The Archive
Articles from When Saturday Comes. All 27 years of WSC are in the process of being added. This may take a while.
Much has been written about the effects of the Sky revolution on football but, continuing our series of retrospective features, David Harrison looks at that particular relationship the other way round
What has football done for television? On the surface it has helped build a juggernaut of a business, through the introduction of subscription TV. We pay an annual subscription to receive BBC services, but Sky introduced the concept of discretionary take-up and delivered a service around ten million households can’t do without – at an average annual cost now exceeding £500. Of those, maybe two-thirds take Sky Sports.
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Saturday, May 21st, 2011 - The Archive
The saturation coverage given to football now was unimaginable in the 1980s. Roger Titford looks at how the change happened
TV coverage of English football was in a state of flux 25 years ago. The 1980s was the decade of change between two quite distinct orthodoxies of how we watched most of our televised football. Before 1980 we had the certainties of the highlights era and after 1990 the choices offered by live broadcasts.
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Saturday, May 21st, 2011 - The Archive
Cameron Carter traces the social history of Britain through 25 years of friendly faces presenting football programmes on TV
In 1986 presenters and pundits sat stiffly, in wife-selected jackets, behind desks, because the desk is the key western symbol of wisdom. In 2011 we have lounging gigglers like Alan Hansen and Mark Lawrenson who do not even wear neckties, or the man-child Jamie Redknapp who is allowed to wear expensive fashion-clothes and constantly interrupt his elders in a career-long attempt to prove his right to be heard. The desk has gone.
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Saturday, May 21st, 2011 - The Archive
Ian Plenderleith gets the feeling all the best goals have already been scored and all the best songs have already been written
When you hit middle age, it’s almost impossible not to fall into the trap of yearning for the days when things were different. Not necessarily better, just different. When nearly every house had just one telephone and one TV. When you played football in the same field every day with the other kids in the village using cowpats for goalposts (really). When a new album by the Jam was not just a new album by the Jam, but a significant event in your life that you looked forward to for weeks in advance. When a live football match on television was something very special that happened no more than a handful of times per year.
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Saturday, May 21st, 2011 - The Archive
It’s been a funny season for the A-League with financial chaos tempered by a record-breaking climax. Robert Forsaith explains
“What a fantastic game, what a fantastic spectacle for the A-League. The game has been crying out for something positive this year.” That was the verdict on the final match of the season from Graham Arnold, the coach whose side Central Coast had just been beaten in a penalty shootout.
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Saturday, May 21st, 2011 - The Archive