Thought for the day: If you were an alien that landed on earth and were forced to watch the Sky Sports News program “Through The Night,” would you know that the biggest sporting event in the world waa taking place, the one that happens only once every four years, the summer Olympic games?
The answer is an emphatic no.
I watched Through The Night on Friday night. Not one single mention of the opening ceremony of the games in its 60 minute broadcast. I also watched it on Saturday and didn’t see the games mentioned either.
This is another example of how immature and biased Sky Sports News is.
When Euro 2008 was happening, “Through The Night” often ran with Cristiano Ronaldo transfer gossip as the main story or cricket news and relegated the Euro 2008 headlines to usually the third or fourth story of the idea in its program.
Go back a couple of years to the bung scandal that BBC’s Panorama program uncovered and it took “Through The Night” a couple of days to cover the news and then they buried it deep within the program. But if some player got into a fight or there’s half a rumor of an agent sealing a transfer deal that no one cares about, you can almost guarantee it’ll be the lead story.
The rule that Sky Sports News seems to be running is that if they don’t own the rights to the event, then they’ll ignore that news. On the other hand, if they own the rights, you can be assured that they’ll cover that news ad nauseum and hype it so much that it’ll never live up to its expectations.
Here’s a parody of Sky Sports News done by That Mitchell And Webb Look, a BBC show. This is so true:
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Shankly's Army
October 2, 2010 at 12:54 pm
Why it sucks
Jeff Stelling
bret
October 17, 2009 at 10:18 pm
who cares about the olympics!!!!its bloody awful!!!
we love football in this country!!!!
Jim
July 19, 2009 at 1:22 pm
Another thing…. SSN only care about the so called Big 4 teams in the English Premier League, them being Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool….. Watching the channel you wonder whats going on in the rest of the premier league……. Fulham sign a player, they get a 2 minute snippet whereas Liverpool releasing their Second strip get at least 5 mins of coverage. And thats for a new kit! SSN are a joke to be honest, the only good thing about it is that it has gorgeous female presenters, mainly Millie Clode, Natalie Sawyer and Chloe Everton!!!!! Although I probs only like Chloe for her surname lol!!!!
boobie
August 11, 2008 at 2:16 pm
Then they use that theme music from “Requiem for a Dream”. Depressing much?
boobie
August 11, 2008 at 2:13 pm
I hate Sky’s graphics. So ugly and mundane looking.
David, UK
August 11, 2008 at 12:51 pm
Sky Sports News like Setanta Sports News are platforms to promote their company’s premium channels, they do not have the rights to the Olympics and cannot like a traditional News Channel show clips from other channels due to regulatory restrictions, they aren’t going to promote the opposition…e.g when Calzaghe is fighting on Setanta SKY are not going to build it up and vice versa with Hatton.
Sky Sports News is a pretty popular channel and is mainly there for football (soccer) news and highlights which at the end of the day is the number 1, 2 and 3 sport over here!
eplnfl
August 11, 2008 at 7:00 am
Panda:
ESPN’s coverage is`better this year. I implied that in my post. Also, since NBC restricts use of highlights it does become difficult to do a good wrap up show.
Panda
August 11, 2008 at 3:56 am
True, ESPN does not focus much Olympic coverage on the Olympics on Sportscenter but that is mostly because, people tune in for the highlights of regular sports. If you want Olympics, you go to NBC which is the official broadcaster.
ESPN is covering the Olympics from every angle, even if they don’t give it a whole segment on on SC. If you watch OTL and shows like that, they have stories about it. Their coverage on ESPN.com is massive and they have reporters in the field who report stories on demand online. If there is a big enough story to talk about, they will and they will do it on Sportscenter.
