The warning in a TV case of bad timing

13 April 2012

Des Lynam is back where he started complaining - at 10.30pm on a Saturday evening. The only difference for him is the channel; the difference for soccer is going to be far more significant.

In his final years at the BBC, the man known as the Guv'nor argued that the edited highlights of Premier League football would command a greater audience at an earlier hour. But if what has happened leaves Lynam with egg on his moustache, it leaves English football much more embarrassed.

Last night's Sky match, between north-east derby rivals Middlesbrough and Sunderland, perhaps typifies football's sense of delusion. Where once this fixture in a supposed hotbed of the game would have had them packed to the rafters, there were banks of empty seats.

ITV's programming decision will force soccer to abandon its pretence that the national game is a prime-time attraction. In the Saturday evening capital of light entertainment it has been seen, and seen through.

No longer can the game portray itself as a glittering arm of showbusiness, or contend its heroes are in the same league as ratings-toppers like Cilla Black and Chris Tarrant. The bluntness of the statement from David Liddiment, ITV director of channels, went so far as to blame it for putting 'pressure on the overall performance of the schedule'.

That is a capital offence in commercial television terms. It means simply that Premier League highlights were kicking off ITV's Saturday evening schedule a couple of million viewers down on the BBC before Tarrant and Frank Skinner could get into the act.

ITV sold The Premiership to advertisers as a spot in the schedule where they would be guaranteed a young, male audience. What they had not anticipated is how exclusively young and male it would be. The families ITV need on Saturday evenings shunned the game.

Women, whatever the Premier League's spin-doctors tell us, are not sufficiently turned on.

That immediately cuts out a big chunk of the population. OK, many will switch on for David Beckham and that lovely Michael Owen when national pride is at stake. But they owe no loyalty and some have no interest in their men's tribal affections.

Even their menfolk argue that there is too much football on TV, certainly too much for marital bliss. In truth, there is only too much bad football, too many Nationwide League and Worthington Cup-ties, and far too many meaningless European games against clubs from places no self-respecting holiday programme would be seen dead in.

At its best the club game attracts a worthwhile TV audience. Last Wednesday, at its peak, Manchester United's Champions League tie against Deportivo La Coruna drew more than 10million viewers to ITV. But that is soccer at its best.

The next evening, when the BBC offered Ipswich v Helsingborg, only around 4m people switched on - and how many chose to take an early bath?

Too much of the soccer offered by television does not come close to the heights of that Old Trafford classic. It is soccer for soccer's sake because television sport bosses are playing a little game among themselves to prove their machismo with the chequebook. And for a decade now soccer's owners have not been able to believe their luck.

Soccer in England has caught an autumnal cold that is running through Europe. Wherever the game is played it may never be the same again, and certainly not in England after contracts for the Premier League and Champions League are renegotiated for 2003-04.

Last week, the BBC and ITV jointly negotiated a £160m World Cup deal with rights owners Kirch, buying pictures of the 2002 and 2006 tournaments when the German company had demanded £171m for next summer's tournament alone.

Lynam's lucrative four-year contract with ITV ends in 2004. What will he decide to do now that soccer's prime-time viewing appeal has had its day?

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The warning in a TV case of bad timing

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