The End of Setanta Sports: Live Blog

[17.26] MediaGuardian report that Setanta Sports News, Setanta 1 and Setanta 2 are due to close down around 6pm this evening. Join us now, as we commentate live on exciting events as they happen. Or, more likely, don't. Meaning we end up deleting this post, and it goes the way of "New BBC Ident: Live Blog", "BBC Engineering Relay Station Tests 2007: Live Blog" and "Totally Saturday Series Launch: Live Blog".

[17.30] It's genuinely quite sad that the presenters on-air at Setanta Sports News may well not know they'll be out of a job in about 30 minutes. The channel aren't even reporting on their own closure, despite it being a live breaking news story. They're literally "on location" for this big breaking story, yet the SSN ticker bar isn't even referring to it. Mind you, neither are Sky Sports News, it seems.

 

[17.35] We feel like ghouls. We’re reporting on the downfall of a television channel, yet the people actually on it are ploughing on with Horatio Herbert Kitchener-grade stiff upper lippedness:

[17.44] Flicking through, all three channels due to close this evening are broadcasting programmes which end at 6pm. Hopefully there’ll be a fitting retrospective for what was – despite what braying crowds of England fans might have said – a commendable attempt at taking on the status quo.

[17.46] As the anchors keep on presenting the sports news, the office workers in the background are actually packing their bags.and walking away. There might be a temptation to make cheap gags at their expense here (“tee-hee, someone’s going round nicking all the mousemats!”, that sort of thing), but it’s a group of people actually losing their jobs, broadcast live on air.

[17.48] The closure of the channel is finally being mentioned, with a rundown of the events covered. Including the aside that “all sports were covered equally, no matter who the rights holder”. Nice touch, given that Sky Sports News don’t like to mention events that they don’t have the rights to.

[17.50] Maybe it’s just the short amount of notice they’ve had to get a retrospective together, but the ‘highlights’ package for the channel – a selection box of reporters in snow talking about deadline day, a few interviews with disinterested sportsmen, a clip of Rafa Benitez and his dossier, and clips from sporting events, often with the telltale score overlays from BBC Sport, but we can’t help but feel this cements the channel’s position as “poor relation to Sky Sports News”. Mind you, that’s more ITN’s fault (who were behind the channel) than Setanta’s.

[17.55] The musical bed for the montage is some nondescript top 20 ‘chart’ ‘smash’. Now, we know they’d had a bit longer to prepare for their demise, but as least ITV Digital closed with Pixies’ Monkey Gone To Heaven.

[17.58] It’s all over. And to be honest, it’s a shame.

[18.00] Anyone been watching Sky Sports News or Setanta 1 (or 2) over the last ten minutes? Sky Sports News seem to be leading with something or other about Chelsea at the moment (y’know, for a change), but we’d hope they could at least have acknowledged the passing of their sports-news-based adversaries as they slid back into their monopolistic position. Meanwhile, we’d guess Setanta 1 (and 2) had cut to the closing Setanta Sports News tribute from their last few minutes on air, as opposed to crashing into the caption above.

[18.20] For anyone wondering what happens next for the other channels available to Setanta subbers, here’s a quick rundown of which channels are on air, and which aren’t:

ESPN America (Sky channel 417) : ON AIR
Setanta News (418) : Closed
Setanta Sports 1 (423) : Closed
Setanta Sports 2 (424) : Closed
Setanta Golf (429) : Closed
Setanta Ireland (430): ON AIR
Racing UK (430) : ON AIR
Liverpool FC TV (434) : ON AIR
Arsenal TV (435) : ON AIR
Celtic TV (436) : EPG says “European night”, but blank screen.
Rangers TV (438): EPG says “The Wee Match”, but blank screen.

How long they’ll last, we’re not sure. None of the channels still on air are actually owned by Setanta, so presumably will stay ticking along whilst seeking a new subscription model, presumably via Sky. When Celtic and Rangers TV will return is anyone’s guess.

