Wednesday

I get immensely annoyed by the attitude of the UK terrestrial channels in their coverage of major sports events. At the moment, both ITV and BBC share the Euro 2008 games. However, you'll never hear one channel mention that the other one shows the matches they can't. It's not as if they're offering competing coverage - all they can manage is a highlights show later in the day, and that, according to them, is all that exists of the game. It infuriates me that the channels can't see that we, as viewers, are interested in the sport first, before any channel loyalty (which I don't have anyway). It gets worse when the BBC news will, after reporting on the latest action in Formula 1, recommend you listen to the race on radio. Why would I do that when the ITV broadcast it live on television? I understand that the other channel will not shut down when there are events on they can't cover - they put on shows that they want us to watch, and value their ratings greedily - but it seems such narrow-mindedness, and every intentional silence still staggers me.