Interesting decision, and very much in-line with what Fox Sports is looking to do here with Fox Footy and League.
401 Main Event and 402 Premier League are IIRC “must-offer” channels in the UK from what I’ve read on TV Forum, so they obviously will be the channels with the most mainstream sports.
A golf channel is an interesting one.
No information about Sky Sports Action - I can’t even guess as to what that’ll have on. Name is too vague.
edit: there’s more information here about the relaunch. New logos and the whole shebang. Kinda meh on the logos.
With this news from Sky Sports in the UK, I wonder if Fox Sports might take this idea further in the future.
A “Fox Cricket” channel is something I wouldn’t be surprised to see happen (but with free to air TV still retaining some cricket coverage, of course) as a result of the next broadcast rights deal with Cricket Australia. Especially in a country which has cricket as it’s #1 sport during the Summer, having a Pay TV channel dedicated to it seems like quite a natural fit IMO.
They don’t say it, but it might have overflow events too. So if there’s too many EPL or cricket matches on the branded channels, some might be thrown onto those channels. Also serves as an appetizer for those on the fence looking to upgrade, in addition to Sports Mix.
Sky Sports Action and Sky Sports Arena are essentially the same - just for other sports without a dedicated channel, and I think if you subscribe to one you get them both as content will switch between channels.
Sky Sports 2 has essentially been a cricket channel for a number of years, and the same with Sky Sports 4 for Golf, while Sky Sports 5 was launched with a focus on European football, but this was dropped after a year.
Surprised they didn’t have a dedicated tennis channel but I guess even though they have the ATP rights that’s only about 18 weeks a year, but still far more content than F1. Rugby League and Union could have been combined too but that’s very weekend heavy and they’ve now lost the European rugby rights and are said to be dropping Pro12, so apart from England Internationals in the autumn and foreign tours, plus Super Rugby and whatever the Tri-Nations is called now they don’t have much rugby union at all.
BBC has revealed the salaries of its television and radio stars earning more than £150,000 per year. Former Top Gear host Chris Evans is the top earner with a salary of £2.2 million per year. Strictly Come Dancing host Claudia Winkleman is the highest paid woman, earning between £400,000 and £450,000 per year. Graham Norton earns up to £899,000 per year.
The hypocrisy of the left-wing, sanctimonious, ever lecturing BBC has been revealed today, with males completely dominating the list of their highest paid “stars”. How Jeremy Vine earns that amount, I have no idea. Spends half his day posting left-wing ranting on twitter.
Everyone. Literally everyone. I don’t think there has been any doubt in the UK that the BBC and NHS are bloated with overpaid staff…
Now, if Channel 9 wants to pay obscene amounts of money for Karl, good for them. A publicly funded broadcaster however? Just imagine if the ABC decided to pay Karl $1 million a year…Australians would go berserk.
Brits have been conditioned though to believe the BBC is a sacred cow and that excess is deserved…finally some true transparency is being introduced as to how taxpayer money is being fritted away. Lineker can present Match of the Day for 1.8 million pounds…or 1.1 million pounds…it is ridiculous how much he is paid. Nobody could present it and football fans would still tune in…
I’m not suggesting that this is a good or a bad thing, just a reality of the industry - market forces result in higher pay for “good” (in the eyes of the broadcaster) talent.
Overpaid based on what metric? The favourite that gets trotted out is that they are paid more then politicians (in particular the PM) - maybe this should be an indication that we should pay our leaders more?
According to Mediaweek - "there is no one on-air at the BBC who earns more than Australia’s highest paid broadcasters – Kyle Sandilands, Jackie Henderson, Hamish and Andy or Alan Jones. "
Peter Capaldi is in the £200,000 - £249,999 range and Huw Edwards tops the News area with £550,000 - £599,999.
Not surprised, Edwards is a big star at the BBC. Back when he hosted the Six O’Clock News, it was the most watched news bulletin in the UK. Then he moved over to the BBC News at Ten, and that became the most watched news bulletin in the UK. I’m fine with the BBC forking over money to retain their market position - their role in the UK is very very different from the role of the ABC in Australia.
Vine’s salary is absurd but he does host a variety of programmes at the BBC, including a Radio 2 show, a specialist role in election coverage, Crimewatch and I presume some others. I assume the BBC bumps up the pay for each commitment a presenter or personality takes on, hence why some seemingly minor presenters are actually quite well off.
That being said, some of the rumours leading up to this were proven false. There were rumours floating everywhere about Fiona Bruce earning millions, when she earns less than 400k.
The Weakest Link is being dusted off for a celebrity charity special in the UK. There’s a possibility it could make a full time comeback. I wonder if Cornelia Frances would be up for a revival of the format in this country?
The BBC stated that those figures are only the payments made to talent that is taken from the television licence fees. Norton may well be getting more than that for his program if BBC Worldwide and producer ITV are paying him extra for overseas sales.
Why how much is on-air talent at PBS paid? Considering the market, it would have to be at least 5x as much to even be comparable?