Ray Hankin's shorts wroteReggie Perrin wroteI think the BBC should shun all top level sports now (other than reporting on it and it's embarrassing that they routinely lose stuff anyway) and concentrate on sports they can build a fan base in and bring back Grandstand on BBC4 all day Saturday.
Hockey is a good one, it's a great game, it's national, it would be cheap. Also stuff like motorcross, rallycross, athletics, crosscountry, swimming, diving, Formula E, Nascar, Baseball, Ice Hockey, Championship RL, revive the Soccer Six stuff, sidecar racing, truck racing, BDO darts, skateboarding, gymnastics, shooting, archery. Sports lovers would get into it. Bring Superstars back too. I'd watch it all just for the Grandstand and Superstars themes.
The channels seem to fight over the same things and people are getting pissed off with the corporate nature of it all, there is a market for pure honest sport. The BBC should change tack.
That's a great shout Reg
Although SKY is popular due to the major sports it still gets a relatively low viewing figure - most people have access to BBC4 and it'd be a great fillip to some of the 'lesser' sports
If they did this it would restore my faith in them as a broadcaster to a certain degree. It could be paid for by sacking off the world cup and trimming down the Olympics coverage. They've lost The Open and will lose Wimbledon soon so they have to have a strategy.
Another thing is that they have such great iconic show of TV history such as TOTP and The Old Grey Whistle Test and they don't use them, they try and reinvent the wheel. In doing that all you do is get muddled formats. The format isn't the problem its their choice of "presenter" over "enthusiast" and to some regard play safe. It's what killed the NME, we want writers with things to say about interesting bands, not a rag full of record company press releases.
Why do Mark Kermode, Tom Brooks and/or Jason Solomons have a version of Film 2018? Why don't Stuart Maconie and Mark Radcliffe have TOGWT with half an hour of archive and half an hour of new bands? A whole year would cost less than the indulgent coverage of Glastonbury costs.
Finally why isn't iPlayer more of a database of all shows that they have ever made that can be accessed with a valid TV License and charged for abroad? There is loads of old stuff I'd love to watch. If you search for Play for Today which ran from 1970 to 1984 you can't find it and some fucker has also blocked the ones that were put on You Tube.