There is something powerfully analogue about the BBC trumpeting its new Match of the Day line-up, as if we were back in the 1960s and David Coleman were replacing Kenneth Wolstenholme. Yes folks, that’s a long time ago, 1967 in fact, and far too distant for young consumers to even know or care about the power those great voices held over us on a programme that was then as fresh as paint.
Kelly Cates, Gabby Logan and Mark Chapman are all fine broadcasters. The latter I know and like. Their cheery embrace of the future in their quoted responses is entirely understandable but you do wonder if they are on the end of a hospital pass here, attached to a programme that should have gone with Gary Lineker, who was at least connected to the century in which it was launched.
As a boomer I was brought up with MOTD, that Saturday night staple one of the few ways to access broadcast football in those far off days when you would have to climb off the sofa and hit a button the size of a whisky measure to change channels. Plenty of those hitting the BBC One button had drained the measure first.
But the idea that any adolescent these days is waiting by the big screen on a Saturday night to listen to colourless anecdotes from Uncles Alan Shearer or Micah Richards about this “football club” or that is weary nostalgia.
The irony is the BBC is proud of its connectivity across myriad digital platforms and boasts of the content it pumps out in short, sharp clips. MOTD reached 130 million views last season via the digital mechanism. This recognises the way we consume highlights, in small digestible chunks that miss out the guff from unimaginative pundits who add little to the experience.
Live sport is the only long-form programming to which most are prepared to commit. I would watch and listen happily to Cates, Logan and Chapman in that context knowing I would be entertained and my interests served. I might mute Shearer and Richards but accept there are some out there who feel differently.
The point is outcomes are still before us in live broadcasts. We don’t know the score. We aren’t consuming information already known. Football highlights are already available by 5pm on a Saturday afternoon, every goal scored in the Premier League accessible online. By 10pm the world has moved on.
Yes there is a residual audience among boomers who might still be awake at that point, 33 million across the Premier League and FA Cup last season, but you can’t imagine that growing unless the programme somehow reaches out to broader demographic.
To compete with other platforms that have already streamed the goals MOTD has fallen into a paradox, squeezing all the available matches into such short windows they no longer nourish as they did when you would be served 20-minute highlights. That was just enough time to justify the analysis.
Match of the Day’s new line-up
Presenters
- Kelly Cates
- Mark Chapman
- Gabby Logan
Analysts
- Alan Shearer
- Micah Richards
- Danny Murphy
- Martin Keown
- Shay Given
- Theo Walcott
- Joe Hart
- Steph Houghton
- Glenn Murray
- Fara Williams
- Ashley Williams
- Leon Osman
- Stephen Warnock
- Dion Dublin
So the match focus is too long for a goals element and too short for analysis. Live programming is far more detailed in this regard and offers the necessary depth. Lineker keeps MOTD alive by his broadcast charm and bromance with the pundits, which amounts to a series of killer assists from which they can hardly fail to score.
But even that feels personality heavy. When the show is carried by the presenters and not the stuff on the pitch it is probably time to try an alternative format. Which is the point in history that MOTD has reached, one that, it saddens me to say, has emphatically not been recognised by this announcement.
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