News without moving the goalposts! (Sky Sports News)

Member Name: T4imbo3107

Product:	Sky Sports News
Date:	29/09/08 (273 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: 24 hour sports news channel!!

Disadvantages: Can repeat itself a lot!

I refuse point blank to pay for anything with Sky; personally I don't see the point of having a TV Licence and then having to fork out so much money for other things such as movie channels and sport. So having Freeview for me is a benefit without crossing the line of forking out more money for something I might not actually watch or don't need. Launched on 1st October 1998, Sky Sports News was a revolution to broadcasting. This was the first time that a dedicated 24 hour resource had been launched specifically to tell people what was going on in the sporting world.

This in turn gave a serious kick up the backside to rivals such as BBC and ITV in what they broadcast and how they broadcast it to which the bidding wars began for the sports and sporting events that we came to know being broadcast on terrestrial TV.

I usually refer to Sky Sports News, on Channel 83, when I get home after a match. The coverage that is given is good and I do tend to agree with the panel of guests or the facts the reporters give.... unless it was a different opinion of the game that I've just seen at Stamford Bridge. The thing I like about this channel is that it is up to date and also has breaking news given immediately when something happens. The chances are that the news is going to refer to Football anyway, personally I don't have a problem with that as that is exactly the reason as to why I watch it for anyway, but for the people who don't like the national game then I can see their point of view completely and understand why they are saying it. The main reason for this is that Sky effectively owns the rights to all Premiership matches and from a business aspect they use this as a platform to advertise their other channels such as the multitude of Sky Movies and so on. In fairness other sports are covered, the highlights with the recent Golf and Cricket matches did get a fair amount of airtime as well on the channel which evened the balance up slightly. Other sports that are covered are Baseball, American Football and Rugby as well as coverage of the international leagues from countries like Italy and Spain.

The level of information on the screen at any one time is good and informative, as you have a ticker running along the bottom of the screen giving details on various areas that have been broken down into the actual sports they represent, the rest of the screen is split into two parts, firstly the channel itself with the studio based presenters such as Saturday Soccer presenter and legend Jeff Stelling, presenting the various programmes and on the right the statistics boards that give information on top League scorers or positions of Teams in the various Leagues worldwide. Reading all the information will take about 12 to 15 minutes to get through which is when you start to notice that items are beginning to be repeated again.

At the time of the matches taking place, usually across the weekend or certain weekday evenings, Sky Sports News is a pretty busy affair as throughout the evening from kick off you have a panel of four people who are all watching the various Sky Sports coverage of a number of matches, the panel usually consist of ex-players such as Paul Merson, Tony Cottee and Matt Le Tissier. They watch the match and comment back to the main presenter on what is happening. The funniest thing is when a goal is scored as the person who is watching that particular team almost certainly would have played for one of the teams they are there to comment upon. So the reactions can be quite mixed to say the least, especially if a goal is scored by the opposition, but all very entertaining none the less. It also means that you get all the information in one place as well without having to flick channels or reverting to Teletext to get a full picture as the updated version of the famous tele-printer is shown across the bottom of the screen with all updated scores as they occur.

Also all coverage of the matches that aren't covered by the studio panel have an on-site reporter to relay back any information directly as soon as it happens. Strangely though for a News Channel you don't get to see much of the game at all, in most cases you get a verbal description from the reporter as to what the event actually was, but you don't usually see the actual goal or incident till after the game has finished. I find this a little strange and suspect that this is either a rights issues by the FA or Sky just making sure that if you want to see this live then you have to buy a package from them. I think the latter applies in this instance!

Throughout the quiet periods of the day and even throughout the night you tend to get a lot of repetition of the same news over and over again. This is just to cover time and really is the main problem with all News Channels, BBC 24 being the biggest culprit of this. Bottom line is that if it's a quiet news then what are you going to do to fill time?

Overall this is a professional operation and also a benchmark that has been copied over and over again in the past. For example ITV broadcast a 2 hour program on a Saturday afternoon starting at 3.00pm using the same format to cover the Championship and it fell flat on its face because it drew too many similarities with Sky Sports News, plus the fact that this did nothing to actually draw any viewers away from Sky and that meant that it was a genuine waste of time. Also I have seen that Setanta have used this as a model in which to launch their rival, Setanta Sports News Channel, as well. Now I saw this round a friend's house as the Setanta News Channel isn't available on Freeview and was quite shocked at how it has been copied, which in reality goes to show how right Sky actually got it in the first place with their plans and what they wanted to achieve.

The on-screen presenters all dress very smartly indeed which helps achieve the professional image that is being portrayed here, the men are all suited and booted whilst the women also appear smartly dressed in business type suits as well. I like this approach and think it means that people are focussed on what they are doing and make the whole thing quite appealing to me as a viewer. Also interesting to note that programs like Football Focus that are broadcast on a Saturday used to do this when it was part of Grandstand, but have more recently abandoned it for a more modern and casual look. It'll be interesting to see what Sky does in the future.

Bottom line is that we have come a long way from the days since Saint and Greavsie, Grandstand and Dickie Davis presenting World of Sport.

My only gripe is that they have yet to go to the standard widescreen format, and still insist that presentation is in the old size of 4:3 ratios instead of the better and far more superior 16:9 ration to most channels now broadcast in these days. This does annoy me a bit as the screen has two big black areas down each side. Like me if you haven't got Sky then this is a good alternative to keep up to date with the happenings, otherwise it's the BBC website to watch the live text facility!!

Summary: A good resource for information.