[18.45] So, with Setanta closed for less than an hour, resulting in 200 people suddenly becoming unemployed, how are people on Twitter showing their sympathy?

“So goodbye then Setanta Sports News - off air at 6pm. We salute their professionalism and their spirit in the face of adversity.”

“Heart goes out to 200 people who no longer have a job at Setanta.”

“Just watched Setanta Sports go off air A bad day for TV & fans A good day for the bully boy managers at Sky TV “

“wats guna happen with ufc in the uk now? setanta you bastards, 2 weeks before 100!”

”SETANTA SPORTS GONE!!!! THAT WAS QUICK, SAD THAT SO MANY PEOPLE OUT OF WORK BCOZ OF IT.....”

“As the lights sadly go out at Setanta, so starts the uploads of Setanta freelancer's showreels: http://bit.ly/50s6T”

“Haha in a bit Setanta Sports worst fucking TV channel ever”

“setanta is now off air I wannabe bloody refund”

“Glad to see Setanta has gone tits up. Horrible company.”

”Just watching the closing moments of Setanta Sports News. More jobs lost. So sad. Journalism's taking a real kicking at the moment.”

Twitter, there. TV Newsroom already have Setanta’s farewell retrospective online. So, here’s a link to it: http://tvnewsroom.co.uk/blog/setanta-goes-into-administration/ As Simon Sweepingthenation mentions in the comments for this post, it was clearly a compilation cobbled together for in-house and trade purposes, what with all the captions being in the present tense. A shame there wasn’t really the chance to put together a more fitting tribute to the brand, but kind of fitting in with their all too quick demise.

Still, that’s it. Setanta – so long, and thanks for all the fish (sport).

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Exciting Newstopia On BBC Four Update

Back in October, we started a campaign to get Shaun Micallef’s wonderful news parody Newstopia onto UK screens, with the most likely homes for it being BBC Four, More4 or Paramount. Flicking through our EPG today, what do we find making up one half of a BBC Four colonial comedy double bill (alongside Flight of the Conchords)? Could it possibly be? Dare we dream?

Doooh. So near, yet so far. Still, it’s a start. And if it went down really well in the ratings, maybe it could lead to Newstopia maybe reaching our screens. Hopefully. Even though the Powers That Be would deem the topical jokes therein too dated to broadcast now, they’d be overruled by the BBC Trust. And it’d be part of a Comedy Shows We Should Have Picked Up Years Ago strand, along with Mr Show. Look, just leave us along with our wishes, okay?

As for Chaser’s War…, we can only assume these’ll be compilations from past series, and not the brand new series which has come in for a Rossbrandsachs-sized shitstorm from the Australian media after their “Make a realistic wish” sketch “mocked dying kids” (i.e. copied an idea from an old Mr Show sketch, only without the wit, panache and talent). Here’s the sketch in question:

Not very good, is it? Despite that, from what we’ve seen of The Chasers, they are capable of some proper Saturday Night Armistice-style comedy*, and the BBC Four shows will certainly be worth a look. Hopefully most of the material making the BBC Four shows will be along the lines of this.

(*Though to be more accurate, CWOE is more along the lines of “Fantasy Football League given a broader remit, with a dash of Beadles About” than Saturday Night Armistice, but it doesn’t sound as snappy.)

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Music Has The Right To Contact Eileen Bilton… Now!

Brilliant YouTube thing of the day: a fan-made video for Boards Of Canda’s “Roygbiv”, comprising wholly of clips from 1980s UK television commercials.

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Humpty Dumpty is Going to Kill You in Your Sleep

Here’s something you don’t get nowadays; misguided television commercials that have the intention of appealing to children, but which end up being inexplicably terrifying. You may have to roll with us on some of these, but we’ve had lo-fidelity masterpiece “Dying Happy” by Baby Bird on in the background while watching these, and it does admittedly add an air of understated menace to even the jolliest puppet potato.

