91Èȱ¬

Could you tell me why this isn't also being shown in HD considering that Sky will also be broadcasting this game but with the option of HD.

Can we expect Arlo White and Greg Brady again on 5Live sports xtra? They were excellent last year.

Is there any chance of the 91Èȱ¬ increasing their NFL output in the next few years? Your coverage is far superior to what FIVE produce.

Surely to show one of the NFL games that has a 9pm Sunday kick off (our time) on 91Èȱ¬ 3 would be possible. I know that SKY hold the rights but surely as long as they still got first choice of game the 91Èȱ¬ could show something?

I've long since argued that NFL is a much bigger interest sport in this country than it is given credit for. The number of people, like me, who have bought a Yahoo Online season ticket this season to watch one game per weekend must show that the interest is there. I'm certain that it would get 91Èȱ¬3 a bigger audience than more reruns of Two Pints of Larger and a Packet of Crisps!!

I know that there is a large cross section that don't want to watch sport, but the NFL season is so short (September until February) that surely it would not cause too many protests to show 3-4 hours once a week for 20-25 weeks???

My doctor became a Chargers fan, like me, solely because SAN DIEGO is an anagram of DIAGNOSE. Nowt as queer as.

so could i watch this on the iplayer live, much like being able to watch match of the day, football focus, or the olympics?

Will Tim Love be involved in any form? His blog on 606 is brilliant

Roger,

There may be only just over 10% of the population that can GET 91Èȱ¬ 2 and not 91Èȱ¬ 3, but what about the, I would imagine, far more sizeable percentage which HAVE 91Èȱ¬ 2 and not 91Èȱ¬ 3? As it stands I will be forced to watch the final hour of the game on my PC. It appears to be something of a half-hearted commitment to the NFL if you are not showing the whole game on the most widely available channel.

on the online streaming, if someone has a HD screen will it be possible to view the Match in HD or are the 91Èȱ¬ just not using the HD camera format?

I want to know the same thing as Reggie, will Tim Love be involved at all? That column is really funny.

Jerry Rice is a great guest to be getting on.

Will Mike Carlson be involvedn in the coverage at all, I've not heard his name mentioned?

Glad to see that the 91Èȱ¬ are showing this, but I'm going to the game, and as a means of taping it to watch when I get back home, I'm taping the Sky coverage, as it's on the same channel throughout. Still, Jerry Rice is a better guest than who Sky have.

Yet again, 91Èȱ¬ Sport fails to cater for Viewers.
I feel its completeley bonkers that the 91Èȱ¬ are not using the HD Channel (commitments include repeats?), switching coverage to 2 channels...you know its unpopular but you still think viewers want it.
No wonder many of us will watch the game on Sky, they do it 100% better and know what us viewers want (dont play the 'they've had it longer then us' card)
I fear for the F1 next season, we dont want this.
Also will Jake Humprey be presenting it?
If he is, good as he knows his stuff.
But I hope he isnt doing the F1 as rumoured.

Marvelous another 'experiment' where coverage of a minority sport (which lest we forget includes all sports except 'football, rugby, tennis, snooker and golf') is sacrificed in an attempt to flog digital services.

If the rights are worth paying for they should be worth showing on a mainstream channel.

Channel switching is all well and good if you live in the UK but if you are one of many ex-pat viewers in foreign lands it's end of story if the switch is outside the 91Èȱ¬1 and 2 environment.
Just another example of how we loyal but geographically challenged viewers are penalised - 91Èȱ¬ i-Player being the main one. I know we do not pay UK TV licenses but we do pay our cable providers and I am sure that they do not recieve 91Èȱ¬ for free so we do in fact pay like everyone else.

Just a quick note, so 91Èȱ¬ do not bid on Cricket, or even England Away Qualifiers but american Football..... Fantastic!

Now I know not everyone likes football, or cricket but I bet theres far less license payers out there who like NFL!

Will you also be showing the rugby world cup from australia, horse racing from chepstow,rugby union from cardiff and moto GP from valenica Live?..

