IT’S JUST LIKE George Orwell wrote all those years ago: Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two makes a flat back four.
Because Gary Lineker tweeted a critical opinion of a piece of government migration policy earlier this week, Match of the Day was last night abbreviated to 20 minutes and broadcast without commentary, in-studio presentation, post-match interviews, or puns as pundits, commentators and crew withdrew their work in solidarity with Lineker. Even the theme tune went on strike.
The Match of the Day title screen on Saturday night, notably not featuring the words Match, of, the, or Day.
The BBC continuity announcer apologised for not showing the “normal” Match of the Day, and instead they showed a short, contextless package of the day’s games: they even committed the mortal MOTD sin by showing Wout Faes’ second yellow card against Chelsea but not his first. Inauspicious bookings are the first casualty of war.
The man best placed to express stupefaction at all of this is madness was, ironically, Jonathan Pearce.
Everton and Brentford shared the dubious honour of being the show’s earliest-ever final game, and the Beeb padded out the rest of the time by showing Sully, in which Tom Hanks plays a pilot who makes an emergency landing on the Hudson river. The plane didn’t even have a #GLAZERSOUT banner flapping at the back of it.
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This bizarre, No Context Match of the Day was at least much better than the ‘Unofficial Match of the Day’ shown at 10pm on GB News, put together for a budget roughly equivalent to a bag of cans. Mark Dolan read headlines from each games haltingly from an autocue, at one point telling us that Everton/Brentford was settled by ‘Dwight Powell’, a Premier League footballer noted for not existing.
His co-host frantically ate crisps in a predictable nod to Lineker, breathlessly shouting that they were promising that this broadcast would be coming at you with no virtue-signalling. A mildly interested Eamon Holmes popped up on Zoom to back Lineker’s right to air his opinions and say some nice things about Erik ten Hag.
The Beeb did at least manage to get their pared-back, Sky-plus edition of Match of the Day to air: an achievement because the sport department have parked their tactics trucks on the lawns.
Football Focus and Final Score were pulled, and radio coverage was diminished. There is doubt now about Sunday’s WSL coverage and Match of the Day 2. What next? Will Garth Crooks’ Team of the Week be the final front of the resistance?
The BBC top brass need to solve the issues sharpish as, in an inversion of the moment at Italia 90 and 65% of all Twitter jokes, they’ve looked at Gary Lineker and shat themselves.
The Match of the Day broadcast was an embarrassment, and the BBC are now in the truly ludicrous position of losing the moral high ground in an argument about impartiality to sets of football fans. It’s like losing to Enoch Burke at hide-and-seek.
Lineker’s supposed breach of the BBC’s impartiality rules is dubious given he is a freelance sports presenter, and his suspension has drawn attention to all manner of inconsistencies with the treatment other BBC freelancers, including Alan Sugar, Karen Brady and other people who do not appear on The Apprentice.
The impression the entire farrago creates is that Lineker was suspended not for expressing a political opinion but instead for being critical of the government. This, plainly, is not the stuff of an in-form democracy.
Lineker attending Saturday afternoon's clash between Leicester and Chelsea. PA
PA
Lineker’s unstinting commitment to Centrist Dadism and willingness to defend human dignity has made him a regular avatar for the culture wars of the right-wing press, a battleground onto which the current Tory government has only been too happy to stomp. The fact the many of the midweek headlines focused on Lineker’s criticism of the government’s Illegal Migration Bill seemed another win for the government, given that too many news outlets weren’t asking the question posed by the UN’s refugee agency: what, exactly, is illegal here? The migration or the migration bill?
But the BBC’s escalation of the situation, the admirable solidarity of Lineker’s colleagues and the enormous public outcry is probably bad news for the government. It’s one thing to escape midweek scrutiny, it’s another thing to be messing with voters’ Saturday nights. The Tory party have thrived by trying to take politics out of people’s lives: Boris Johnson’s 2019 slogan ‘Get Brexit Done’ was less a bright vision for the future than a promise that he’d make all of this wretched News go away.
Rishi Sunak yesterday evening issued a statement calling for a resolution between the Beeb and Lineker, hinting at unease, while the BBC Director-General Tim Davie apologised to BBC viewers in an interview with the BBC, saying he hoped Lineker would soon return to the BBC.
Despite its seemingly endless capacity to traduce and undermine itself, football has generally stood firm in the face of the English culture wars: Marcus Rashford was backed in sending Boris Johnson spinning into u-turns, while the England squad at the European Championships defied government ministers in taking a knee before games.
Thus it was again this weekend.
Somehow a Match of the Day without words became an emblem of free speech and an alarming reminder that this is a British age in which it has to be defended.