SMITHS CRISPS

 

SUBTEXT: Remember kids, potatoes are actually alive. Alive, and seem to have a fervent wish to be chopped up into really thin slices and then boiled in fat. Why, we’re not sure – possibly due to some kind of deep depression that is presumably likely to happen amongst root vegetables stuck in soil for the majority of their lifetimes, or maybe it’s a sex thing. Who knows? All we know for sure is, they want it to happen in the factories of Smith Crisps.

CRESTA

 

SUBTEXT: So, maudlin, frenzied, maudlin. Cresta – enjoyed by bipolar bears.

KINDER SURPRISE

 

SUBTEXT: Humpty Dumpty is really fucking scary. Do you know what he’s doing behind that wall? Sharpening his axe. And do you know why? Because he wants to see if little girls and boys also contain rubbish little plastic toys if he chops them open. Anyway, sleep tight!

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Turkish Delight on a Moonlit Night

For all the annoying chatter along the lines of “ooh, isn’t Letterman brilliant! Why isn’t there a show like that over here, eh? My favourite bit is when he laughs at one of ‘his’ jokes that he’s just seen on a cue card for the first time, and then the band leader pretends to lead an impromptu version of a vaguely relevant musical number. Why it isn’t on a proper channel, I. Just. Don’t. Know”, we prefer Craig Ferguson. who follows Letterman with The Late Late Show in the CBS nightly schedule. Why? Because he’ll open a show like this:

Much better.

[Update] Simon, from the internet’s Sweeping The Nation writes:

“It's certainly stiff competition in the 'British TV Face From The Nineties Visually Represents TMBG' stakes to:”

 

Excellent stuff. Now, if we can just dig out footage of Ray Cokes doing the robot in time to ‘Rhythm Section Want Ad’ we may well have a minor internet meme on our hands.

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Angry, and Possibly Litigious

Now, it’s not a conscious decision that we’ve somehow become one of those blogs that just links to YouTube videos done by other, talented people, but we feel compelled to share this. We like dance music. We like Stephen Colbert. Ergo: we like this.

 

In other news, we’re trying to get at least one update “out there” every day from now on, so you can probably expect quite feeble updates like this making up the numbers.

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Heavily Stylised Gs and Silent Laments

We haven’t checked in with Applemask’s spiffing retrospectives on ITV regional continuity for a while, so what better time to stroll briskly with him through the cobbled streets of Granadaland’s past. Hey, it’s not all drab yellow-on-blue slides displayed to a soundtrack of nothing more than a faintly crackling UHF signal and the lament in the back of your mind that the people in the village down the road who get Central instead are represented by a much cooler ident. Just us?

PART ONE: “the idea of national television in Britain was still only water in a stranger’s tear”.

PART TWO: “Look at me, look at me, LOOK AT ME!”

 

PART THREE: “A flickering light show for weeping onanists.”

 

Just as soon as we invent time travel, we’re going straight back to 1983 in order to shake some Bernstein lapel. We’ll keep on shaking that Berstein lapel until we’re allowed to take control of the corporate identity of the channel, at which point the realisation that Photoshop doesn’t exist yet will kick in, we’ll panic, and the ITV franchise for the North-West of England and North Wales will duly be represented by something we hurriedly put together on a BBC Micro in MODE 2.

Hey, that’s exactly what happened to Children’s BBC in 1985:

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The Mighty PWEI versus Gay Byrne

If there’s something we love seeing, it’s when mainstream television plays host to completely unsuitable guests. For example, in the early 1990s Bill Hicks was once a guest on Pebble Mill at One. Bill Hicks! Sadly, there isn’t a clip of that on YouTube, but there is this. Promoting their album Dos Dedos Mes Amigos, Pop Will Eat Itself made an appearance on sedate Irish chat show The Late Late Show.  Carnage ensued:

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More News Going Wrong

That last update has been linked to on Metafilter, resulting in a minor flurry of hits to the blog. As a direct result, because we’re needy enough to pander to any reasonably large crowd glancing in our general direction, here’s a minor collection of other news-related titsuppery from YouTube. Some of these are mentioned in the comments of the aforelinked Metafilter page, credits included where due (because we can’t be bothered registering on there to thank the poster directly). We’d sooner all the comments had just been about how great we are, but we assume everyone is just taking that bit as read.