Great. Are we to look forward to other US and unusual sports? Personally, I'd like to see the NBA, MLB and perhaps some 'extreme sports'.
I will be watching this NFL game this weekend and I'm not even a huge fan of US football.

Please show the NBA too.....Please!

Yeah great. So the 91Èȱ¬ can afford to show a live American Football match, but not any English football matches...

Sorry but you need to get your priorities right.

To be fair Steveo, they've got the non-Premier League rights from next year.

So no live Rugby League World Cup 2008 matches on 91Èȱ¬ TV or Test Cricket yet you can afford to show live American Football....

Thanks for this post Roger. I am pleased that this game will be shown live.

While I can see the point that many here raise, that the 91Èȱ¬ is not showing British national football or cricket teams at all at the moment but showing American Football, I do think that the sport has appeal over here, and it would be good to get back to the days of the early Sunday evening American Football game, as it used to be on Channel Four all those years ago. 91Èȱ¬ Three would be a good place for it, for the reasons you state above.

I think that one of the reasons the posts here have spilled over into other sports is that until the last couple of days there have been no posts on the sports blog for almost a month, so it's the first chance to post any thoughts.

Sort of echoing some of the previous posts, in terms of cricket, is there any news on the announcement that you were hoping to make soon? I saw a couple of stories regarding TMS retaining rights to summer Tests, but I, and seemingly others too, were hoping for TV coverage news. Is there any chance of highlights via the red button at all? Even though the result was not what was hoped for, the 10 pm Ashes highlights vis the red button two years ago was great.

Thanks.

'all most viewers have to do is press a button once'

Most viewers is the main word there Mr Mosey, why cant 91Èȱ¬2 just shift the programme in the 7pm slot to another day?
Also my Mosey, most people dont have Digital TV in any shape or form.
Also saying 'press a button once' sounds like you are calling the viewers of the coverage stupid.
Hardly surprising from the 91Èȱ¬, no wonder the 91Èȱ¬ are not committed to any sport.
Keep it all on 91Èȱ¬2, no need to shift it to 91Èȱ¬3 at all!

Being one of that 12% who doesnt have digital TV if the whole game had been on a digital channel I wouldnt have had a problem, i'd have just accepted that I'd have to wait for the highlights later that night.

However to show the first 2 thirds of the game on bbc 2 and then switch to bbc 3 for the finish seems an idiotic decision at best.

Looking at the 91Èȱ¬2 schedule for the rest of the evening of the 3 shows being shown between 7pm and 10pm, 2 of them are repeats so I would have thought that one of the repeats could have been pulled from the schedule to make way for the extra hour of NFL.

Out of interest can I ask when was it decided that the 91Èȱ¬ would show the game live? If it was a recent decision then I could understand more there being a problem with scheduling but if it had been planned a long way in advance then i could not see why there would be any problem with having the whole game on 91Èȱ¬ 2

It makes a refreshing change to see the NFL on at a decent hour. Also its nice to see something other than golf or snooker on 91Èȱ¬2, well done. Now to the serious business, Any chance of showing a few other games (other than the superbowl) and are there any plans to bring the Stanley cup playoffs to the Beeb?

I understand the comments on here talking about the coverage, and I admit that I would have prefered not to have to change channel during the game, but in the end it was a minor thing to do to enjoy the sport that I love.

I am glad that the 91Èȱ¬ had live coverage of this game and it was a great game too! I really hope that more coverage of this sport could be shown on the 91Èȱ¬.

What are the chances of there being more games on the 91Èȱ¬ in the future? It would be great if the 91Èȱ¬ could show more live coverage or at least highlights of games, other than just the Superbowl (which is a very good place to start!).

How sad that you handicap the potential of the sport i this country in yet anothr thinnly veiled exercise to try and force people to switch to your poorly perfroming 91Èȱ¬3.

There is no reason whatsoever not to let the game play in full on 91Èȱ¬2, it's not like this was a surprise event thrown at you, you have had months to plan the schedules.

