About Me

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Hammersmith, London, United Kingdom
I'm a director of Maidenhead United Football Club. For ten seasons one of my roles at the club was to produce the match programme. The aim of this blog was to write football related articles for publication in the match programme. In particular I like to write about the representation of football in popular culture, specifically music, film/TV and literature. I also write about matches I attend which generally feature Maidenhead United.

Sunday 28 November 2010

Too much show not enough business

The BBC's Football League show has come in for some harsh criticism recently in a polemic on its own 606 message board that went viral.
Although the article goes a bit over the top in its denouncing of the show there is an undercurrent of veracity in its tone that should be acted on with regard to the extra bits of dressing that surround the reason we all tune in - the highlights themselves.
Firstly its worth mentioning that the BBC's coverage of the Football League is streets ahead of what was offered on ITV year after year in its Football League Extra programme which tended to show the absolute minimum, basically just the goals with a heavy emphasis on the top division.  However the BBC seems to be trying too hard to differentiate the Football League show from the Match of the Day programme that precedes it. 
MOTD gets it just right with a simple formula of action, post match interviews and studio analysis, that the Football League Show would do well to copy.  Instead it sees it self as some sort of community programming by wasting airtime with viewers comments and the short fat bald goatee phenomenon which is Clem, a man who seems to alienate the manager of every club he visits.  Cut all this show and get down to the business of the football.  There is so much credit to be given by the BBC's commitment to its coverage of every single team to the extent that a blank weekend in the Championship makes no difference to the depth of coverage, it would be a shame if it were ditched due to the parts which were wholly disposable.

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