My 18-year-old son, Archie, wants - and gets - his sport from everywhere. He has no regard for the particular programme or the presenters, although he does quite like Gary Neville. Gary Lineker, Alan Shearer and Danny Murphy, on the other hand, talk sense but they’re speaking to his dad, not to him.
I do have time for them because I remember them in their football-playing pomp. BBC One’s Match of the Day as a show, Archie can take or leave. It’s the action he’s after. If it’s a big match he might watch it live, if not he will catch the highlights well before they appear on the plodding BBC. Clips on social media, YouTube, dodgy foreign streaming services – you name it, he will have found a way.
At home, his old man would have stuck faithfully to BBC, ITV, Sky and their scheduling. But Archie, he wants it now, on the move, wherever he is and he’s not bothered who supplies it. Archie is the future. While the TV executives want me to keep tuning in, the charts they pore over, the ones that dictate where their industry is heading, tell them they must somehow woo Archie, that he’s more to offer long term.
That’s easier said than done if you work for an old-fashioned TV content provider. You’ve paid a fortune for the ability to show live sports and you’ve also got these other comedies and dramas in your locker that have cost the earth. Advertisers are champing at the bit for youth and renewal and volume, and all the time your audience is ageing and declining.
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