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R Views
by Ron Norris
The Farce That Is ITV Sport

"You shouldn't have to leave to watch a Saturday football match in the dark", said my travelling companions on the way to Huddersfield but leave in the dark we did, all thanks to the ramshackle organisation that is ITV Digital.
 
After changing the day and kick off time once or twice, the newest digital broadcaster finally settled on a 12pm Saturday kick off time and immediately halved the Ranger's travelling support. Not, I imagine, because people wanted to stay and watch it on the telly, but were probably more put off by having to get out of bed before sunrise with a 3 hour drive ahead of them.

For a channel that has exclusive rights to the lower leagues, you would think they would do everything in their power to help struggling clubs like QPR and indeed Huddersfield from having this problem, but no, the men in suits (or women possibly) got their way and our two little clubs were pitted in a TV ratings war with Manchester United in the FA Cup.

The figures aren't out yet, but I despair to think how few people actually watched this match, after all less than a thousand watched the league cup semi-final, something which draws general attention. Huddersfield v QPR? Forget it, could be the lowest viewing figures since Live TV debuted the news bunny.

Sky now have over 5.5 million digital subscribers, ITV has a paltry 1.2 million. Of this only 138,000 people actually subscribe to the beleaguered ITV Sport channel. 138,000?! That is quite pathetic.

I have had some personal experience of ITV Digital efforts at customer service, I wont go into detail, but nine appointments were promised and nine missed. I then cancelled and got Sky with no trouble at all. It therefore surprises me not that ITV Digital has a churn (cancellation) rate of 23% compared to Sky's 10%

When Sky obtained the rights to the football league some ten years ago, there were murmurs of discontent, however Sky has been behind the football revolution during the nineties, ITV however are dragging the Nationwide Leagues kicking and screaming down with them. ITV's sports coverage has always been poor, only they could launch a dedicated sport channel and treat its product with such utter contempt.

To be fair, ITV are not completely blameless in this, they are desperately trying to increase their subscriber base by offering the ITV Sport channel through Sky as well. By all accounts it looks to be Sky themselves who are stalling on this. Presumably in the hope that the pretenders to their throne will disappear as quickly as they arrived and Sky can then pick up the pieces for peanuts.

Where would this leave the clubs? Who knows, what I can say is that ITV has to get its act together and quick, otherwise the very future of clubs like ours could be further threatened by a lack or decrease in TV money so essential in the modern game.

ron@qprnet.com