Football League Show - Running Time Stats

[Papa Lazarou]

I don't suppose anyone knows where I can watch the first 3 or 4 episodes, as it would make the analysis more meaningful?

 

[bobzam]

1m9secs was stretching it this week with the KLL attempted cross which they claimed was a shot. Only needed to show the goal, nothing else happened apart from floodlight failure.

 

[34064 Fighter Command]

People want to see Goals, punch ups and sendings off, or something mildly amusing like a streaker. It's more entertaining and gives the presenters something to talk about.

There's only so much a pundit can say about a wayward El-Abd pass going out for an opposition throw-in.......... (although in the 1970's this would be meat and drink to someone like Jimmy Hill or Brian Moore).

I watched something called 'Match Time' on ITV4 last week, showing the highlights from the '83 Highbury semi-final. It's worth pointing out that the other semi-final, between Manchester Utd and Arsenal, was only covered by a quick succesion of STILL photographs and Ron Atkinson as studio guest. Now this was a BBC covered game on Match of the Day (John Motson is commentating on the YouTube coverage), but it just shows how far we have progressed that we can now have footage from EVERY game shown only hours after the final whistle. Remember that EVERY OTHER league fixture that 1983 weekend had NO COVERAGE WHATSOEVER in order to get those two semi-finals televised, and even when football highlights were 'regionalised', it was very rare to see a team featured two weeks in succession.

The fact is that with around 36 league fixtures each weekend and only around 70 minutes broadcast time, a full round-up will only amount to about 90 - 120 seconds a game, whichever way you decide to slice the pie up.

 

[Papa Lazarou]

People want to see Goals, punch ups and sendings off, or something mildly amusing like a streaker. It's more entertaining and gives the presenters something to talk about.

There's only so much a pundit can say about a wayward El-Abd pass going out for an opposition throw-in.......... (although in the 1970's this would be meat and drink to someone like Jimmy Hill or Brian Moore).

I watched something called 'Match Time' on ITV4 last week, showing the highlights from the '83 Highbury semi-final. It's worth pointing out that the other semi-final, between Manchester Utd and Arsenal, was only covered by a quick succesion of STILL photographs and Ron Atkinson as studio guest. Now this was a BBC covered game on Match of the Day (John Motson is commentating on the YouTube coverage), but it just shows how far we have progressed that we can now have footage from EVERY game shown only hours after the final whistle. Remember that EVERY OTHER league fixture that 1983 weekend had NO COVERAGE WHATSOEVER in order to get those two semi-finals televised, and even when football highlights were 'regionalised', it was very rare to see a team featured two weeks in succession.

The fact is that with around 36 league fixtures each weekend and only around 70 minutes broadcast time, a full round-up will only amount to about 90 - 120 seconds a game, whichever way you decide to slice the pie up.

Accepting this, it's the rationale behind how the new larger pie is sliced that seems to be annoying some people.

One thing that amazes me is that the only footage that was filmed of the 1983 Cup victory away at Liverpool was on a cine camera, depsite there being no other games that day.

 

[34064 Fighter Command]

It's not particularly surprising because there was no such thing as a 'hand held' video cameras available to the general public in the early 1980's. The technology simply wasn't good enough back then to entice the professional either - it was only really available to the very rich 'hobbyist' or corporate customer.

You would have had to own something like this, and it would have cost you the price of a small hatchback. That's just the camera. the recorder would have been seperate. That would have cost you the price of ANOTHER small hatchback.........

And you'd have needed a tripod, because the camera would have weighed about the same as a baby and most video tapes would not have run for more than 60 minutes - running tapes at 'half speed' only came along mid '80's or so.

The reason a cine camera would have been used would have been :
a) It's reliable and won't break down.
b)The thing wouldn't have run out of battery power after 1 hour.
c) The camera (and film) would have been cheap (mass produced) and easy to process. Videotapes were NOT cheap, and nor were the cameras producing broadcast quality pictures. The optics for zoom and refresh rate (for slo-motion) simply weren't good enough (or didn't exist).

 

[Papa Lazarou]

This week's stats.... discuss.

 

[Papa Lazarou]

Bounced for the resident stattos.