Tag: TV
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UEFA Champions’ League TV Rights
Although I haven’t seen an official release from UEFA, there are lots of media reports saying that Paramount has won the rights to the Champions’ League (UCL) in the UK, for four years from 2027/28 bidding “well in excess” of the £1bn that TNT currently pays over the 2024/25-2026/27 three year cycle. TNT Sports, previously…
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Sports Streaming Update 2025/26 Season
Long-time readers of this blog will know I’m slightly obsessed with TV coverage of sports, and the rights situation. As football begins its new seasons across most of Europe, I thought it would be interesting to see the state of play across a range of leagues and look at some of the themes. Premier League…
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6 Nations Remaining Free To Air
When I recently wrote about the end of Eurosport, I also referenced once more, the then ongoing discussion about what would happen with the Six Nations. The good news is that yesterday a four-year deal was announced for 2026-2029 between the Six Nations and the BBC and ITV. The tournament will continue to be available…
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Licencing One Streamer’s TV Show For Your Streaming Service
There seems to be a bit more of this happening: licencing your service’s programming in a “second window” to either a broadcaster, or now more commonly, a streamer. This week I read that ITVX is licencing Suspicion, an Apple TV+ original for its service. This seems to be the first time that an Apple TV+…
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Farewell Eurosport…
Yesterday, Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) announced that from the end of February, Eurosport as a brand would no longer exist in the UK. All its programming would be wrapped into TNT Sports. From my perspective, this particularly impacts on how I watch cycling, a sport to which Eurosport has the vast majority of rights. But…
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Boxing Day TV & Radio – Radio Times – 2024
Yes – I’m back for one final look at the TV and radio you could be watching or listening to. Although to be honest, have you thought about going out for a Boxing Day walk or something? But if you’re dead set on staying at home, and not binging on various new offerings from Amazon…
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Christmas Day TV & Radio – Radio Times 2024
Merry Christmas to all my readers! Yes – it’s the big day, and for some reason, you’re unclear which TV or radio is worth listening to. That’s despite the fact that only BBC1 has really bothered this year. Nevertheless, here is my regular rundown of what’s worth your time, something I’ve been offering the world…
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Christmas Eve TV and Radio – Radio Times – 2024
For reasons that are now lost in the mists of time, every Christmas I go out, buy the double issue of that year’s Radio Times magazine, and annotate the key days over the festive period with my thoughts on what is and is not worth watching. I’ve been doing this since 2009, and I’m still…
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Sports Disappearing from Free-to-Air TV
There were a couple of bits of news over the last week or so that have continued a trend that seems to have only grown in recent years – the disappearance of live sport from free-to-air TV. First came news that Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) has signed an exclusive deal with the European Broadcasting Union…
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Battlelines: Sky, HBO & Max in the UK
I’m fascinated to see how Sky manages the seemingly inevitable launch of Max as a streaming brand in the UK. Things came to a head this week as Sky launched a lawsuit against Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) accusing it of a contract breach, in large part because of how a new Harry Potter series is…
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Sports Numberwang
I’m really only posting this, because I spent a bit too much time putting together a Thread of a response to a clickbait-y post about the major sporting events’ viewerships. I really shouldn’t rise to the bait, but… The Threads algorithm threw up this post. (A reminder that “Verified” just means someone who is willing…
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Peak TV vs Peak TV
If you Google “Peak TV”, the first search result is a Wikipedia article called “Golden Age of Television (2000s-present)” It reflects an era that started a little earlier with series like HBO’s The Wire and NBC’s The West Wing, but obviously carried on through the early 2000s, and broadly speaking, continues to this day. The…