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October 27, 2007
Posted on 10/27/2007 in Television
Australia were keenly following the cricket when the team was playing in India, reports the Sydney Morning Herald.
They [audience figures]show that the three most watched programs on pay TV in Australia last week were cricket telecasts from India on Fox Sports. In order, these were the sixth and seventh one-dayers, and the one-off Twenty20 match.
A pay-TV audience is considered pretty good if it exceeds 100,000, given that only 29per cent of Australian households have access to the product. The matches in India all topped 100,000 and some did much better.
June 14, 2007
Posted on 06/14/2007 in English cricket
Michael Henderson, writing in The Daily Telegraph, has slammed spectators at Old Trafford for their behaviour during the recent Test.
“Good as it was to see the ground full last weekend, too many people had come to admire themselves. This is not a problem exclusive to Old Trafford. The narcissism encouraged by television, which likes to identify 'colourful characters', and people 'having fun', is evident everywhere. It just seems more apparent in Manchester, where the heavy-handed stewarding continues to offend regular patrons.
“What can be done about the increasingly unpleasant atmosphere inside Test grounds? Not much, I'm afraid. Where once spectators were sober observers (in both senses of the word), immersed in the game's history, we now have thousands of people for whom a Test match offers a splendid opportunity to get riotously drunk, and possibly the chance to disrobe and charge on to the field of play.”
Henderson, who has a track record of taking swipes at Old Trafford, writes that when Shiv Chanderpaul completed his half century “thousands of revellers ignored his achievement, preferring to hurl their beer trays higher and higher. The only ground where these high jinks do not take place is Lord's, where MCC members are often mocked for being snobs. Anybody who was at Manchester last week would say that snobbery has much to commend it.”
December 4, 2006
Posted on 12/04/2006 in
Cricket Australia announced today that Michael Parkinson, the renowned television interviewer and fervent cricket fan, will interview Shane Warne. The show will air early next year.
Parkinson: The Shane Warne Interview will be recorded before a live studio audience and
will air in early January, 2007, exclusively on UKTV.
The interview will have no boundaries and will cover Warne’s stellar career on the cricket field, as
well as his personal mishaps and controversies on and off the field.
“It will be a real pleasure to interview Shane Warne,” said Parkinson. “He is a man who evokes
different emotions from people depending on the subject in question. He is in my view the greatest bowler of them all, certainly in my lifetime.
“Warne is a charismatic, complex and fascinating man. I am greatly looking forward to sitting down with him to find out what makes him tick.”
Shane Warne said: “I respect Michael, he is passionate about cricket and I have only the highest regard for him as a journalist and interviewer. I am looking forward to our chat.”
November 27, 2006
Posted on 11/27/2006 in Television
Sky Sports is generally reckoned to have done a decent job replacing Channel 4 in covering the cricket in England in 2006. But, writes Peter Wilby in The Observer, when the occasion demanded expertise, their commentary team was found wanting.
The incident in question came at The Oval in August when Pakistan were accused of ball tampering and then refused to resume after tea, eventually forfeiting the match. Wilby was unimpressed with Sky’s main men:
They proved themselves utterly inadequate. They lacked even one person, a Benaud, an Arlott, even a Christopher Martin-Jenkins, who could bring journalistic qualities - an inquiring mind, a hunger for information, a desire to explain - to the occasion. They could tell us next to nothing about what was happening behind the closed dressing-room doors. More seriously, they failed to give the events any wider context.
Continue reading "The day the sky fell in"
November 25, 2006
Posted on 11/25/2006 in Television
Despite all the hype generated by Rupert Murdoch’s Sky TV before the start of the Ashes, they managed a spectacular cock-up before the series had started. As Chris Maume in the Independent points out, it all went wrong from the toss:
It was purportedly transmitted live - though that pretence was punctured by David Gower's revelation beforehand that Australia had won it.
It transpired that Mark Nicholas, working for the Aussie TV station Channel 9, was in shot, and because he also fronts Five's coverage over here it was considered necessary to edit him out. Pathetic, really. Except it seems to me that it almost certainly had nothing to do with rival channels. I mean, we are talking Mark Nicholas here. Wouldn't you edit him out of your shot if it was humanly possible?
November 14, 2006
Posted on 11/14/2006 in Ashes
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Morning Lara, morning everyone
© The Daily Telegraph
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Richie Benaud will be joined by a bikini-clad model, Lara Bingle, to front the advertising of Channel 9's Ashes coverage this season. Shuper effort, that. More at the Daily Telegraph in Sydney.
