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The Guardian
44 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Sky Sports News' golden age at an end as rival platforms turn up the volume
A constant in pubs, gyms and hotel breakfast rooms, almost always with the sound down. Perhaps not since cinema's silent age have faces been so familiar without the general public knowing their voices. The vibe is more casual than in previous times, shirt sleeves rather than business suits, but the formula remains the same: a carousel of news, clips, quotes, quips, centred around highlights, all framed within a constant flow of results, fixtures and league tables. Sky Sports News hits 27 years of broadcasting in August, having been launched for the 1998-99 football season by BSkyB. As the domestic football season concluded, news came of changes within the Osterley-based newsroom. Seven members of the broadcast talent team would be leaving, including the long-serving Rob Wotton and the senior football reporter Melissa Reddy, within a process of voluntary redundancies. Sky sources – not those Sky sources – are keen to state the changes are not a cost-cutting exercise, instead a redress of SSN's place within a changing media environment. Ronan Kemp, the One Show presenter and Celebrity Goggleboxer, is understood to be in discussions to join Sky and despite Wotton's departure, Ref Watch will still be serving those who get their kicks from re-refereeing matches and VAR calls. Rolling news, which became common currency around the time of the initial Gulf war with Iraq is no longer the go-to information environment. Sky News, SSN's sister organisation, is going through similar changes, including the loss of the veteran anchor Kay Burley. The smartphone, where news alerts supplant even social media, takes the strain of keeping the world informed of Micky van de Ven's latest hamstring injury. Desperate to hear even more from Jamie Carragher and Gary Neville? There are podcasts and YouTube channels available at a swipe. In the US, ESPN's SportsCenter and its accompanying ESPNews channel were the progenitors of a medium copied globally and by Sky in launching SSN. SportsCenter is a flagship in marked decline from a golden 1990s era that made American household names of presenters such as Stuart Scott, Keith Olbermann and Dan Patrick. ESPN, an organisation in the process of taking itself to digital platforms as cable TV gets mothballed, closed SportsCenter's Los Angeles studio in March. Linear TV's death will be slow, but it is dying nonetheless as streaming, all bundles and consumer choice, takes hold. Meanwhile, YouTube channels, with production values way below industry standard, amass huge audiences for fan-owned, independent media. The time of viewers tuning in for 10pm highlights voiced over by presenters' catchphrases – Scott's 'boo yah!' being the prime example – has long passed. Social media and YouTube have killed the demand. Though live sports remain the foundation of broadcasting contracts, highlights and analysis can be watched at the time of the viewers' choice. Digital is where the eyeballs go, and what the advertising dollar is attracted to, despite the ubiquity of Go Compare et al. Viewing figures remain healthy but the game is now about far more than ratings. SSN's imperial period was the early millennium days of Dave Clark and Kirsty Gallacher's toothsome double act, to a time when the yellow ticker of breaking news held great sway, though not always delivering on its promise of earthquake journalism (news of Nicky Shorey's Reading contract extension, anyone?). Millie Clode, Di Stewart, Charlotte Jackson, Kelly Cates: a nation turned its lonely eyes to them. Then there was transfer deadline day, more important than the football itself. Long, frantic hours spent hearing Jim White's Glaswegian whine declare anything could happen on this day of days. In the early years it often did, from Peter Odemwingie's mercy dash to Loftus Road to the brandishing of a sex toy in the earhole of reporter Alan Irwin outside Everton's training ground. Another reporter, Andy 'four phones' Burton, labelled the night the 2008 window closed: 'The best day of my life, apart from when my son was born.' Eventually, though, it became too knowing. Not even White's yellow tie, as garish as his hype, accompanied by Natalie Sawyer's yellow dress, could stop the event from becoming desperate hours chasing diminishing returns. Live television is a challenging environment, especially with nothing to feed off. Though many presenters have been lampooned – abused in the more carrion social media age – the difficulty of 'going live' with an earpiece full of instructions and timings should never be underestimated. How does Mike Wedderburn, the channel's first presenter, make it look so easy? When, in a broadcasting-carriage dispute between Virgin and Sky, Setanta Sports News was given brief life in 2007 – 22 months as the Dagmar to Sky's Queen Vic – it was made apparent how hard, and costly, the business can be. Sign up to Football Daily