All the sports news I need! (Sky Sports News)

Member Name: i_am_joy

Product:	Sky Sports News
Date:	08/05/09 (70 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good presenters, keeps me up to date with breaking sporting news

Disadvantages: The rolling news means the same stories are repeated over and over again

While I don't really follow sports, I do like to keep up to date with the football tables and to a lesser degree I like to know what's happening in the world of rugby. This is down to having grown up with six older brothers, throughout my life I have been bored to tears with sport yet it's made me a little interested too.

This is where a channel like Sky Sports News comes in. Being a 24 hour sports news channel it means I can always tune in and catch the main headlines, it's a rolling news channel so the stories are often repeated throughout the day. This makes it a little boring if there's not much happening in the world of sport as you get the same stories over and over again, as has happened today when the various presenters have all taken turns in analysing the reaction of Didier Drogba and Michael Ballack during yesterdays big match.

The presenters are all non biased I think, but some of them seem to put their feelings across about various sportsmen and managers without saying a word. It makes me laugh sometimes when they are interviewing a particular expert about a particular player or game, sometimes the presenter will lead the guest so much that it soon becomes obvious which of the big teams they are rooting for! In the main though I find the presenters to be warm and fairly casual in their manner, much more so than many on the Setanta News team who look like they are trying far too hard to look professional.

I treat Sky Sports News quite badly, weeks will go by and I won't even think about this particular channel but usually I will check in once or twice a week. I don't know the names of individual shows on the schedule but there are always top name guests and commentators, I particularly like the match day show where a rather excitable old-enough-to-know-better man (Jeff I think his name is) leaps around and bellows at the top of his voice whenever there is a score in a Premiership game. He has good commentators who each watch a football match on the screen in front of them, they will cut in whenever there is a goal and often Jeff will skip to them so they can give their thoughts on the game they are watching so far. This is a good way of doing it I think as I can listen out for my team and don't need to wade through too much bumph before they are mentioned.

Of course the channel features other sports such as cricket and boxing, but I do find the channel is generally slanted towards football and rugby. Surprisingly while the Beijing Olympics was going on it wasn't mentioned as much as I would have imagined and the presenters tended to just sum up the medals and victories once in a while, although talking of athletics I have noticed that Duane Johnson is a common target of speculation amongst the presenters on Sky Sports News.

Overall I do like this channel and am glad I get it as part of my Sky package, for me it's perfect as I like to flick in and out of the channel just to see what's going on but I can also see why the more serious sports enthusiast would also watch the channel. However, I do believe that if I were to watch it for too long a stretch then I think I would get rather bored at hearing the same script and seeing the same video/pictures all day long.

Summary: An good television channel for anyone interested in sports - although mainly if you're a footie fan!