P&B Fixes Scottish Football's Media Coverage

[Mark Connolly]

A large number of us like a good moan about Sportsound, Sportscene, Sky's coverage of matches, the fact Scotland games are behind a paywall, and myriad other issues with the coverage of Scottish football. And as it's an international window, there's very little decent to talk about.

And so, P&B, what would be the blue sky version of Scottish Football media? Would you keep Open All Mics under the proviso that they actually discuss the games they are attending? Would you get rid of the Friday Night Championship game because you are a Saturday at 3pm zealot? Should there be Tuesday Afternoon Lowland League games simulcast live on BBC Sounds and Comedy Central?

Have at it.

[Ludo*1]

We all nominate a club hero to speak about our respective club on Sportsound.

I nominate Fan Zhiyi. Mainly because I don't think he ever bothered to learn English and I still think he'd make more sense than half the c***s on the radio.

[Richey Edwards]

- Live matches everyday of the week. 

- The scrapping of VAR.

- The abolition of the hated and utterly pointless playoff system.

- Mascot races.

- Amalgamate a load of football teams (there are too many IMO).

[velo army]

32 minutes ago, Mark Connolly said:

A large number of us like a good moan about Sportsound, Sportscene, Sky's coverage of matches, the fact Scotland games are behind a paywall, and myriad other issues with the coverage of Scottish football. And as it's an international window, there's very little decent to talk about.

And so, P&B, what would be the blue sky version of Scottish Football media? Would you keep Open All Mics under the proviso that they actually discuss the games they are attending? Would you get rid of the Friday Night Championship game because you are a Saturday at 3pm zealot? Should there be Tuesday Afternoon Lowland League games simulcast live on BBC Sounds and Comedy Central?

Have at it.

Greenie for the correct syntactic use of myriad.

The Friday night games are a hit 

Honestly I'd start with the pundits and make the whole thing less sensationalist and anti-intellectual. Have pundits on who can string a sentence together and will tell us something we don't know already. Get rid of James McFadden and Michael Stewart. 

Also have pundits on who are unafraid to question VAR and also the massive wealth gap in Scottish football. 

Basically just employ me as a pundit.

[Doctor Sanchez]

Firstly, mag to grid the pair of Yer Da's from Sportsound. Miller and Bonnar cheerio, get rid of all the OF facing shite and provide a balanced and credible coverage that isn't based on a belief of Old Firm exceptionalism. Start calling out their songbooks and stop pulling punches on their behaviour.  

 

The rest will fall into place... 

[Salvo Montalbano]

Putely looking at the BBC...

Friday night - Championship (or League One/Two) game live on BBC Scotland.  Followed by A View from the Terrace.

Saturday lunchtime - Fitba' focus: we don't need the BBC network show but a preview show with content about all four divisions, features on non-league, etc. Round up of last week's best goals, any under 21/reserve games, etc. 

Saturday afternoon - Sportsound. Loads to change, but nothing too hard. First hour or so previewing all the games, not just Rangers/Celtic. Teams news and analysis of the teams from all featured games which include at least one from each division during league weeks. If Rangers or Celtic aren't playing until Sunday, then they are not discussed at all.  At 3pm, cover one game live but not just a Rangers or Celtic game. Relevance to top six/bottom six, relegation, Europe, managers under pressure, game from the Championship, make sure its actually the most interesting game of the day. Other channel has Open All Mikes, but the chat is about the games as they progress, not VAR, not who Rangers could sign, etc. After 5pm, brief match reports from all featured games with scorers and comments about the other games in each division and how they leave the tables. Interviews from both managers (where available) at each featured game. 

Saturday night - Sportscene. Longer highlights, proper analysis, no VAR chat unless it's absolutely necessary. Goals round up from the Championship and Leagues One and Two where available (even if it just means showing one or two goals from L1 and L2) with league tables from all 4 divisions. 

