Why ITV simply cannot capture the magic of the FA Cup

Written by Oscar Pye-Jeary for FootballFancast.com: If given enough time and purpose I could write a long and poisonous diatribe against the evils of Sky television. With it’s egregious presentation, farcical hyperbole and pre-Premier League amnesia it’s virtually short hand for all that is ill in the modern game. Why if I were a semi decent mid-table Premier League youngster I’d be big headed and self important too if I watched enough pumped up featurettes of myself running and gurning in slow motion to the music from Gladiator.

I could also write a damning and dismissive critique of good old Auntie Beeb, with its lazy, entitled approach to our national sport, uninsightfull and ill researched analysis (cough Alan Shearer cough) and the sneaking suspicion we’re paying for them all to regularly frequent tanning salons and hold lavish Eyes Wide Shut style parties

However I wouldn’t and won’t, because the crimes of these two pale into insignificance next to the behemoth of televisual football balls ups – ITV.

In a stricter, less forgiving world – and the one I’ll run when I’m eventually recognised as the rightful lord and master of the Universe – ITV would’ve been banished from presenting the FA Cup after they cut to an advertising break just before Everton’s dramatic Extra-Time winner against Liverpool in 2009. But alas, due to the namby pamby liberal nature of modern British society (Nick Clegg? Pah!) they were reprieved, and allowed to trundle on and do it again during England’s World Cup opening game against the USA, depriving ITV HD viewers the joy of watching a full third of England’s tournament net bulging.

In my – just and righteous – new World they would’ve been stripped of their terrestrial status and made to go and play in the corner with Bravo and Granada Men and Motors, with their 3^rd channel status given to BBCThree or More4, but again they were let off. Shamefully.

Even when they pulled off the coup of all coups and stole Match of the Day from under Auntie’s nose, they somehow managed to mess it up, playing only 28 minutes of football highlights in their first 70 minute show under the bizarre assumption that what viewers who tuned into a football highlights show actually wanted to see was Andy Townsend talking, something they took to surreal levels of absurdity with “Townsend’s Tactics Truck”, in which our erstwhile hero corrected tactical errors in hindsight to the actual, live Premiership players who’d made them, whilst in the back of a truck.

Even their generally competent coverage of the Champions League – their flagship footballing broadcast – was often marred by their insistence on awful punditry, which reached such dire levels Townsend and Robbie Earle were forced to stand outside on the pitch with a little wooden table and not allowed back in again until they made sense.

And now, due in part to their own lust for power and in part the BBC’s lackadaisical arrogance, they’ve gained control of the FA Cup, something we all felt the consequences of last weekend.