Your argument about 88% of people having digital TV is a blatent lie. 88% of people are capable of getting digital TV but most TV sets are still running on Analogue, whethr they are those who havent switched yet or just second TVs in a household. A real figure is more likely to be 40%

Hackerjack - if you think 40% is the better figure, what's your source for this???

Sounds like a great idea to get a game shown regularly throughout the season starting at 9pm on 91Èȱ¬ 3.

In my opinion the 91Èȱ¬ coverage of the NFL game played at Wembley was particularly outstanding and I applaud the 91Èȱ¬ for securing the legendary Rice. Arguable the 91Èȱ¬â€™s professionalism in sports commentary is unparalleled, however I am sorely disappointed that they switched channels during the NFL game. I was totally dismayed as my recorder hasn’t yet developed the AI to change its programming to the alternative channel. Next time start with the alternative least the replay viewers can enjoy the game to its entertaining full.

Those not familiar with the sport or event will have no concept or understanding of the significance of this historical event. I personally want to see more NFL so that I have that choice from the more traditional sports that I am exposed to on TV, radio and the newspapers on a daily basis. Hopefully, and I am absolutely certain that it will happen, the sport will flourish in the UK, this is but the start.

American football may well be a minority sport in the UK but it always will be as long as the media support is not there. Its time for a change, or rather for progression. In this day and age there is a multitude of choice and opportunities for people to broaden their outlooks its time for the 91Èȱ¬ look forward to the future and cater for the minority sport followers rather than continually playing safe. I say give us choice, give us diversity.

This may not be the blog for this. But as these blogs seem to have dried up here we go. The 91Èȱ¬ now seem to have lost the rights to the Anglo welsh cup. After sky annouced a new 5 year deal with the RFU.
More sport lost by the 91Èȱ¬. Soon it will not be worth while the 91Èȱ¬ having sports multi screen. (Because according to rumours the 91Èȱ¬ will drop even more racing to bring us formula one) Maybe you will drop Rugby in favour of American football. The 91Èȱ¬ did not even bid for the rights to the UEFA Cup. It is a disgrace that our national broadcaster does not show any regular live top class football. The money the 91Èȱ¬ found for Formula one, could have been put toward the FA Cup and England Internationals. So the 91Èȱ¬ will have no club rugby left to show once skys contract come into force.
What are the plans for 91Èȱ¬ sport. The 91Èȱ¬ used to show top class sports and a variety of sports week in week out. Now we have less and less sports. If the 91Èȱ¬ is including best tries highlights and looped repeats of inside sport in the amount of hours of sport it shows, then that is plying the figures. I have always defended the 91Èȱ¬, always believed that it is the best broadcaster of sport in the world. But it seems that as of late it continually shoots itself in the foot. The loss of anymore rights no matter what sport will be devistating for 91Èȱ¬ sport whether it be racing or rugby.
So what are we to have on satudays from now on Murder she wrote and Diagnosis Murder.

Thank-you Roger a very informative reply. And whilst I accept that club rugby does pull in less viewers than international rugby. I personally believe that focusing on just one off major events like the world cup aqnd olympics and national landmark events like the six nations is a short sighted way of looking at sports rights.
ITV did when they scrapped world of sports. But they seem to have realised that was a mistake. Now the ITV/ITV4 schedules are full of sport. Both ITV and Channel four with horse racing tell the whole story through the year. Not just concentrate on the odd few events.
The 91Èȱ¬ when they put there heart and sole into sports coverage is the best.
I just hope we will see a return to some sort of club rugby maybe with the competition that is Rugbys answer to the Champions League and the Heiniken Cup and horse reacing as the 91Èȱ¬ is there to serve the viewers and not just concentrate on ratings as it would seem you are doing with your satement above "The Six Nations gets massively bigger audiences than any club rugby, which is why we've prioritised that and secured the rights up to and including 2013" Whilst I accept that ratings may prove to the 91Èȱ¬ is doing its job. We are always told that the 91Èȱ¬ is not there to chase ratings.
I believe that I have have some interesting ideas and would love to discuss some of my ideas with you and various sporting bodies. I would love to meet you and discuss my ideas with you and say the racing or rugby authorities.