[Central Belt Caley]

Commentators to be required to apologise every time there’s sectarian singing

Get Derek Rae back and make him chief commentator

Take all the sportsound lot, load them into a cannon and fire them into the sun

I’m not precious about the 3pm kick off slot, the Friday nights are usually good. Thinking picking the odd week to have a Saturday early or evening if a game from the championship/league 1 would be good

[coprolite]

Friday night championship is good. More early round scottish cup and occasional games from up and down the pyramid. Terrestrial coverage of non cheek euro trips. 

Having watched a fair bit on alba and barely understood any, i've concluded that commentators and pundits add nothing except noise. Some infuriate me and make it less enjoyable (looking at you Andy Walker you dribbling simpleton). Bin them and get a musician for each game. 

[Der Panzer]

Friday Night under the lights - Championship 1 week, Premiership the next - can only show 1 home game and 1 away per team per season. The Friday games are one thing I miss about the championship.

Saturday - Replace Off the Ball with something fresher and more balanced across all leagues. Open all Mics I like but the pundits need seriously freshened up and need to be employed based on qualifications and skill rather than jobs for the boys. 
 

Sportscene to include 8 mins of highlights minimum, 12 mins maximum of video highlights per game and 3 - 5 mins of analysis maximum of Premiership games. Exceptions only to be made where something mind blowing has happened (a 6-5, 4 sendings off etc). The important thing is that all games have similar and consistent length of coverage.
 

Championship should have its own show on later in the day with 1 or 2 featured games with analysis and longer highlights and goal/red card highlights from elsewhere - with a general rundown of the league and talking points afterwards. There could also be goal highlights from league 1 and 2 but I can take or leave this as I don’t think the appetite is really there - this could be packaged into on demand highlights packages probably. 

Sunday I’d like to see a panel type show - a hybrid between Open Goal/AVFTT where key storylines across the league are brought out and discussed - a feature on 1 club per episode perhaps. 

Scotland games must be free to view -  especially in times like now where it’s not utterly dreadful - we need the next generation hooked - at 38 I must admit I treat Scotland like a 2nd team I watch out for results for - would 100% watch if on telly I had subscribed to but I’m not paying any extra for it. 
 

VAR can gtf - I’d rather be cheated by refs and the OF in a less in your face way so I can try and convince myself honest mistakes happen and it can’t surely be a conspiracy. 

 

[johnnydun]

Get an affordable Scottish Football TV channel, with at least 4 live games available each week, from any division.

Daily news and highlights, Scottish football documentaries, magazine programmes and vlogs.

Move AVFTT to the channel along with Open Goal to include nearly everyone, (I say nearly everyone, as PLZ soccer is not invited) I would make Sportsound a part of this channel along with a Sportscene type show.

Get a nightly Pie & Bovril members/Vlogers/Podcasters debate show on with different folk every night.

£20 a month, who's in?

This is not, I repeat not Setanta.

Edited March 25 by johnnydun

[Derry Alli]

I'd happily pay £20 a month but I'm no wantin' Derek Rae.

[johnnydun]

4 minutes ago, Derry Alli said:

I'd happily pay £20 a month but I'm no wantin' Derek Rae.

Deal, we will have the guy from Arbroath.

[Derry Alli]

1 minute ago, johnnydun said:

Deal, we will have the guy from Arbroath.

Nae twa doots. 

[johnnydun]

2 minutes ago, Derry Alli said:

Nae twa doots. 

Finally some loon eh ken relate tay cummin oot eh box. Ken.

[Derry Alli]

1 minute ago, johnnydun said:

cummin oot eh box.

Aww jeezy peeps min.

[eindhovendee]

I'd go with a few of the above suggestions but I'd like a Saturday night Championship game as an addition to the Friday night games.

Championship teams go a bit mental playing under floodlights live on TV, no idea why but consistently good entertainment. 

[VincentGuerin]

I think we're not actually all that far away from an acceptable situation in some ways.

Friday: Keep the Championship games on BBC, but consult with the League One and Two teams to see if they'd be interested in a small number of games per season as well. Two each if there's something worth showing?

