Bewildered and dumbstruck - that's how I felt when watching 'Match of the Day' on Saturday night. There I was, getting my regular fix of all the action from that day's Premier League matches when Gary Lineker announced it was time for the August 'Goal of the Month' competition.
Now at this point I should inform those of you visiting our site from overseas that the BBC's 'Match of the Day' is an institution in its own right. A weekly programme showing highlights and goals from England's top flight, it's been running for 43 years and since 1970 has held a 'Goal of the Month' competition.
What would typically happen is that a selection of the best goals would be shown, each one assigned a letter of the alphabet ('Goal A', 'Goal B', etc). Viewers would then be asked to write their top three in descending order on the back of a postcard and send it off to the BBC. If your postcard matched the opinion of an unnamed panel of Match of the Day experts and it was pulled out of the hat before anyone else's, you'd win a prize.
It's a harmless bit of fun, but one which has become part of the ritual of watching 'Match of the Day' over the last 37 years… until now. On Saturday night, Gary Lineker informed the British public that because of the BBC's current suspension on audience participation competitions, 'Goal of the Month' would this time take on a different form.
Though a selection of goals from August's matches would be shown, the public would not be able to send in their votes by text message (as is now the case). Instead, Alan Hansen and Alan Shearer would go off and decide which one was the best before announcing the winner in a week's time. No public involvement, no nothing.
How very strange. Yes I know it wasn't the public that actually decided which goal was the best according to the number of votes cast. The public were only voting in the first place in the vague hope they'd be selected as the winner of a pair of tickets to a Premier League game of their choice, but that's not the point. By allowing us, the public, to take part, it enabled us all to get involved and make our feelings known that one particular goal was the one which should go on to be considered 'Goal of the Season' the following May.
Apparently, 'Match of the Day's loyal band of viewers were no longer important. We would no longer have the chance to enter the monthly competition even though it was the BBC's fault for not regulating its audience participation contests correctly in the first place.
I feel somehow let down and cheated. Whatever next? Lottery numbers being drawn when no-one's bought a ticket?
Wednesday, September 05, 2007
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5 comments:
I think you've answered your own question - there's no element of voting at all, so why feel cheated? I doubt the bigwigs at the Beeb even analyse the entries in this way. They just draw someone with a matching list from the hat.
In an ideal (i.e. honest) world I think it should be a viewer vote. I've always thought the competition element was a bit odd - people are more likely to pick goals that they think the pundits will rate rather than what they actually think is the best goal themselves. They might as well be asking "what number is Alan Hansen thinking of this week"?
Hi StuMo... I only feel cheated because the public were always invited to get involved with the programme in some way, albeit slightly spuriously. By removing that element it almost felt to me as though the BBC were sticking two fingers up to the viewers and saying "Tough luck - we can do this without you".
I'm totally in agreement with you that they should decide the 'Goal of the Month' / Season' by making it entirely a viewer vote. It seems a much better idea to base the outcome on what most of the country thinks rather than the opinions of a couple of former players.
I found the whole "viewer" contest scandal very odd. Why not just use actual viewers rather your production assistant's cousin? Didn't producers consider that one whistle-blowing disgruntled ex-employee could bring the sham down?
BBC has always had this aura of ultra-professionalism (especially when you compare it to some of our networks *coughFOXNEWS*), so it came a huge shock that they would be involved in something like this.
Lol @ *coughFOXNEWS*...
Well to my mind, Chris 'B', the BBC is starting to lose some of its aura now, but why is hard to say. Perhaps they're trying to cut too many corners in giving the quality service it always used to - I'm not quite sure.
They still produce some remarkable TV and radio programmes but whereas before it would be hard to find fault with them, now it's less difficult...
Why the cough Fox News? Fox News (and all of Newscorp) is a paragon of journalistic integrity. You can tell this because they were the first to put the American flag in the corner of the screen, and the only one to still have it there all the time. Not like those Godless lie-berals (aka terrorists) at CNN or MSNBC.
After all, Fox News reports, and I decide. How much more professional than that can you get?
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