Some new developments
A quick blog with the answers to two of the questions we're most often asked.
Which events are the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ planning to show in High Definition? And why isn't Sport content available on the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ iPlayer?
Archives for January 2008
Super Bowl XLII: The luck of London?
| 14:04 UK time, Wednesday, 30 January 2008
While the dust was settling on the back in October, our presenter Jake Humphrey and I were discussing how we were going to finish the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳'s highlights programme.
"Why don't we say the New York Giants' win makes them a good bet for the , and that way we can plug the fact that we're showing the thing," we agreed.
Euro 2008: So who will you be watching?
A few days ago, a ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ colleague from outside Sport gave me his view on . "As of now," he said, "I don't really care about the Euros. But I know that when it comes to June, if I'm asked to do a late meeting in the office - I won't! I'll be off to watch the football."
He is, I suspect, pretty typical. Without any of the home nations taking part, we won't have the pre-tournament talking points: , the travel plans of the WAGs. But just before Christmas we sat down with to agree which broadcaster would show which games - and, as we looked at the schedule, I was increasingly confident that this is going to be once it's underway.
Racing on Ceefax
| 09:16 UK time, Friday, 25 January 2008
I'm never at my most comfortable when I'm on the subject of horse racing. Not because I'm not a fan of the sport - but because with a name like mine I realise it can look faintly ridiculous.
But just for the record, Gallop is not some pseudonym I've adopted for the benefit of this blog - unfortunately it's the real deal.
The reason I'm here to discuss the sport of kings, is that in the coming week we are changing our horse racing service on Ceefax.
, this will not mean an end to our coverage of the sport on our analogue teletext platform. What it will mean though is a different content mix and less emphasis on bookmakers’ data.
The Luck of the Draw
One of the strangest aspects of this job is the extent to which you're in the hands of fate. When , some weeks ago, opted for last Saturday's fixture as their live evening game, they would have seen it as a moderately interesting Premier League occasion which they could sell as 'struggling Big Sam takes on his former club'.
By the time it came round, everything had changed and the had reached ludicrous proportions. Setanta were, presumably, able to sell subscriptions in Tyneside and beyond to those who were suddenly sucked into the hype and/or locked out of the game.
An Interactive Cup of Nations
When I last blogged, I mentioned that football's was one of several sporting events coming up which the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ would be televising, as well as carrying coverage on this website and on our radio stations.
Now this biennial event is upon us, getting under way in Ghana on Sunday with a match between and . It runs until 10 February, with 32 matches packed into those three weeks.
All of those matches will be screened by the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ to viewers in the UK, mostly on interactive, or red button, television.
The ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳'s World Service, meanwhile, will be offering fantastic radio coverage of the event in Africa, where it is Fast Track radio programme is hugely popular with football fans, and beyond.
A balancing act with Sports Report
People have said the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ loves an anniversary. Maybe so, though my formative years as a producer on the Today programme on Radio 4 were with an editor who hated anniversary stories. "Lazy journalism", he called them - with some justice, because revealing something new is much more difficult than recording that it's 40 years since some event or other happened.
All the same, this month we'll be raising a glass to a 60th anniversary within ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Sport. It's 60 years since Sports Report first took to the air - and for the past 14 of those years it's been a stalwart of Radio Five Live.
At 5pm on Saturday afternoons, there's the wonderful old music; the peerless James Alexander Gordon reading the football results; and then analysis and reaction from all the day's sport.
Rise to the challenge with Sport Relief
for its fourth outing and this year it has moved from July to March. So far the joint venture between the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ and Comic Relief has raised around £50m and we are hoping to greatly add to that amount in 2008.
Once again the focus of the campaign will be the and we will be televising many of them in a special programme on ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ ONE (³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ TWO in Scotland) on Sunday, 16 March at the end of, what we hope will be, a special weekend of fundraising and entertainment across all areas of the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳.
We first came up with the idea of the Miles in 2004, as we wanted to create a mass participation fundraising activity that anyone could do, regardless of age or ability. That is why we deliberately emphasise that it is about taking part rather than being competitive.
Expect The Unexpected
| 11:36 UK time, Saturday, 12 January 2008
Playing against the unpredictable genius that is is one of the toughest challenges in snooker. Turns out that covering him for television can be pretty challenging too.
'With most matches you can usually predict what's going to happen and plan your programme accordingly', said Graham Fry, who heads up our snooker coverage with TWI.
'But with Ronnie, you have to have a Plan A, a Plan B and a Plan C'.
Sporting pleasures ahead
Our boss Roger Mosey blogged at the end of 2007 about what you could expect from ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Sport in 2008 and there's no doubt the new year has started with plenty of live sporting action for us.
This Sunday night marks the start of with coverage on ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ interactive television (just hit your red button), this website (for UK users only) and on Radio 5 Live. ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Sport will show you three of the four tennis Grand Slams this year, and with just at the right time, all UK tennis fans will be keeping their fingers crossed for a successful year.
About Alastair McIntyre
Born and bred in the sporting hot-bed of the North West of England (St Helens... and yes Saints and Rugby League are one of my biggest sporting passions), I am from the school of 'if you are not good enough to play professional sport, then I want to be involved in it somehow'.
I was always interested in journalism and that is how I started my 'media' career.
I started in newspapers at the Warrington Guardian reporting firstly on news and then writing about that great Rugby League team involving Jonathan Davies before moving to the Lancashire Evening Telegraph. I was there when Blackburn won the Premiership and then shortly after that I moved to the Sentinel evening newspaper in Stoke for three years where I designed the sports pages, wrote the headlines and did some reporting.
I started at ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Sport as a sub-editor in 1998, researching and writing copy for the presenters before moving into production in 1999 and since then I've been lucky to have done a variety of roles behind the scenes - produce music items, film and cut stories and features as well as edit programmes which I've been doing for the past six six years.
The job is fantastic - you get to work on some great events, some great shows with some great people - The Olympics, Sports Personality Of The Year, the Six Nations, Wimbledon. Plenty of variety and plenty of fun.
The Cup Overflows
As long as I've been following football, the FA Cup third round has been the perfect way to blow away the Christmas and New Year cobwebs. Except for that weird 1999-2000 season when Manchester United withdrew because of the and the third round was played pre-Xmas, with Darlington reinstated as "lucky losers". Those were tough times for the venerable old trophy.
I'm old enough to remember non-League in 1972 and my first weekend at ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Sport coincided with Sutton beating Coventry in 1989. By January 1992, I was editing Middlesbrough 2-1 Man City for Match of the Day. Boro were outside the top flight at the time so it was something of a shock: I thought I'd be cutting a luxuriously long edit of the lead match until news reached my edit channel that Wrexham (92nd the previous season) had just beaten reigning champions Arsenal.
