One Day To Go, And One Day Gone

Schedule A:

Kicking this off a day earlier than we'd anticipated. Because of this very interesting news from MeejaGrauniad. Here's the main bit of it, in case only registered users can view articles from MG:

The BBC has teamed up with Wallace & Gromit producer Aardman to create an animated title sequence for its Match of the Day Euro 2008 football coverage.

Aardman's title sequence, which will run around Match of the Day's Euro 2008 coverage, features animated versions of footballers including Cristiano Ronaldo, Michael Ballack, William Gallas and Fernando Torres.

The animation also includes former Holland player and present manager Marco van Basten and Italian former Rangers midfielder Gennaro Gattuso.

It opens in an Austrian opera house and goes on to feature the eight cities that will host matches across Switzerland and Austria from the start of the tournament on Saturday, June 7, as backdrops to the animated players.

Unkle's version of Austrian-born composer Mozart's symphony number 41 accompanies the title sequence.

Splendid stuff. Slightly disappointingly, the animation isn't of the stop-motion variety, but this is a promising start nonetheless. We're kind of expecting ITV Sport to go with the "footage of various landmarks in Switzerland and Austria, with CGI whooshing shapes in the flag colours of competing nations darting around everywhere" approach, but we'll keep an open mind until we see it. We might be lucky, and they've gone with a rolling serial that takes place throughout the tournament, with Gaby, Andy, Ally and Jim Rosenthal recreating key scenes from Hannibal Brooks.

Or, given they can't even be arsed with showing the final, it'll be a piece of card with "Uero 20008" faintly scrawled onto it with a dry felt-tip.

[BBC Sport: +1 Point.]

The BrokenTV World Cup Of Euro 2008 Coverage League Table (6th June 2008)

• 1. BBC Sport: 1 pt
• 2. ITV Sport: 0 pts

Schedule B: Big Brother Ratings Update

5,400,000 viewers for the launch show. Will Switzerland vs Czech Republic beat that? Time, or more likely Digital Spy's ratings roundup, will tell. We're going to get at least one graph out of this year's Big Brother.