It's not just a two-horse race
The idea of this blog is that we explain ourselves to the licence-fee payer, and that the replies are one of the means by which you can give us feedback. As you'd expect, not all of it's positive, but it is taken on board.
So I thought it was worth responding to John Phelan's comment last week (#14) which claimed that Match of the Day says "how great the big four are" followed by "a quick whip round the rest". If that was ever true in previous incarnations of ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ or ITV Premiership highlights, I really don't accept it as a description of what we've done since August 2004. On regaining the rights, we introduced a full commentary and minimum five minutes' edit for every game. The intention was not to "whip round" any game ever again!
John also claimed that MOTD is a "load of rubbish" which, if true, is a sad indictment of what our team does for a living. Either way, it may be a "load of rubbish" but I don't agree that it's a big-four obsessed "load of rubbish"! Just ask the fans of Liverpool - presumably one of "the big four" - who've been complaining about our placing of their recent matches in the running order.
In the past, the usual gripe was (with some justification) that certain teams' games often ended up as 30 seconds in the round-up. Now it's that a given edit of several minutes was too late in the running order. However, there is a real issue behind all of this, one which I will now try to address.
When I headlined this piece "it's not just a two-horse race", I was not talking about the Premiership itself. This season at least, that is a two horse race. If anyone other than one of the wins the league, then something extraordinary will have to have happened.
What I meant is that Match of the Day is not, and cannot, only be about the race for the title. We very much hope that stays alive all the way to next May. If it does, some programmes, such as the one last Saturday, will start with Chelsea, Manchester United or both. On a day when , and all the (good and bad) headlines the next day were about every journalist - and most impartial viewers - would understand why we led with their game.
However, next in the running order, ahead of big wins for and , was a dramatic bottom three clash between . The other week, on a day when Manchester United and Liverpool both won, the first three games on Match of the Day were , and . The bottom three all won, so we started the programme with them. Similarly, Reading led the first MOTD of the season by coming back from two down to win their .
These decisions, like any we make, are debatable, and are therefore debated. They're certainly not designed to boost our audience figures (which are almost always higher when the UK's best-supported teams Manchester United and Liverpool feature) and, I hope, also rather explode the "big four" theory. Prior to Saturday, the second-best supported team in the country (Liverpool) had been involved in a number of indifferent low-scoring games, so have often been lower in the running order than we - or their fans - might have anticipated.
I would argue that this is meritocratic, and that, as a public service broadcaster, we should not automatically bow to what political theorists call the "tyranny of the majority". Just as the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ as a whole tries to cater to minority groups and interests, so we owe it to Watford and Charlton fans to provide them with proper coverage and analysis of their teams, even though they're massively outnumbered by fans of the "big four". We're certainly not perfect, but if people don't think we've moved on in this respect post-2004, then frankly we've failed in what we set out to achieve.
And we won't only focus on the title and relegation picture. Yesterday's MOTD2, with as the featured match, a film showing Portsmouth fans travelling to their game from Scotland and as our guest, concentrated on the amazingly tight race for the 3rd and 4th Champions' League spots. Again, we hope this stays alive for the rest of the season.
Further down the football pyramid, Sunday's live FA Cup tie saw heroically earn a place alongside the "big four" in the . They deservedly held the best team from the league three rungs above them, and 2.7 million watched on ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳1. That's a great audience, if somewhat smaller than we'll get for the big boys in later rounds.
But that's not really the point. I'd like to think those who watched, enjoyed that programme for what it was, a classic illustration of Cup underdogs playing out of their skin. And if they thought it was a well-produced show which did the occasion justice, then so much the better. We certainly put as much thought and effort, and as many resources, into it as we will any live game in the New Year. Our team on site also thoroughly enjoyed themselves, and we hope that showed in the coverage.
Anyway, all replies welcome as usual. But please spare me the "big four" stuff. This week, at least!