Firstly, legendary CBS Evening News anchor Bob Schieffer in 1977, having a bad start to his bulletin (from Metafilter user evilcolonel):

“Good evening!”

The first of several CNN blooper reels, pretty much the stateside equivalent of our very own Christmas Tapes (also from evilcolonel):

“Oh.. shit.”

More, here, and here and here.

A shorter clip of CNN’s Nancy Grace and Clark Goldband doing a pre-planning ‘bit’, where they try to extract the maximum amount of jollity from… erm… a story about rape. That’s rape. Bloody hell.

From ‘New York Good Day’, here’s a very special ELDERLY ANCHOR VERSUS ELDERLY ANCHOR BITCH FIGHT. He could almost be the American Peter O’Hanrahanrahan.

“I was your boss, once!”

The world’s most unfortunately placed aston:

But, saving the best ‘til last, here’s a non news clip. Instead it’s a few highlights of Eurovision 1977, with a hugely entertaining talkback track from the gallery included. Starring a director so angry he makes his counterpart from yesterday’s BBC News clip sound like Sergeant Wilson from Dad’s Army. We know there’s an annoying graphic popping up throughout this video, but you don’t really need the pictures.

It’s possible this is an elaborate hoax, but we prefer to think it’s the real deal, mainly because the thought of things like this going on behind the scenes add to the magic of television (as posted on Metafilter by malevolent).

“Sound! Sound! Have you cut the sound? Put the sound… there’s fuck all sound in here[… ]This bloody organisation!”

The thing we now want our of combined Christmas and birthday present: a full, unedited copy of the above non-broadcast recording to be uploaded to UKNova.

[update] We have investigated. The Eurovision 1977 clip is real, the director in question being the well-regarded Stewart Morris. A clip from the BBC Christmas Tape for 1979 (Good King Memorex) lightly parodied his Euroantics from 1977. Hurrah!

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Philip Hayton Version? That’s a Good Name For A Band.

Thanks to a post by Steve Williams on the spanky new TVCream Forum, we’ve got a new hobby. Watching YouTube videos from Newsbunny, where old editions of the BBC News are accompanied the talkback track from the gallery. Yeah! It might not sound as exciting as, say, train collecting or stamp spotting, but that’s until you see this one.

Dating from December 1986, the clip sees Philip Hayton present the BBC One O’Clock News for the first time. Entertainingly, we’re able to see just what a good job he actually does, as everything pretty much goes to cack up in the gallery. The chaos is commentated on by the director, who becomes increasingly agitated as the bulletin goes on. Meanwhile, Hayton is coolness personified, dealing with the problems with aplomb, even when a report falls off air, and he’s asked to ad-lib. That’s ad-lib the news.

Highlights from the gallery include:

(1.20) “There’s no page eleven! Have you got page eleven?”

(1.50) “There’s no VT. Hope to bring you pictures later.”

(2.20) “I haven’t got any stories Mike!”

(2.38) “What interview!?”

(3.05) “I haven’t got a thirty-six yet!”

(3.35) “Oh, shhhh….!”

(3.49) “I haven’t got any scripts, Mike! How am I supposed to run a show?”

(4.47) “I haven’t got any pages at all!”

(6.25) “Oh, sod it!”

(6.41) “We haven’t got the City!”

(7.08) “Just ad-lib, we haven’t got the TX.”

It really does show how hard it is (or at least, was) to put together a live news broadcast, and how difficult a job newsreader’s job actually is.

“TX! OTHER TRACK!”

 

[update 17:37 June 9th]

Still, it could have been worse:

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