The doyen of cricket is joined by bikini babe Lara Bingle - clad in parochial green and gold togs and cricket pads - in Channel 9's new Ashes campaign.
"So, where the bloody hell are you?'' Bingle says in the promo, coining her Tourism Australia catchcry to attract viewers to the series.
Benaud's thoughts are simple.
"Marvellous,'' he says.
September 24, 2006
Posted on 09/24/2006 in Ashes
The Barmy Army have been entertaining supporting England for a number of years, through the dark depression of the nineties and out into the altogether brighter 2000s. But with the Ashes a mere 59 days, 13 hours, and 28 minutes (ish) away comes the news that Australia are urging their public not only to turn up at the cricket, but beat the Barmies at their own game. Further proof in video format here and here - two commercials airing on Australian TV at the moment.
Never mind the cricket; this winter's real contest could be in the stands.
September 6, 2006
Posted on 09/06/2006 in Pakistan in England
While the spectre of ball-tampering briefly resurfaced at The Rose Bowl, it was Sky Sports’ coverage which came in for criticism in the media.
The BBC’s veteran Pat Murphy accused Sky of having “power without responsibility" for the way they presented and commented on the footage of Shoaib Akhtar working on the ball.
And Derek Pringle in The Daily Telegraph was equally critical:
“In a mischievous piece of commentary, Sky failed to draw their own conclusions, leaving it for viewers to email in their thoughts. Nasser Hussain's trenchant thoughts after England's innings — that Shoaib, was "very silly to do it in the current climate" as it would be "all over the morning paper" — was ironic given Sky's instigative role.”
Continue reading "Shoaib and Sky under the spotlight"
July 21, 2006
Posted on 07/21/2006 in Television
"Maybe I'm getting a bit philosophical but that's a major issue," Langer said.
"After the impact of the Ashes I'm amazed that every kid in England isn't able to watch cricket."
Sky's coverage of the matches with Sri Lanka and Pakistan this summer is reportedly attracting an average of around 200,000 viewers, compared with the 9m Channel 4 regularly achieved during the epic Ashes series last year.
"I have been in this country for four weeks now and I've seeen maybe half an hour of cricket on TV," Langer said.
More at the BBC.
May 9, 2006
Posted on 05/09/2006 in Television
In the Guardian the excellent Frank Keating points out that this week sees the start of Sky Sports’ domination of English cricket coverage. But he doesn’t think this is necessarily a bad thing.
“Greedy county club chairmen, a pusillanimous England and Wales Cricket Board and a double-crossing minister of culture are perceived as the collective culprits by cricket lovers. Will Thursday be the day that goads the fans to hit the shits? Or shall we, as ever, just shrug and get on with real life?”
He points out that a Sky subscription is no more expensive than a grandstand ticket for a Test (although many would argue that even that is grossly overpriced). And what about the absence of Richie Benaud, after countless summers of commentating on the English season?
“Oh, and sacrilege I know, but thank heavens the hagiolatry of that Aussie ancient of the muttered monosyllable is now, also, a thing of the distant past. So are romantic ideals of television coverage. Realists should stop moaning, cough up and get dished. There is no going back.”
March 15, 2006
Posted on 03/15/2006 in Television
Watching cricket on Indian television, with the incessant stream of adverts, tries one’s patience, says Simon Barnes in The Times.
It rather tries one's patience. Not because they kept losing the satellite feed, or anything comic like that. The problem was the advertisements.
On Indian television, any moment when they give you an actual program is bitterly resented by the station and is regarded as a wasted opportunity. So, naturally, there were adverts between every over. You were never off duty, always being nagged at, harried, pestered, or flirted at by lovely girls with rupees in their eyes.
March 8, 2006
Posted on 03/08/2006 in Television
An amusing opening paragraph was written in the obituary for John Junkin, a TV scriptwriter and actor, who died yesterday.
In October 1998 a letter in The Times from John Junkin read: “May I confess to not being quite as upset as many people at the loss of first-class cricket by BBC Television, principally because it will give viewers a chance to see the three new series I have devised.
“These consist of 26 programmes on gardening, 26 on travel and 26 on cooking, with a Christmas special in which a well-known gardener is invited to take a celebrity chef to some glamorous location and cook him.”