Kick off your evenings with the Guardian's take on the world of football after newsletter promotion Over-exposure to SSN – as happens when someone works in a newspaper sports department, say – can lead to contempt. The joins can be seen, too. Haven't they done that same gag for the past six hours and each time pretended it was an ad lib? Just what is Gary Cotterill up to this time? Why did Bryan Swanson always use such portentous tones? From morning till night, it would be ever-present. On weekend evenings, when you caught the skilled veteran duo of Julian Waters and the late David Bobin running through the day's events, you knew it was time to leave the office, down that late drink, question your life choices, the pair's clipped tones taking on the effect of a lonely late-night cab ride. SSN is forced to move with the times. As is the case across the industry, journalists have often been supplanted by influencers, as the mythical, perhaps unreachable, 'younger audience' is chased. That is not to say the channel is short of decent reporting. In the aftermath of the 2022 Champions League final in Paris, chief reporter Kaveh Solhekol produced a superb account of the ensuing chaos and danger while others floundered for detail. SSN, like SportsCenter across the Atlantic, is now more a production factory for content being sent across the internet, published to multiple platforms, than it is a rolling news channel. Within press statements around the redundancies there was the word 'agile', a term repurposed – and overused – in the business world, but meaning doing more with less. Next season, as heavily trailed on SSN right now, Sky will have 215 Premier League live matches to show, including every game played on Sundays. That requires the company's shift in focus, for Sky Sports News in particular. Though look up wherever you are and it will still be on in the corner, almost certainly with the sound down.
Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE 'Sam Allardyce wanted to kick my door down': IAN LADYMAN tells Mark Clattenburg about extraordinary run-in with former Premier League manager on new Mail podcast
Podcast All episodes Mail Football Editor Ian Ladyman told ex-elite referee Mark Clattenburg about a particularly exceptional exchange he had with former Premier League manager Sam Allardyce on the latest episode of the Whistleblowers podcast. Ladyman revealed he had a tense phone call with 'Big' Sam Allardyce during the former Bolton, Newcastle and West Ham boss's early days at Notts County in the late nineties. Allardyce won the Third Division with Notts County in 1998, which led to him being offered the chance to manage relative giants Bolton in the Championship a year later. 'Sam is friend of mine. When I first met him, I was working for a local newspaper', Ladyman said. 'He was the manager of Notts County, and it was my job to cover the club. They had taken a player on trial who had just come back to football after failing a drugs test. Whistleblowers, brought to you by the Mail and Wickes TradePro - is football's most original new podcast - lifting the lid on the parts of the game no one else talks about 'Twenty years ago, that was very rare. So, I rang Sam and told him I was going to write a story. 'Sam said I could write the story - but told me not to mention the drugs ban. I am like, Sam, that is the only reason the story is interesting. 'The fact your signing Joe Bloggs doesn't matter – we have got to mention the drugs ban. He said, you do that – and I will kick your f***ing door down. 'I had only just arrived in Nottingham and was living in a hotel – so I replied, you're not going to be able to do that Sam. 'He said: I will come to that hotel and kick every door down until I find yours.' Whistleblowers is a brand-new football podcast, brought to you by The Mail in association with Wickes TradePro. From what really goes on in the referee's room, to how clubs spin crises and who's pulling the strings behind the scenes - Whistleblowers brings the inside stories only those at the heart of the game can tell. Co-host Mark Clattenburg shared his affection for Sam Allardyce and what it was like referring his 'big character' in the dugout. Listen here Co-host Mark Clattenburg shared his affection for Sam Allardyce and what it was like referring his 'big character' in the dugout. 'I used to love Big Sam as a coach', the official said. 'I miss his character. At Bolton, he used to abuse me and the fourth official all the time and I used to ask him why and he would say – just to get the crowd going. 'I remember one time – we had a big bar bill at St George's Park. West Ham had been playing Aston Villa. It was worth a large sum of money. 'I went to Big Sam and Neil McDonald and said, my God – that bar bill was huge last night. 'They said the club would be launching an investigation and somebody would be sacked. I asked why – they told me they wanted to find out who'd had the coffee.' For more anecdotes from inside the world of football, search for Whistleblowers now, wherever you get your podcasts.
