In the last of his state of the football media nation pieces, Johnny asked you for your favourite programme on TV, radio or podcast…
Never in the history of broadcasting have we had so much choice when it comes to football-based programmes. Yes, there’s a lot of live football __with pre and apres game analysis, but these days there’s a lot more too. There are discussion programmes like the wonderful Monday Night Club on 5live. There are magazine shows like BT Sport’s European Football Show. There are phone-ins like the award-winning 606. There are podcasts full of wit and wisdom such as Football Weekly on The Guardian and Athletico Mince. There are journalists sitting around a table, talking about football and pretending they don’t hate their readers and there is the thoroughly surreal Soccer Saturday where we watch grown men looking at televisions…for six hours. These are glory days.
So What Makes A Great Show?
There are some basics that any show, no matter what format it’s in, has to get right.
First up, you need to define what the programme is trying to achieve. It’s no good criticising a phone-in for not being high-brow, nor expecting the European Football Show to employ Tim Lovejoy for some serious banter about laydeez. A programme needs to know what it’s trying to achieve before it goes on to do so.
In Soccer Saturday’s case, it invented a whole new thing and can’t really be judged against anything else, only against its own past. Similarly, Match of the Day is the original football programme and __with such a wealth of history behind it that, graphics aside, it’s not really tried to reinvent itself as fancy or modern, and there is a blessing in that. It sticks to its format and delivers consistently. Old friends need valuing. Do we really want something challenging and original at 10.30pm on a Saturday night when your liver is busily metabolizing three bottles of wine? No. In other words, there’s a time for boiled potatoes and a time for Armenian sea bass with cauliflower couscous.
But ultimately, a programme has to just appeal to the viewer or listener on a gut level. You need to feel that it’s not too dumb for you, nor too aloof. You need to find hosts and guests entertaining, and if you can dance to the theme tune, so much the better.
Even the best programmes can get stuck in a predictable rut, and yet predictability of a show is one of the things that we tune in for. If we liked it last week, we want to like it this week and if it’s totally different, that mitigates against that. So things need to be consistent, but not stale. That’s a hard balance to achieve.
Quality of guests and presenters clearly matters a lot. There are shows that are let down badly by pundits who lack good quality articulation, and thus are poor communicators. However, they are fewer than ever before. Shows with rotating casts of contributors can be better or worse depending on who is involved any particular week. Some commented that 5live’s Monday Night Club was often their favourite, but only when certain pundits were present or absent. That’s the tricky thing – how do you keep consistent quality week on week when those involved are always different? Conversely the Champions League Goals Show on BT has the same people on every time and is a joy because of that. There’s no one way to get the job done, I guess.
In terms of content, I’ve felt for a long time that obvious and dumb has become a lot less tolerated than it once was, say, ten or more years ago, when so much football media was boring, conservative, narrow and made by men for men. This is surely in part because of criticism from leftfield voices such as ourselves and many others who felt like football was too often sold to us via the lowest common denominator, and assumed its audience had sh*t for brains and couldn’t cope with anything other than a stream of cliches delivered by grunting members of the working class.
I often felt that producers of football programmes must have hated their audience to treat us to such low-grade fare. I vividly recall in 2005 writing a column asking why, given football’s pre-eminence in Britain, there were no intelligent football magazine shows on a weekly basis. Those days seem a long way away now because slowly but surely those of us who, back in the day, communed around programmes such as Football Italia, Baker and Kelly’s phone-in, Standing Room Only, When Saturday Comes – and even Football365 – began to exert a cultural pressure which eventually changed the default setting.
And that brings us to podcasts. Whatever your niche tastes are, you can now find a podcast dedicated to it, often made by people of a similar bent. Increasingly, this is where the more original work lies and from where it is unearthed by the mainstream media.
So Who Do You Love?
Before we get to the vote, my favourite shows, in no particular order, are: The European Football Show; Champions League Goal Show; The Football League Show w/ Kelly Cates; National League Show w/ Natalie Quirk; 5live Monday Night Club; 5live Friday Night Social; Soccer Saturday; Football on Five. And I never miss Sunday Supplement, because it feels like watching an alien lifeform which thinks it’s fitting in with the humans.
The Results
A broad point that emerged was that it feels as though Sky, once so all-conquering, has fallen away from the public’s embrace. Once the home for interesting programmes such as the Footballer’s Football Show, only Soccer Saturday garnered significant support and even that seems to be flagging a little (“like watching monkeys in a zoo”, someone messaged to say)
Monday Night Football was admired too, but that’s pretty much where it ends. This isn’t to say they’re not broadcasting interesting, innovative or quality programmes, but if they are, they’re not in the forefront of people’s minds. I watch their Football League show on a Saturday and it’s really enjoyable. But even their Spanish coverage, long a cornerstone of their non-British football, was critiqued by some as being a watery version of the old show Mark Bolton presented, which just had more bite to it. Compare this to BT Sport and the gulf is huge. It’s not perfect – nothing is – but their rainbow makes Sky look quite monochrome at times.
Someone quite high up the football telly greasy pole got in touch to say this:
“There’s a feeling in the business that Sky often feels old-fashioned. Friday Night Football is disastrous – looks and feels like its local TV in 1982. Everything that is wrong: paunchy old bloke in suit, with tie off, next to beautiful (and as it happens, though she’s not used for this, very knowledgeable) woman. Expect a major reworking across the network in the coming year or two. Expect less middle-aged men in suits, more women and brighter, younger men.”
Hmm. Interesting. If true, there’s much to disagree with there.
There were a lot of podcasts which got plenty of votes but just missed out on the top five, such as Athletico Mince (wonderful), Football Ramble, The Game, and Graham Hunter’s Podcast (essential). All much loved by listeners. Perhaps most remarkable was the fact that Match of the Day got just two votes and only when I prodded fans out of their slumber. Perhaps it’s just there, delivering a solid 7/10 every week and thus is taken for granted. Or maybe it’s just not cool to admit to liking it, even though everyone watches it. Goals on Sunday didn’t even make it onto the radar. Not just no votes, but not even a passing mention. Perhaps another sign of Sky’s decline?
5. MOTD 2
Chappers is always good. Challenges people, but with good humour.
4. Monday Night Club – 5live
When they get the studio balance right the MNC is essential listening. Two journos, one player
3. Champions League Goal Show – BT Sport
Very good. Pundits can actually name players from teams. Always enjoy that.
2. European Football Show – BT Sport
Like Soccer Saturday, but with intelligent conversation, and you can actually see the action!
1.The Football Weekly – Guardian Unlimited
Informed, erudite, entertaining guests and wonderfully presented.
Been a great listen for years now.
It’s informative and recognises football is supposed to be for enjoyment.
Nice mix of UK & Euro journalists. Get a feel for the wider Euro leagues. Some (!) humour. More considered opinions.
Clearly, the 7,233 who follow me on Twitter share similar tastes. The fact that the top three are all presented by James Richardson and the two TV shows feature the same pundits with the addition of Howard Webb for the goals show, suggests a clear taste for intelligence and humour. And while this is all far from scientific, and I know this sort of football programme isn’t mainstream, nonetheless, the mainstream is always influenced by what is popular on the margins. I hope this means that the trend towards people who know stuff, and away from those who don’t, will continue.
John Nicholson