Ar sh!t

I think they're putting the Saturday afternoon show on SKy Sports News this season.

It was last season, too.

Rupes wants more subscribers, and sees this as a way of getting them.

BBC does a similar thing on the red button, on match days. No MASSIVE news though, but Garth Crooks

Precisely - makes commercial sense to me. They are primarily a business and not a free fantasy football resource after all.......

It is a running commercial for their paid for channels, so it is arguable that they will suffer by making it paid for. I say this as they only really report sports that they have on their premium channels, rather than Sports in general. (Would they really bother with Speedway, if they did not broadcast it?)

I would imagine Sky sports news is watched more via freeview than on subscription channels, so not sure how advertisers would react to it, but they should claim a reduction in advertising rates.
This appears to be the latest in Sky's backlash against other channels over being forced to concede ground in the price they charge Virgin and BT for SS1&2.
It did not go unnoticed that they pushed the Emirates cup tournament on to SS3 last weekend, so BT could not cover it.
I wonder if some live EPL games might slip to SS3 in the coming season, would not put anything past Sky in their current malicious mode.

This was never more evident than during the World Cup, SSN managed to go the whole month without noticing the World Cup was even on. It's not a sports news channel it's just, as blahblah says, a running commercial for Sky Sports.
It'll still be a big miss but I can't see anyone who couldn't quite make up their minds whether or not they can justify an extra £20 a month for the sports package being swayed by the inclusion of SSN.

Just watch it on justintv or myp2p, simples

Of course they did the WC, but you get my point.

I thought it quite funny that BBC/ITV did not let them show action on SSN. Or were they showing replays and wanted people to watch those?

I'm loath to defend a Murdoch channel but that's not really true. They had 5 or 6 half hour World Cup reports each day and they'd flown people out to SA and set up a studio rather than do it from the UK. In the circumstances that was pretty admirable considering they couldn't show a kick of the action.

They also give results and updates etc for F1 and others - obviously not in as much depth as sports they have picture rights for but you start to look dumb waffling on about something on a channel like that with just still images behind you. They do that for cycling as they sponsor the Sky team (Wiggins etc) despite having no rights to many events (e.g. Tour de France).

You don't get the in depth coverage but you do get the 'news headlines'.

As i said get a stream but it does beg the question why on earth doesnt auntie or itv do a sports news channel.

Largely about having the rights to pictures. Pretty dull telly to waffle for 24 hours without being able to show much.

ITV can't be relied upon to show 90 minutes of live football, never mind a 24 hour sports news channel. Midway through a golf update they will probably cut to a tampon advert.

There's certainly room for a sports news channel on free TV, even if it's not 24 hour. I suppose the BBC will be winners out of this even without doing that as their red button scores service will get a lot more viewers from people who can no longer see the "real thing" on Sky.

It is as others have said free advertising for the subscription channels, perhaps they feel subscriptions have now just about reached saturation point but with the digital switchover surely the free-to-air digital audience is growing all the time so there will be more of a target market who could have seen this channel for the first time over the next couple of years?

Lol, spot on

Just had someone on plugging some wrestling thing for ages. Sport?

Yeah, I switched channels when he came on. Hope this isn't the sort of route the channel is going to go down... this is scripted "entertainment" not sport.

It is their PpV

I know it's their PPV, but it belongs on SSN about as much as the star of one of their PPV movies would do.

That is my point about it being more an advertising channel, than a News Channel, so they should leave it free.

Well I won't argue about it because I do believe they covered the World Cup if a fellow fisoer tells me they did.
But whenever we were trying to find any info about games we had missed during the day or whatever, someone in the pub would always say try Sky Sports News and we would try it and there was never any info coming across the red ticker tape or on the info bar at the side, I (we) got to assume they weren't covering it.
Presumably it was coincidece that we never tried it during one of their half hour shows, but then we probably stopped even trying them after a couple of blanks.

In recent years it has been on SS News AND SS 1

Now BT have SS1 they are taking Jeff Stelling off this and making it
on Sky Sports News ONLY

Also if you are a Sky customer
Sky Sports News will only be available to Sky Sports subscribers (I think)

Yes, and this is what we are discussing, removing it from Freeview

I know but I am saying is that I think
if you have a sat dish and do not also have Sky Sports
you wont get it either

Sorry, misunderstood, you mean that it will only be available with SS packages.

OK, as a non sports Sky subscriber I can confirm that SSN is not available without Sky Sports on the satellite platform. When will I lose it on Freeview?

23 August

Dont worry Bram you still got Babestation.

2 Premier league weekends to hook you in and (re-)establish the addiction - then you have to pay