Taking your comments on board
In last week's blog entry I asked you to comment on certain aspects of our football coverage on the ±«Óătv Sport website.
The response was brilliant - so thanks for all the constructive replies. It was good to read the compliments but also to take proper notice of a few criticisms.
As there were too many responses for me to be able answer individually, I have tried to extract the most common themes from your comments about football coverage on our website.
Here are 10 main points:
1) The majority of you enjoyed Jason Roberts’ column last season (and Neil Warnock’s the previous year) and many of you enjoy reading Tim Vickery’s weekly perspective from South America.
I am still trying to finalise arrangements for the new season (and yes I have already tried - and failed - to lure some of the people who you suggested) but I am not going to sign-up three or four different people and rotate them because I feel it takes time to build-up familiarity so continuity is important.
Many of you commented about Mark Lawrenson’s predictions. His column is very popular and will return in three weeks - but remember his opinions are purely that - and not everybody is going to agree with him. You can also take him on by playing Challenge Lawro. Alan Hansen will also be telling us his thoughts when his column returns next month.
2) Fantasy Football will not be returning to the ±«Óătv Sport website. We had to close down our free game after the 2004/05 season following the introduction of the ±«Óătv’s “public value” test.
two years ago stated that the Fantasy Football game was not “sufficiently distinctive from commercial alternatives or adequately associated with public service purposes, to be justified by the remit".
3) is clearly something many of you want to see more of because it offers a bit more in-depth explanation of how games might be won or lost.
We are currently working on producing an improved version of this - so hopefully this application will develop into something even better. It is quite a time-consuming process - but very worthwhile.
4) Impartial news content is definitely important to you. Your feedback suggests that if you read something on the ±«Óătv website then you know it is true and has been thoroughly checked out before being published.
5) Which brings me on to our Gossip Column which gets about 400,000 page impressions on a daily basis. Transfer speculation is notoriously difficult to report on as much of it simply isn’t true - so the Gossip Column enables us to draw a distinction between fact and rumour.
6) Comment is another facet of our coverage that we may give greater consideration to in the future.
The World Cup blog showed there is plenty of appetite for comment and although some of you regarded this as “uninspiring drivel” my feeling is that we can do more on this front.
We think we can make more use of our best journalists and bring you more in-depth opinion. There will also be a football blog by the autumn, but we are yet to finalise the details of exactly how this will work.
Comment can also come in the form of covering live events in a more colourful way. We will try to make you feel like you’re in the stadium by bringing you more atmosphere, passion and humour.
7) Team news seems to be of significant value to you and we will be working hard to make this more up-to-date and accurate next season.
Post-match quotes are more important than pre-match quotes and a lot of you remarked that manager and player interviews are not the most inspiring unless something controversial happens during a game.
8) Providing more insight into the world of football is one of the main areas where you feel we have room to improve. This is one of our main on-going challenges because it is not always easy and straightforward to do this.
You want real views and real emotion as opposed to reading more about the corporate side of the game. You want more behind-the-scenes stuff and I will challenge my staff to try to satisfy your thirst.
9) Statistics - i.e. live scores, league tables, fixtures and results are also vital to you, especially on Saturdays.
We've improved our stats over the past couple of years and I am pleased to say that from the new season we will be providing enhanced football stats like we had during the World Cup.
10) Sorry! But to emphasise again, the ±«Óătv is not allowed to broadcast radio commentary or show video of live events unless we have the rights to do this.
We did buy the rights to stream the ±«Óătv matches during the World Cup after securing an agreement with Fifa.
No such deal is currently in place regarding the Premiership, though we are allowed to provide audio streams of commentaries from Five Live to a UK audience only.
Again, it’s all down to rights and the ±«Óătv does not have a licence to be able to stream commentaries from around the world.
But here's some great news; our next Premier League contract, starting in August 2007/08 and spanning three seasons, will allow us to stream Match of the Day and MOTD2 on broadband as simulcasts with the TV shows (for UK users only), so at last all the Premiership goals will be on the ±«Óătv Sport website for the first time!
Among the other ideas you submitted were calls for greater depth to our lower division coverage.
It may be that in future we will be able to tap into the ±«Óătv’s network of sports journalists across the country and get more locally-produced content on to the website and our other platforms.
It was also suggested that we should not concentrate so much on the big glamour clubs in the Premiership. We do strive to give coverage purely on merit and I assure you we do not go out of our way to provide less content on clubs like Blackburn and Fulham.
So, lots to consider and I’ll keep you posted about any developments - and hopefully will soon have news about our main football columnist for next season…
