leagues want it both ways. They depend on the coverage -- they can't exist without it -- but they want full control of it, and to get paid for it.

I think the Belgian newspapers tried to do that to Google. The papers won their case, Google removed them from the index, and pretty soon the papers were begging to be taken back.