lost that loving feeling - Thursday Night Fever

As the Reds beat Crystal Palace in impressive, if slightly fingernail-shortening style on Saturday, there’s nothing to moan about (until tonight when we will no doubt be brought back down to Earth with a bang against Coventry) on the Forest front so I thought a general rant was in order instead.

My subject this week, following the launch of ITV’s The Premiership show, is TV and it’s effect on football. So far I have not seen the show, other than the odd glance at the pub after Saturday’s game, but by all reports ITV have entirely succeed in making a complete mess of it. However, this isn’t my main concern - to be perfectly honest I don’t follow the Premier League close enough to be bothered if the programme is any good or not. But the fact that so far I haven’t been able to even see it to make my own mind up leaves me slightly puzzled and extremely worried. After all, I regard myself as being a fairly average football fan. And the routine I follow is fairly typical of other, fairly average, football fans I know. However, at 7pm on a Saturday, most average football fans are either on their way home from an away game, or supping ale in the after-match pub, leaving them with no chance to watch the highlights show.

Of course, ITV will probably have done their research and expect to receive the same amount of viewers that Match of the Day won in its late night slot on the BBC, otherwise they wouldn’t have risked the change on the behalf of their advertisers. But if they are eliminating average football fans like myself who are now unable to watch Premiership highlights, then they must have found another audience to target.

This audience is the football fans who don’t go to games.

However, to me this amounts to little more than the alienation of the fans who actually keep the game going. Contrary to popular belief by many at the top of football, loyal fans who attend games are not a disposable commodity. If the trend of tailoring football towards the ever-powerful ‘armchair’ supporters continues, they could soon find that the football economy breaks down from lack of basic support.

Allow me to expand.

Forest are so far down for 6 live televised games on ITV after their take-over of Nationwide League rights from Sky in the summer. This shouldn’t be a bad thing. However, the total inconsideration shown towards real fans is quite shocking. For instance, Forest were due to play Bradford City on Saturday 22nd next month. When ITV digital moved the fixture to the proceeding Thursday for coverage on ITV Sport they failed to take into account that the Reds were also due to face Rotherham on the Wednesday of that week. Not content with moving one game, ITV have had to rearrange two dates of the footballing calendar, causing no-end of inconvenience for fans planning to travel to the City Ground for either game (like myself, as I will be starting term at Lincoln University on the same Monday we now play Rotherham) not to mention the strain it puts on the players who now face a run of 3 league games in 6 days; all for the benefit of those who prefer to watch their football on television.

For me, Saturday means football and football means Saturday. After all, When Thursday Comes doesn’t exactly have the same ring about it. I accept that it’s inevitable that some games will have to be played on other days due to fixture congestion. I also think that TV games shouldn’t be shown on Saturday as this could be equally damaging to the game. However, all most fans ask is that a little common sense is shown about the whole matter. Sky managed to build up a good relationship with fans by keeping things sensible and having a reasonable number of games on at reasonable times. But ITV are causing chaos within the fixture lists. So much so that from 23 home fixtures that my season ticket entitles me to, there are only 14 remaining Saturday games, and that is before further, inevitable, disruption due to international call-ups etc, and more games being elected for TV coverage after New Year.

While we will have to accept that Saturday football is disappearing from our diaries, it is unacceptable that ‘real’ fans should be made suffer the toil of long journeys and late nights, on top of the over-priced tickets, just to suit those that are happy to sit at home and pay their £10 a month subscription. Surely it is possible to arrange TV games at times to suit both audiences? After all, what difference does it make to armchair fans what time or day a game takes place on when the only effort they need make is reaching over to pick up their remote control at the right time?

However, I suspect that the disruption to football fixture lists is not the ‘unavoidable’ down-side that ITV’s publicity machine would have us believe. It strikes me that this is coming from the same book of tactics that is currently stopping Sky customers receiving the ITV Sport channel, despite the fact that ITV Digital (formerly ON Digital) customers have always been able to receive Sky’s channels. In effect, ITV are making it impossible for anyone to watch football unless they buy ITV Digital.

Their hope it seems, is that in the end football fans will find it too much effort and inconvenience to attend games that they will give up and buy into ITV Sport instead. However this won’t happen (especially while ITV continue to offer such a poor service). Instead, people will just lose interest in football, period. The game will lose its feet financially and ITV’s investment will collapse.

The basic error of judgement the TV companies seem to have made is assuming fans see football as entertainment. In a brutally commercial world where modern Boxing resembles American Wrestling more than the art-form it used to be (to such an extent that even ‘Prince’ Naseem will walk out because the sport has become ‘too showy’), football seems to have become as much an entertainment industry as cinema or the record industry. This image may suit the broadcasters down to a tee, but the fact is football isn’t this.

Football is a social activity. It’s a hive of emotion, both good and bad. And above all else, it’s a sport. To the average fans, who’s views I have been attempting to put forward throughout this piece, it is not the entertainment that matters when they attend a game - it’s the winning or losing (and the talking about it afterwards with others who share the same outlook on the game). When this realisation strikes the likes of ITV Sport then some sense might be restored to football.

But until then what can we do?

Well, the FA and Football League are quite happy to sit back and watch their royalties stack up, and pass the buck to someone else whenever an accusing finger points their way. The only hope is that fans will unite behind their ideals and stand up against outside influences in the hope that the message gets through. This is a time when football fans need to reclaim control of their game.