Sky Sports, on the other hand, has proven time and time again they don’t do that. I remember for the Euros they had a couple guys on site and they were spent trying to get interviews with Ronaldo and Scolari because one was leaving England and the other was coming to.
eplnfl
August 10, 2008 at 9:39 pm
SSN sucks. True enough. However, to it’s credit, ESPN is not much better. In prior years you hardly knew the Olympics were going on if you watched only ESPN. On the other hand when ESPN gets an event like Euro 2008, they promote the hell out of it. SSN also reflects the generalized lack of interest in the Olympic games in the English media since team GB is not a standout one. Why there isn’t more interest in the Olympic soccer matches is strange since as we all know London has the next games.
As to the US draw v. Holland. Given how it happened it is disappointing. Given what most experts said before the games the US team is doing great and is in a good position to both win the group and advance.
Why anyone would watch the Community Shield over the USA v. China BB game this morning is hard to understand. I enjoy soccer for the great players and great action and this morning that was on the hard court in China.
Raatzie
August 10, 2008 at 7:13 pm
Please don’t feed the troll.
jm
August 10, 2008 at 6:24 pm
Darlington,
Are we supposed to take as farce your juxtaposition of the label “arrogrant Americans” and the claim “you will never be good at football”?
Anonymous
August 10, 2008 at 5:29 pm
Sky doesn’t cover the Olympics or the Euro’s they promote the sports they show on Sky. They probably don’t have rights to show any from the Olympics.
SSReporters
August 10, 2008 at 4:27 pm
@ Darlington, I know, the Netherlands suck, it’s not like they were favorites to come out of the group and possibly win the tournament…..nothing like that at all.
SSN to me is better than SportsCenter, which shoves the Yankees down our throats and Brett Favre 24/7.
Sky Sports cannot show highlights of events that they do not have the rights to, so that’s the reason why that happened.
Darlington
August 10, 2008 at 3:50 pm
I am most relieved that the Dutch equalized against the arrogant Americans.
Here in the states they talk about no football except this olympic football. No Charity Shield coverage or discussion of Championship beginning. All of the American football sites are focusing on this tournament and declaring the USA has never had a better side. Well if the best USA side ever cannot beat the Dutch when they are off they can never be a footballing power.
You Yanks call it sucker for a reason.
You suck at footy!
Ryan
August 10, 2008 at 3:13 pm
Yeah I agree the American blogs are doing a nice job, it will bet tough for the soccer to get a lot of airtime on TV, as ESPN the major cable sports outlet can only show something crazy like 1 minute of olympic footage a night.
Kartik Krishnaiyer
August 10, 2008 at 2:58 pm
It is interesting to compare the coverage in different parts of the world of the Olympic Football Tournament.
In England no coverage at all.
In Latin America the coverage is massive, and their own club sides are hardly getting any ink
In Spain, the coverage is minimal but there
Australia is covering the event very closely. Surprisingly so. Looking at their website the initial coverage is similar to Germany 2006 but I am sure will tail off as the Socceroos are not playing as well in China as they did in Germany.
In Mexico I have seen articles blaming Hugo Sanchez for Mexico’s non qualification (He was fired right after the qualifying tournament ended) and boasts as to how well Sven’s side would be doing in China if he had been coaching the team during qualifying. I’ll save my commentary on those claims for another time!
Here stateside, blogs like mine and others have essentially taken a hiatus from covering our domestic leagues to cover the national team’s quest for Olympic glory.
I guess it all depends on where you live how you see this tournament.
Weston
August 10, 2008 at 1:10 pm
Its British media – of course their focus is on gossip and rumors.
boobie
August 10, 2008 at 12:48 pm
Then why do you people continue to watch Sky Sports News?
Michael
August 10, 2008 at 11:07 am
The other reason Sky Sports doesn’t care is because there’s no British representative competing. Same thing happened at Euro 2008.
Kartik Krishnaiyer
August 10, 2008 at 10:02 am
No shock there. They are parochial and narrow minded.
I’m gutted as the US just blew the entire tournament on a stupid (though somewhat) questionable late foul on Holden and a free kick. The Dutch were so out of the match mentally for us to blow it like that is unforgivable.