Saturday: Keep OAM but with every single person currently involved in it sacked and just start again. A wider range of people doing the reporting; Get people in who understand broadcasting and come from a wider demographic of the Scottish football community than just middle-aged ex-players and journalists, and do OAM properly. Include a game each from the two lower leagues and the Highland and Lowland Leagues. Why not? Commentary game available based on the merit of the game rather than simply whichever of the OF is playing. Music section in the bin. I'm not all that arsed about Sportscene as it is. I just want to see the goals and big incidents from the other games, really. So, not much required there. Who gives a f**k which game is on first?

Sunday: Replace the Sunday OTB with a light-hearted-ish look back at Friday/Saturday done by people who are more clued up. I'd keep OTB Saturday, tbh. This is where to incorporate fan opinions, invite callers etc. That has no value in the Saturday show.

TV deal: Investigate the value of a subscription model run by the league. This is the optimal solution, but I don't think we have the quality of people involved in Scottish football to make it work at the moment.

Edited March 26 by VincentGuerin

[Dons_1988]

Hate to give the boring answer here but there isn’t any particular right answer if the current ‘quantity’ of coverage is the same. 

Part of the problem for me is it’s so limited that there just isn’t the variety available. 

If we look at down south, they throw so much money at it that they cover all bases. The slick highlights packages, goals shows, extended highlights, ‘banter’ shows, nostalgia shows, journalists giving their long form analysis, radio coverage with pundits giving a reasonable level of analysis, in depth interviews, social media pish, whatever other angle you want. It caters for just about every demographic of football fan. 

The frustration with, say sportsound, is that is the national radio coverage we get. It’s virtually exhaustive at a national level. So VAR chat and ex players music choices is basically what we have to listen to if we want Scottish football radio coverage. 

[VincentGuerin]

8 minutes ago, Dons_1988 said:

Hate to give the boring answer here but there isn’t any particular right answer if the current ‘quantity’ of coverage is the same. 

Part of the problem for me is it’s so limited that there just isn’t the variety available. 

If we look at down south, they throw so much money at it that they cover all bases. The slick highlights packages, goals shows, extended highlights, ‘banter’ shows, nostalgia shows, journalists giving their long form analysis, radio coverage with pundits giving a reasonable level of analysis, in depth interviews, social media pish, whatever other angle you want. It caters for just about every demographic of football fan. 

The frustration with, say sportsound, is that is the national radio coverage we get. It’s virtually exhaustive at a national level. So VAR chat and ex players music choices is basically what we have to listen to if we want Scottish football radio coverage. 

It's on a different level in terms of funding, but a lot of that stuff is there in Scottish football. It's just that a lot of it is shite.

We've got as much newspaper coverage as they do down south, we've got Nutmeg, we've got AVFTT, we've got Open Goal, we've got Super Scoreboard, we've got that other one with the old guys on it, we've got loads of podcasts and Youtube stuff.

There is a gap for a proper magazine-style show and a Scottish version of Match of the Eighties or Premier League Years. But apart from that, we do have a version of more or less everything you mention.

Edited March 26 by VincentGuerin

[stressball]

I still think an SPL  style streaming package is the best bet.

 

Apparently there  had been discussions before streaming was a thing about an SPL TV channel but sadly I can’t find that.

 

You’d have your big standard SPL package which would include access to specific games of all teams, but not all of each teams games.

You could then bolt in additional access for each individual team in the league, Celtic and Rangers would be priced higher simply to recoup more money to enable the platform to run at a profit for the rest of the teams.

You could then charge for additional games on a rolling basis provided you already have a subscription in place.

 

So say I wanted to watch the Edinburgh derby, I have the Celtic package and want to watch it, I pay an additional fiver for the privledge. 
 

I can’t be bothered getting into the carve up of revenue but the quick notes would be each team gets an equal share of the subscription pot, then it’s divided by team subscriptions going straight to that team(higher levy to the platform for Celtic and Rangers) and the same for games on demand.

 

You’d also need to get the 3PM black out in the bin.