The latest batch of live TV games was announced yesterday for mid-December to mid-January, and they include our matches against Aston Villa, Nottingham Forest and Derby County.
The trip to Villa Park is now on Sunday December 23rd, with a 1.30 kick-off, while the home game with Derby has been brought forward to Friday 11th. January, starting at 7.45. But the away match at Forest remains a 3pm kick-off at 3pm on New Year’s day.
Presumably because the only ‘protected period’ (when games can't be televised live, so as not to affect the gates at other clubs) is 3-5 on Saturdays. So matches can be broadcast at this time on bank holidays, even though a full programme of matches will be taking place throughout the country that day, in leagues at all levels of the game.
Live TV fixtures are announced in monthly chunks, and about five weeks before that period will start, but that means that there isn’t much notice of changes to matches at the start of the period concerned. This time it’s the change to the Villa fixture that has caused particular anger, and many fans from both clubs have taken to Twitter to complain about the inconvenience of the game being put back to the following day.
Villa fan Liz Britton said "Do none of you realise that people make plans in advance? Especially for the weekend before Christmas?! So inconsiderate to fans who are actually attending the match.” Such as Leeds fan Colin Edwards: "Had already planned my entire Saturday on this game and then pick my eldest up for Christmas on the Sunday night on a six hour round trip....”
Leeds fans put out by constant fixture changes have been hitting back in the only way they can, chanting "Sky TV is ******* ****” during the match to try to ruin the broadcast. Sky commentators have always ignored this (while being happy to mention chants about anything else) but for the Wigan game they started blocking out anything critical of their wonderful station.
Supposedly this was on the grounds of preventing their sensitive listeners from hearing any bad language. The one made me laugh when "Dom Matteo scored a…” got as far as the first syllable of the rude word before the crowd noise went quiet on the TV. I had a vision of someone unfamiliar with that chant having a sudden panic attack and diving across the studio to hit the mute button!
If we were to change the chant to something like "Sky TV is not very good”, would they still mute it then? I bet they still would. In the days when I used to watch their phone-in, any callers who were remotely critical of their broadcasting or fixture changes were always swiftly cut off, with a comment like "what a lunatic, how did he get on here”?
Of course, the fans who make anti-Sky chants at matches are by definition the match-going fans who are put out by fixture changes. I did once get an e-mail from a Leeds fan in Germany who is pleased that so many games are broadcast when he can’t get to the games in person. And for away games in particular, it’s hard for Leeds fans to get tickets when some allocations are ridiculously small for a visiting club of our size.
But while Sky’s broadcasts are very useful for a lot of our fans, there should be more of a balance between the interest of match-going fans and those who watch at home or in the pub. Instead of trying to block the protests of angry fans, Sky should have a lot more consideration. We all know that they want to show the biggest clubs to get the viewing figures, so why didn’t they announce a kick-off time for Villa v. Leeds at the start of the season?