I’ve been spending far too many late nights watching the World Cup…
I’ve been spending far too many late nights watching the World Cup. After five days, I am still struggling to comprehend the BBC’s studio coverage.
ITV appears to have rented New York. Brooklyn studio, Manhattan glittering backdrop, the whole thing looking like football’s answer to a Scorsese opening shot, minus the Gershwin soundtrack. The BBC appears to have found on Fivrr a Second Life developer. The BBC’s backdrop for the coverage feels less like a celebration of football and more like a demonstration of what happens when every creative decision has to survive six meetings, a procurement review and a cost-control committee.
At the precise moment Gary Lineker is proving, via The Rest Is Football now on Netflix, that personality, chemistry and conversation are every bit as valuable as the broadcast rights themselves, Auntie has responded by placing the world’s biggest sporting event inside what looks like an airport budget hotel designed for people claiming expenses. Less said about the plastic plants the better. ITV says World Cup. The BBC says your password expires in three days.
The World Cup is spectacle. The BBC has a responsibility to respond. Yet it has somehow contrived to make both feel like being walked through the fire-evacuation procedure by a man who stopped believing in his own life somewhere around slide four of the presentation. An own goal of such heroic purity it should be removed, preserved in formaldehyde and donated to the nation.
