It is a mystery why Sky Sports and TNT stick with the same pundits who offer no expert insight whatsoever, especially when subscriptions are so expensive.
This week I’m looking at the way programmes are put together for us including opening credits and who they’re aiming them at.
For the WSL game between Manchester United and Everton, it opens with very Photoshopped action graphics, coloured and treated action shots which don’t just focus on the Lionesses we know so well, though they do feature as stars of the game, to the MOTD music. They’re nice and fresh and colourful and I’d feel excited by them if I was young. Liam McDevitt presents. A nice beta male who is a good choice as an accessible presence with Rachel Brown-Finnis. Shows thought. Everyone takes the knee against discrimination, which is nice to see, especially as it will be the kids’ world now and a bit of positivity in a harsh world is welcome.
Women’s football on the BBC and Sky has a definite inclusive feel that the tribalism of men’s football keeps at arm’s length and is perhaps aware that a significant part of the audience are children. So interviews have what you might call a ‘comic’ style. This isn’t a criticism, more a reflection of approach. You could imagine them in Shoot! for example. All week, the presentation of women’s football is consistently distinctive and highly enjoyable whether covering the WSL, the SWPL1, the Women’s Championship or European leagues, some of which are on YouTube channels. The channels deserve praise for their approach. Gnarly, defensive old culture warriors like me are always sensitive to patronising or diminishing because we’ve seen so much of it, going back decades. But pleased to report, it no longer exists.
The MOTD for the FA Cup credits are a bit less graphically zingy as your life flashes before your eyes in an FA Cup montage. Joe Hart and Mark Chapman make it an enjoyable, light-hearted programme. Hart on penalty-taking and goalkeeping was fascinating and he was given a chance to talk.
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TNT’s Serie A intro looks like a travel programme with shots of beautiful Italian places interspersed with football. It sets the context well and gets the juices going for the Napoli v Milan clash. This sort of glamorous, exotic scene-setting is a reason in itself to watch and can’t be matched in the Premier League. It’s a 54,000 sell out and noisy.
In contrast, midweek football on TNT starts with Forest v Manchester United. Where Serie A is a lush setting, the Premier League is less travelogue and more open air jail. The opening credits are just a montage of action. They haven’t tried with graphics at all. Little style. Unimpressive. Like they don’t care. Rio talks with Joshua Zirkzee, standing still on the pitch initially, then slowly walking, then stopping. This was, for some reason, orchestrated, as Rio looked away, clearly getting a signal to start to walk. All unnecessary to the point of odd.
The interview with Ola Aina was one of those types done by Kenny Allstar in-a-big-4-wheel-drive affairs, like the world isn’t heating up and your choices don’t matter. This despite the channel running a programme about how climate change is affecting football, Playing For Our Future. Driving around in a big petrol thirsty car is so thoughtless, ham-fisted and dumb. It all seems so well-worn, utterly stupid and disconnected. The one makes the other seem like the worst kind of tokenism. They even clumsily run a trail for the program after the interview. It’s a bad look, old fashioned and like it’s 25 years ago.
All the interviews are perfunctory. If the intent is to entertain and inspire people to watch the game, it only succeeds in laying a dead hand on proceedings and makes the argument for no pre and post-game show successfully. That being said, I do like seeing Ruben Amorim talk, he always seems amused. Rio talks the usual rubbish about the so-called uniqueness of the physicality of Our League which suggests he’s not taking Qatar Airways to see football anywhere else. Beggars belief that TNT actually pays for this mindless guff. Punditry doesn’t have to be this dull, it really doesn’t and sometimes it isn’t. They could make it interesting but I don’t think they even try. “United have to fight,” says Rio. Yeah, absolutely riveting. Why do they allow this stuff to consistently happen? Not everyone is so uninteresting. They mustn’t be bothered about the number of subscriptions because they’re hardly making a compelling case for buying one.
Thankfully the game starts at last and United are instantly behind. “His speed is his superstrength,” says Rio of Anthony Elanga, something blindingly obvious offered as expert analysis after he runs at pace the length of the pitch to score. There are many more obvious things said as if insights. Ferdinand is a particularly egregious repeat offender but not alone.
Who are these sorts of shows for? Not for the student of the game for whom bland, obvious assertions are insulting to their intelligence, nor for the casual viewer who just wants to see a bit of football and to whom this 60-90 minute pre-game show won’t be of interest. Not for those wishing to see something graphically rich and stylishly put together either. So who? I can’t imagine any constituency and that’s a failing of focus by the producers. They’re trying to appeal to people who don’t exist, people not bothered by the details of football who want something bland and unchallenging who are bothered enough to watch a 60-90 minute pre-show and don’t think the pitchside ‘desk/plinth’ is ludicrous. Perhaps they think they are providing something dense and intellectual. I wouldn’t rule out such a delusion.
Wednesday’s Sky midweek football of the Merseyside derby began with their ‘we’ve-got-some-new-software’ opening with shirts shedding ‘litter’ in the shirt’s colours, this season’s idea which does look like a college project and just too odd and distracting to stir the blood. They managed to get Duncan Ferguson in without mentioning his managerial stint at Inverness Cally, even in passing. An interview with Jake O’Brien sees him wearing the expression of someone up on a firearms charge and Andy Robertson stars black-eyed with a ‘wits up wi yoor coupon’ sort of look.
As usual, when showing clips of ’90s football, it always looks and sounds so much better than now. I’m sure they don’t mean to say ‘this was when it was good,’ but that’s what it does. Today’s footage looks anaemic. This isn’t nostalgia, it’s objectively true. The authorities have made everything worse.
The broadcast with Big Dunc and Carra hangs together well, thanks to Kelly Cates’ honeyed style and doesn’t drag, proof of what great presenting can do, not forgetting Juliette Ferrington’s light, unaffected interview style. Duncan does have a pleasing ‘social club nutter’ about him, who’s nice until the moment he snaps. He’s good value and makes it watchable in a way Jamie Redknapp doesn’t. Why producers don’t realise this is one of the mysteries of our days.
Thursday saw Redknapp on the pitch with Gary Cahill (who might as well not have been there) and Dave Jones who is very Dave Jones-ish, pushing enthusiastically but weighed down by the pundits. “Ange is under big pressure,” says Jamie to no-one’s interest. It’s like these people live in a world that is unaware of what is already in common parlance and thus they speak like we have never heard of such thinking. “He’s got to win football matches” is another Redknapp insight. Why do they all say “football matches” just because everyone else does? I mean, what else do they have to win? A pointless, flatulent qualification. There’s no football that isn’t a match. God forbid you have some individuality or think. They even all have white trainers on. Does Sky employ a hypnotist so that they all conform to a norm?
Thankfully there’s only half an hour of this somnambulance. Poor stuff compared to last night. Then the football started between two of London’s most ridiculous comedy clubs. Cole Palmer seemed to have used a smaller bowl than usual to cut his hair. He looked self-conscious, like the big lads are going to catch him and give him a wedgie. They play like they’re 22 strangers, scamming a living as footballers. Utterly hopeless football, the first half hilariously clumsy and clueless. Headless chicken stuff. A better second half is ruined by VAR which takes forever to make easy calls. The appetite to get rid of it seems to have dissipated but it is still an aggressively egregious force in the game.
At the end of the week, my conclusion is that the programmes are not without quality in how they look and are put together but it’s all a bit hit and miss and frequently insults our intelligence and sense of aesthetics, remarkably, aiming their programmes at a non-existent audience.
