Thetownend.com

Get rid of that silly bint reading out the emails and if anyone ever gets near that studio take a file and scratch off the McAbomination’s club “crest” off the back panel of glass.

Aside from the above and the tit that is Claridge who does actually make the odd good point  it’s quite a good show and unlike it’s predecessors it’s not biased to the Championship and gives a decent level of exposure across all the leagues.

i only watched the first 1 so dont know if they changed it but when i was watching they announced the scores of each match before the highlights where shown. Dont know if its still like that, spoils it a bit.

I always seem to stumble upon it half cut so I miss the opening 15 minutes but it's a decent watch.

Slightly surprised about Claridges comments that Southend's financial predicament was a bolt out of the blue... obviously he his very in touch and nobody had written it down for him on his notepad

i hadn't known anything about southends troubles until recently.did everyone else then?

I know I made a post about it a couple of weeks back.

i'm sure claridge has been aware for a few weeks same as us,but before then it was not out in public really was it?
i had no idea

I appreciate that Lizzie Greenwood-Hughes had worked in childrens based media prior to the FL show but that is no excuse to make it sound like every Football League supporter is a 10 year old who, bless them, doesn't support a Premiership club.

Mind you it does amuse me.

Richard Pullen, aged 26 who lives in Newcastle.

Well, apparently not. Bolt out of the blue for everyone (well BBC researchers and so-called FL "experts") right up until it happened last week. He did specifically say that it had taken everyone by surprise this week. Which clearly it hadn't, but then that's the problem with being a self-declared (or BBC-annointed) expert who doesn't do his homework.

It beats HTV & Points West "local" coverage any day though.
It's also better than the HTV midweek Brissle love in that used to go on.

Oh, yeah. But as Dazza says would be immeasurably improved by the removal of the "Speak yure Branez" feature which sadly virtually all sports and news programmes now seem to feel is compulsory. And perhaps spending Lizzie "Dressed for over 30s night at a provincial nitespot" Whateverhernameis' salary on getting some proper researchers in instead of relying on Claridge's in-depth knowledge of what he thinks he knows.

But the coverage of the actual football, which is what I suspect most watch it for, is pretty good.

There was a fair bit posted on here IIRC when we signed Revell on loan from Saarfend, their fans stating that they must have financial problems which some people posted on here, and that was just a little over 2 months ago now.

I hate the presenters, I hate the format and I hate the studio they do it in. But you can't complain with the coverage of the lower leagues which is better than I've seen before on free to air, especially the extended highlights they post up on the BBC website.

As I said in the MotD thread, the BBC should drop the Premier League and go for exclusive Football League coverage instead. I reckon there is as much interest in the Football League nowadays (more clubs, more fans) and some of the games in the Championship are up there with the Premier League.

Problem is jonny while you might be right that there's plenty of interest among actual football fans in FL coverage, that's not the audience they're going for. Topflight highlights shows will always get far higher ratings thanks to the "Massive fan but never go to a game" crew who would be up in armchairs if the Beeb abandoned top-flight coverage entirely. The Beeb would lose a sure-fire ratings slam dunk and Sky would be pissing themselves laughing.

The Premier League highlights has to be free to air doesn't it?

So if the BBC did drop it, one of the other channels (ITV, C4 or Five) would pick it up instead. Then the BBC could put their money in to the Football League instead which no one else would pay for or give decent coverage to, so everyone ends up happy.

The BBC are competing far too much for ratings when they don't need to, and in the process they're pissing away licence fee money that could be put to far better uses.

OK, didn't know that. If so, you may well be onto something there.

Especially if they could get Lizzie Pointless-Woman to fuck off along with the PL highlights "And now, here's a lovely picture Richard, 26, of Newcastle, has drawn of Fergie getting all upset with the ref. Lovely use of the red crayon for the face there Richard"

I don't have so much of a problem with the woman who reads out all these informative and insightful comments from other fans, it's the fact that they think anyone gives a rat ass what fans of other clubs think or are concerned about. It's boring and pointless, and Steve Claridge is a complete fuckwit.

Other than that, the coverage is brilliant.

That is one of the funniest paragraphs i have EVER read.

I salute you jonathon.

Why's it funny?

The BBC pay £56m a season for the MotD rights. For £80m they could have got exclusive coverage of the Football League, League Cup and Mickey Mouse Cup, including over 100 live games as well as the highlights they have now.

Total Premier League attendance in 2008/9 was 13,527,703 compared to the Football League at 18,374,424 (not including the playoffs or cups). The Championship (on its own) has the 9th highest total attendance of ALL professional sports leagues in the world and the only football leagues that beat it are the Premier League, Bundesliga and La Liga - Serie A is substantially behind.

Yeah, but it's not attendances the BBC are after - it's ratings. All the attendance figures show is that there is a higher level of commitment from FL fans, but the BBC are not after committed fans, it's precisely the "Can't be arsed to actually to go to a game" armchair fan that brings them the ratings they're chasing