24 hours a day coverage! (Sky Sports News)

Member Name: dtait09

Product:	Sky Sports News
Date:	06/08/09 (96 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: First with all the big stories

Disadvantages: Often filled with same stories

Sky sports news has recently celebrated its ten year anniversary. This review won't be focusing too much on the past; though having had sky sports news at my disposal for the last ten years I feel I am in a good place to give an opinion on its service but feel best speaking of the now.

The actual concept of Sky sports news as a 24 hour service is something that fits in with my lifestyle. I love football and there is nothing better to do than after a hard days work than flick the channel on and see the days events reviewed and catch up with any transfer gossip you have missed.

The general format for those unaware is that Sky sports news is fronted by two presenters who give you a run down of the sports news, topical at that time. The programme may be interrupted by exclusive interviews or breaking news, which generally comes up in yellow across the middle of the screen.

As well as the two presenters there is information all around the screen featuring things such as team news for sports matches (bottom of screen), current tables and standings (right hand side).

On days, or nights, of full fixtures of football (premier league and champions league) the news channel reverts to soccer specials (show for Sky sports one but shown on SSN also) where Jeff Stelling, who is easily the best presenter on TV (period), is joined by an array of ex footballers who give updates of the days games. Here there is plenty of banter as well as informative material.

Recently Sky have pushed this success further by having a sports equivalent where in the football off season you have top sportsmen from respective sports analysing cricket, rugby matches etc taking place during the day.

In general, Sky Sports News changes its image every couple of years with the most recent being an influx of blue making it distinctive and professional looking. Obviously the main aspect of the service is what it stands for - sports news! The sky sports news day is split into segments which are: -

Afternoon Report
Evening Update
Good Morning Sports Fans
Through the Night
Sky Sports News at Ten

Each has the same format and the names just symbolise a change in presenters as well as time in the day.

This is my review of what I find good and bad about the Sky Sports News service: -

**GOOD

For me, the strength of the show lies on the ability to be innovative; better than anyone else. The way setanta sports is set up is a poor imitation of sky. Sky Sports News is the market leader. Part of this success is the excellent set of presenters, and the way they all work really well together, especially when breaking news stories.

It would have been easy to give this review five stars just for Georgie Thompson (all hot blooded males would understand this point) but aside from her stunning looks which make you forget about football for a few seconds she is superb at her job and even when she is interviewing famous sporting people live it is obvious she isn't just reading off an autocue and she genuinely knows what she is talking about. This was a criticism I had of the show in its early days especially Kirsty Gallagher, who now is a successful tv presenter in her own right but used to constantly make mistakes and didn't really feel like she was comfortable with the whole situation.

As I have stated above I feel its innovative style makes it easily streets ahead of the competition. They are always there with the top stories, first to get interviews and once your familiar with reporters like Nick Collins you realise that even when watching Football Focus on Beeb One you hear him getting the questions in before Garth Crookes.

I think the best example of this innovation is the recent coverage of the transfer deadline day. As a huge football fan I stayed up to see if my team were on the verge of signing anyone. SSN had every single angle covered; they had reporters in London, North East, South Coast, everywhere. They had journalists in the studio who were texting contacts as close as football chairmen, and getting responses. This enabled SSN to have tabs on everything that was going on. The presenters take e-mails and texts as the programme goes along demonstrating its flexibility and abilities to stay on top of opinions throughout its live format.

The deadline day coverage was unchallenged. SSN had the first shots of Dimitar Berbatov shaking Alex Fergusons hand well before the announcement of the signing. This is what you come to expect with Sky Sports News.

It was the only place to watch the transfer deadline day unfold. It was refreshing to watch the presenters get as excited as the fans watching the show; their enthusiasm rubbing off on all viewers.

**BAD

I guess its to be expected but in the main their isn't enough content sometimes for Sky to comment on and you could easily watch 6 hours of the same footage and news stories. Even the change in presenters will bring the same, or similar, presentation of the same news.

An extension of this criticism is that sometimes Sky goes over the top with breaking news. I remember a good few years ago there was an anticipation of some signing or other and then there it was......"breaking news.........Tim Sherwood has retired from football". Although a good player in his day his career had been on the decline due to a succession of injuries and it was no big surprise at this news which better would have been an extra story on the programme, not exactly breaking news. "Keegan Resigns" is a much better example of how they should use their breaking news.

The music tends to get on your nerves a bit but its no major problem but probably my biggest gripe is the comments of what's coming up after the break and then it being completely different. I remember going to see my team play in the Carling Cup last year and was looking forward to seeing them on tv; more precisely on sky sports news. Tuning in just before the adverts they said carling cup highlights next - I watched them go through another five sets of adverts, each time saying carling cup highlights next and they never came. In that sense it can get quite annoying and in the end I searched youtube and found what I was looking for.

**OVERALL

Despite my strong criticisms of those few features I actually really enjoy Sky sports news. It is always finding out what you want to know and any more detail can be found on their website skysports.com, which is pretty impressive if a little more difficult to navigate around than the bbc equivalent.

Overall, they definitely lead the way in their coverage and setanta and bbc are playing catch up. You can trust sky sports news to get to the things you want to know first and its 24 hour service means presenters will be on hand to talk you through the big stories. Although four stars is my rating I think its more of a 4.5!

This is an updated version of my own review on ciao as dtait07

Summary: Innovative station, ahead of its rivals!