J Standing
20th Mar 02
I recently saw a trailer for a tacky ITV game show featuring the
rambling Mark Nicholas. Imagine how delighted I was believing that
with him stuck on a desert island doing what he's best at (speaking
in unfeasibly long sentences without ever really making a valid
point) Channel 4 might have let Michael 'Slats' Slater take over
their Test highlights programme. It was only when I checked my TV
guide that I realised that the departure of the 'Hampshire-has-been'
has co-insided with the lack of overseas highlights. I suggest that
a little less money spent on buying in unimaginative American sitcoms,
may allow funds to be diverted to showing one of Britain's national
sports.
Channel 4 responds:
Channel 4 made a new 3-year commitment to cover England's home cricket
tests last year and we will be showing ball-by-ball coverage of
6 of the 7 tests against Sri Lanka and India this summer, plus highlights
of all the home tests and one day internationals. This is a bigger
financial commitment than ever before.
We showed highlights of all the tests and one days from India.
However, we were unable to schedule highlights of the tour in New
Zealand. With the slots available to us and the time difference
in New Zealand (12 hours), the next day's play would already have
begun by the time our highlights package could be shown (NB because
of the shortened Summer News, we are able to show highlights of
the home tests at 7.30pm).
Instead we have scheduled a new 52-week-a-year ICC World Cricket
Week on Saturday mornings, which started in February, which includes
highlights of England's New Zealand tour, plus a round-up of all
the other international action we have never been able to show before.
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