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
‘Prison was the first place we felt sisterhood': six women return to the ruins of Holloway
The directors of Holloway use a simple but powerful visual device to demonstrate how badly the British prison system is failing the women it incarcerates. Towards the end of their eponynmous documentary, six former inmates are invited to play a version of Grandmother's Footsteps in the chapel of the deserted ex-prison, where they have been filming for five days. They begin lined up against the wall and a voice tells them: 'Step forward if you grew up in a chaotic household.' All six women step forward, before being instructed: 'Step forward if you experienced domestic violence growing up.' Again, they move ahead in unison. 'Step forward if somebody in your household has experienced drug use. Step forward if you grew up in a household where there wasn't very much money. Step forward if a member of your family has been to prison …' By the time the exercise is over, almost all the women have silently made their way from one side of the room to the other, starkly highlighting the film's fundamental theme: the UK's prisons are full of vulnerable women being punished – at great expense – and not helped. Shortly before Holloway prison began to be demolished in 2022, directors Sophie Compton and Daisy-May Hudson secured permission to film inside the abandoned site in London, watching as six women returned to the cells where they were once held, to explore how they all ended up imprisoned as young women. Directors of a more conventional documentary might have plonked the participants on the bare iron frames of their old prison beds and instructed them to pour out their life stories, poking and prodding them for all the shocking details. Compton and Hudson take a subtler approach, arranging the women in a circle, supervised by a trained therapist, and waiting to see what emerges. It is a risky strategy. The flow of the conversation is faltering, interrupted by nervousness about how their words will be used, suspicion about the directors' intentions – and a sudden, uncomfortable request for the most difficult conversations to continue without the cameras rolling. The film includes all this uncertainty: they debate whether they should proceed before realising their desire to talk about the justice system's failures mostly outweighs their concerns about sharing chapters from their complicated pasts. Compton (Emmy nominated for her documentary on deepfake pornography, Another Body) and Hudson (who won a Bafta Breakthrough award for her film Half Way, documenting her own family's experience of homelessness) have the confidence to make their subjects collaborators on the project, inviting them into the editing process, to ensure everyone feels happy with how their experiences have been handled. 'They could say what they did and didn't like,' Hudson says. 'They wanted more laughter included. Our wish was that they felt proud of the film.' Once western Europe's largest women's prison, Holloway has a significant place in British history. More than 300 suffragettes were held in a wing of the original building during the early 20th century. Ruth Ellis was hanged there in 1955, the last woman to be executed in the UK. Greenham Common protesters spent time here. Sarah Reed, who had previously been a victim of police brutality in 2012, died in her cell in 2016. This is not the story the film sets out to tell. 'It's not a film about Holloway; other films can tell a historical story or show the realities of being in prison,' says Compton, who I meet along with Hudson and two of the film's participants, Aliyah Ali and Mandy Ogunmokun. 'This is about a group of women returning to Holloway, and finding they are not the same people they were when they were in prison.' The women each respond differently when they walk through the corridors of the site, which closed in 2016. Some take delight in defying forgotten rules, skipping along walkways that were previously out of bounds. One begins by cheerfully telling the cameras how she viewed her time at Holloway as a holiday camp experience – it takes days for her to admit the extent to which her attitude is just a protective front. Another observes approvingly the way that brambles and ferns have started to reclaim the space, springing from beneath the plug sockets and creeping through the windows. 