Saturday night (not early evening mind you), BBC1. Laid-back presenters watch the highlights of that days premiership games, analysing the talking points of the game in there own indomitable fashion and disagreeing as they occasionally do.
Although Match of the Day is now limited to those competitions where the BBC still has the rights, this is still one of the best football highlights programmes on any UK network. ITV managed to out bid the BBC last round and got the rights. They already had poached Des Lynam but they tried to change things for their version. None of it worked and they have trimmed it back to copy MoTD. Proving that for 30 plus years the BBC have developed the perfect package of presenting style, humour and commentators.
With Des it was perfect but now with Gary Lineker it is still good. Both had a cool laid back air about them that really help the presenting style they know to leave the extreme `getting worked up' stuff to the pundits. The bench is also good on the BBC, Hansen, Mark Lawernson etc are professionals and know what they're talking about. Occasionally they have a weak link but this is rare. Whereas ITV gets big names but the chemistry doesn't always work usually they have managers between jobs (shown by Keegan leaving to go back and destroy Leeds!). The BBC commentators are great too recognisable voices that we have grown up with who know how to use their voices to compliment the action, again this isn't always the case but they have a much better strike rate than ITV!
Overall this is where I want to watch my football and I can't wait till the next bidding round. Hopefully ITV will bare in mind the low ratings the programme gets and wonder if it is worth that much money, and BBC may be able to get by without breaking the bank. Can't wait to see it back again! If you're in any doubt that the BBC's MOTD is the place that the nation wants to see it's football then look at the ratings for games that both BBC and ITV show at the same time (world cup matches etc), by and large the BBC slaughter ITV which goes to show the reputation that the network has built over it's long career of MOTD. This is the place that the nation comes to for football (when it has the choice).
ITV may have had the money to outbid the BBC. And they may have had the lawyers to distance themselves legally from ITV Digital (no connection there then duh) but ITV has done nothing but harm to the game by ducking out on their contract with the Nationwide division teams. Lets have the premiership highlights back on BBC before ITV mess those up too. There that's my 10 cents!
