Sunday, 26 January 2014

ITV's FA Cup 'highlights', or little more than the goals

Last nights FA Cup highlights show on ITV annoyed me. City were first game up yet the highlights were brief. The game of the day had little more than 5 minutes action. ITV again showed how poorly they cover football.

I can understand their (and BT Sports) decision to pick other games for live coverage. Picking FA Cup games s notoriously difficult. The 'magic' of the cup means you're never sure where the story will be. Though the TV companies don't always help themselves by, for example, always picking Man United no matter who they play. But a highlights show should be able to react to the days events and concentrate on the days stories. This is something Match of the Day does every week, showing more of the bigger stories of the day.

But even though ITV put City's game on first they also didn't help themselves by spending almost as long after the game on interviews and so-called analysis. In total they spent 5 minutes and 9 seconds showing action from the game, and 4 minutes and 13 seconds showing people talking about it. The result is that apart from the goals I got no impression of how dominant Watford reportedly were in the first half, of how poor City were in the first nor how good they were in the second half. I only saw the goals and a couple of other chances.

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