'It feels kind of healing to see that Holloway prison is falling apart,' she says. Some remember with horror the noise of night-time screaming, but several are surprised by the unexpected feelings of affection the building triggers. 'It was probably the first time that I was in an environment which was controlled and felt safe,' Ali, 31, tells me. 'It's sad that for a lot of us, the first time we felt that connection of belonging and sisterhood, we found it in prison. What does that say about society?' She was sent to Holloway at 18. 'Growing up how I grew up, you're conditioned to just brush things off and get on with things, and wear masks and stay strong. When I went back to my first cell, I felt my 18-year-old self cry out.' Ali is initially the most reluctant of the six participants. The founder of a non-profit organisation, The Daddyless Daughters Project, she has rebuilt her life, radiates strength and seems visibly irritated by the entire setup. 'I was worried they could edit our voices and create a narrative that we weren't hoping for,' she says. 'I was thinking, 'We're trusting them with a level of vulnerability that we're not comfortable with. What are these people going to do with it?'' Gradually she was reassured and slowly began to reveal some of the childhood events that catapulted her into prison – family breakdown, domestic violence, a move to a women's refuge, then later into a residential children's home at the age of 12. Her problems escalated when she got caught up in county lines dealing, as a child exploited by criminal gangs to move and supply drugs. 'I was introduced to selling drugs, which I was very good at, and it was the first time that I started to feel a sense of worth,' she finally reveals on camera. She is dismayed to remember how little support she received as a child. 'The system saw me as a bad girl … as somebody who asked for all of this,' she says in the film. 'It was always, 'What's wrong with you? Why can't you just behave? Why can't you just stop doing this?' Nothing was asked about what actually happened to me,' she says. Her fury is echoed by Ogunmokun. 'It's so frustrating to see how similar the stories of people going in and out of prison are. Change is so slow,' she says. The daughter of a woman who struggled with addiction, she also spent some of her childhood in care, went to Holloway first aged 20, and was in and out repeatedly for two decades until she shook off her own drug addiction aged 40. 'I'm angry that some kids are born into certain circumstances, and what chance do they have?' Ogunmokun, 66, has dedicated the 25 years since leaving Holloway to helping former addicts break the cycle of addiction and offending. 'Every time I reoffended the judge would say: 'You haven't learned anything.'' She didn't get the support she needed to change while she was in prison, through no real fault of the prison staff. 'The officers see horrific things, but they're not trained counsellors – they're not mental health trained, they're not sex-trafficking trained, they're not domestic violence trained. They've got a regime they have to run by.' She hopes the film might persuade viewers that there needs to be a revolution in the way that female offenders are treated. It is almost 20 years since the seminal Corston report on vulnerable women in the criminal justice system called for a radically different strategy, but many of the report's key recommendations have yet to be implemented. Hudson and Compton struggled for several years to raise funding to finish their film. Now they feel happy that it is being released at a time when there is some emerging optimism about the possibility of change. 'The simple truth is that we are sending too many women to prison,' the justice secretary, Shabana Mahmood, said earlier this year. 'We need to do things differently.' The film will be screened at an event with the prisons minister, James Timpson, in parliament later this month. Hudson's first fiction film, Lollipop, which comes out this month too, also features a woman who has recently left prison. She says both projects examine the way vulnerable women are shamed and blamed, as well as trying to showcase 'the power of women that society tries to put on the outskirts'. Ali is satisfied with how the film has turned out, and wants it to be shown to young people in prisons, to offer hope that lives can alter course. Despite her early reservations, she is impressed by the directors' creation. 'It's been emotionally turbulent,' she says, 'but they've done an amazing job.' Holloway is in UK cinemas from 20 June.