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TV Wrap: A farcical Match of the Day broadcast reflects terribly on the BBC
IT’S JUST LIKE George Orwell wrote all those years ago: Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two makes a flat back four.
Because Gary Lineker tweeted a critical opinion of a piece of government migration policy earlier this week, Match of the Day was last night abbreviated to 20 minutes and broadcast without commentary, in-studio presentation, post-match interviews, or puns as pundits, commentators and crew withdrew their work in solidarity with Lineker. Even the theme tune went on strike.
The BBC continuity announcer apologised for not showing the “normal” Match of the Day, and instead they showed a short, contextless package of the day’s games: they even committed the mortal MOTD sin by showing Wout Faes’ second yellow card against Chelsea but not his first. Inauspicious bookings are the first casualty of war.
The man best placed to express stupefaction at all of this is madness was, ironically, Jonathan Pearce.
Everton and Brentford shared the dubious honour of being the show’s earliest-ever final game, and the Beeb padded out the rest of the time by showing Sully, in which Tom Hanks plays a pilot who makes an emergency landing on the Hudson river. The plane didn’t even have a #GLAZERSOUT banner flapping at the back of it.
This bizarre, No Context Match of the Day was at least much better than the ‘Unofficial Match of the Day’ shown at 10pm on GB News, put together for a budget roughly equivalent to a bag of cans. Mark Dolan read headlines from each games haltingly from an autocue, at one point telling us that Everton/Brentford was settled by ‘Dwight Powell’, a Premier League footballer noted for not existing.
His co-host frantically ate crisps in a predictable nod to Lineker, breathlessly shouting that they were promising that this broadcast would be coming at you with no virtue-signalling. A mildly interested Eamon Holmes popped up on Zoom to back Lineker’s right to air his opinions and say some nice things about Erik ten Hag.
The Beeb did at least manage to get their pared-back, Sky-plus edition of Match of the Day to air: an achievement because the sport department have parked their tactics trucks on the lawns.
Football Focus and Final Score were pulled, and radio coverage was diminished. There is doubt now about Sunday’s WSL coverage and Match of the Day 2. What next? Will Garth Crooks’ Team of the Week be the final front of the resistance?
The BBC top brass need to solve the issues sharpish as, in an inversion of the moment at Italia 90 and 65% of all Twitter jokes, they’ve looked at Gary Lineker and shat themselves.
The Match of the Day broadcast was an embarrassment, and the BBC are now in the truly ludicrous position of losing the moral high ground in an argument about impartiality to sets of football fans. It’s like losing to Enoch Burke at hide-and-seek.
Lineker’s supposed breach of the BBC’s impartiality rules is dubious given he is a freelance sports presenter, and his suspension has drawn attention to all manner of inconsistencies with the treatment other BBC freelancers, including Alan Sugar, Karen Brady and other people who do not appear on The Apprentice.
The impression the entire farrago creates is that Lineker was suspended not for expressing a political opinion but instead for being critical of the government. This, plainly, is not the stuff of an in-form democracy.
Lineker’s unstinting commitment to Centrist Dadism and willingness to defend human dignity has made him a regular avatar for the culture wars of the right-wing press, a battleground onto which the current Tory government has only been too happy to stomp. The fact the many of the midweek headlines focused on Lineker’s criticism of the government’s Illegal Migration Bill seemed another win for the government, given that too many news outlets weren’t asking the question posed by the UN’s refugee agency: what, exactly, is illegal here? The migration or the migration bill?
But the BBC’s escalation of the situation, the admirable solidarity of Lineker’s colleagues and the enormous public outcry is probably bad news for the government. It’s one thing to escape midweek scrutiny, it’s another thing to be messing with voters’ Saturday nights. The Tory party have thrived by trying to take politics out of people’s lives: Boris Johnson’s 2019 slogan ‘Get Brexit Done’ was less a bright vision for the future than a promise that he’d make all of this wretched News go away.
Rishi Sunak yesterday evening issued a statement calling for a resolution between the Beeb and Lineker, hinting at unease, while the BBC Director-General Tim Davie apologised to BBC viewers in an interview with the BBC, saying he hoped Lineker would soon return to the BBC.
Despite its seemingly endless capacity to traduce and undermine itself, football has generally stood firm in the face of the English culture wars: Marcus Rashford was backed in sending Boris Johnson spinning into u-turns, while the England squad at the European Championships defied government ministers in taking a knee before games.
Thus it was again this weekend.
Somehow a Match of the Day without words became an emblem of free speech and an alarming reminder that this is a British age in which it has to be defended.
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Match of the Day On the box