More at The Times
February 1, 2006
Posted on 02/01/2006 in Television
The Guardian's John Plunkett is enraged about England's contract with BSkyB:
There is an easy solution - stick cricket back on the A-list of protected sporting events and live cricket need never disappear from terrestrial schedules again. But will MPs recommend that? Will they heck. They should put up - or shut up.
Also see more at Cricinfo on the Commons' attack of the ECB today.
January 25, 2006
Posted on 01/25/2006 in Television
Vin Maskell has had enough of TV's constant slow-motion replays, and questions whether cricket on TV is losing its appeal:
ARE cricketers really as obnoxious, overbearing and arrogant as they appear on television?
Does Brett Lee really have to do that mid-air kick or that chainsaw-pumping pantomime? Apparently so, but here's what we tend to forget: if Lee takes three wickets in an innings, he only does his party act three times. Not 10 or 20 times.
A-n-d n-o-t i-n p-er-p-e-t-u-a-l s-l-o-w m-o-t-i-o-n.
Television directors love to convert a fleeting moment into something surreal. In doing so, television coverage makes sport and its emotions seem more important than they already are.
January 11, 2006
Posted on 01/11/2006 in Television
The Sydney Morning Herald reports on plans to expand TV technology ahead of the 2006-07 Ashes. It seems that many of the innovations used for Twenty20 will be tested. Heat-sensor cameras, scientific ball-tracking devices and "in game" player interviews are all being considered.
Steve Crawley, Nine's director of sport, said that the cricketers who were miked up during the Brisbane Twenty20 found the whole idea really interesting:
Our ultimate goal is to have the best cricket coverage in the world for the Ashes next year. We are working on technology that has never been seen before - some of it will come through, some of it won't. We're spending a lot of time on this. That's how big the Ashes are to us. There's scientific stuff with ball paths and a camera that shows heat off the ball. Real CSI stuff. It might come off.
December 1, 2005
Posted on 12/01/2005 in Television
The unease among many surrounding the ECB's deal with BSkyB just won;t go away. Despite sports minister Richard Caborn's virtual refusal to consider reviewing the contract on Tuesday, now the government is coming under pressure to explain conversations between Tessa Jowell, the culture secretary, and James Murdoch, the head of BSkyB and son of billionaire media maganate and Blair supporter, Rupert:
Extracts from the confidential minutes of the meeting were released to the Guardian under a Freedom of Information Act request, but details of the discussion about the broadcasting rights were withheld. The minutes of the meeting held on November 23 2004 marked "restricted" reveal that Murdoch "said he would like to discuss sports, the ECB [England and Wales Cricket Board] and the broadcast of Test cricket matches"
November 29, 2005
Posted on 11/29/2005 in Television
As the debate of whether the ECB should have sold TV rights to satellite broadcaster BSkyB, David Brook, a former Channel 4 executive who has been leading a campaign to get the coverage back on free-to-air television, is about to address a House of Commons inquiry.
In a column for the Independent, Brook made clear his objections:
But Sky's monopoly over the summer game is bad for cricket and bad for society. Over 30 million people watched the Ashes series last summer - more than half the country. We all got caught up in the excitement. But how many fewer of us would have shared in the nation's collective joy if it had not been on terrestrial television? Would so many people have cheered the team at Trafalgar Square? Would thousands of young would-be Freddie Flintoffs have taken up cricket?
November 20, 2005
Posted on 11/20/2005 in Television
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Twenty minutes of Bob Willis and Paul Allott droning on in their pedantic, vinegary way, and you're broken
© Getty Images
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If the mandarins at Sky Sports' Osterley offices were hoping that this winter's cricket would afford them a quiet time ahead of next summer, when they start their controversial and far-from-acclaimed monopoly of domestic coverage, Matthew Norman's broadside in the sunday Telegraph will not make good reading for them:
Nothing can rival Sky for paucity of ambition, anaemic smugness of presentation, and the soporific sourness of their commentatary.
And he then echoed what many readers of The Wisden Cricketer stated in a recent poll ... that their commentators are so depressing:
Twenty minutes of Bob Willis and Paul Allott droning on in their pedantic, vinegary way, and you're broken. Take the house, the car, a kidney, I'll dance in the street playing the triangle with a beatific grin on my face. Anything, but please, MAKE IT STOP.
Oh for next May when five months of wall-to-wall Willis awaits.
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