Seriously, who gives a flying fart about snooker any more? It was fine in the 80s, on a fat cathode ray tube when it was raining all the time and the only thing on the radio was the feckin’ Smiths, but these days? Really? All damn evening FFS? Two ugly blokes I’ve never heard of, who probably haven’t got a single Magma album between them (or even know who they are) potting reds and sweating profusely? Give me a break. On the other hand, don’t. Roll on Springwatch.
ATM: BBC Two has gone to pot. Is it time to put the covers on the green baize?
by 42 Comments
Oh god yes, and only another 150+ channels to choose from. On my shitey old Freeview box alone.
15 zillion channels of shite amounts to nothing. I too have a shitey old Freeview box, and there are at most 3 or 4 channels worth eyeball time, and that’s pushing it, but enough for us. Having huge dollops of time on one of those scarce havens of relatively intelligent time wasting* given over day after day after day to the fecking snooker is a royal PITA is all I’m saying.
*i.e. not completely awash with inane adverts for snake oil shampoos or skin creams, ludicrous cars that no-one needs or loud, brightly coloured ensnarements for sugar based foods offering a fast-path to obesity and diabetes.
You’re right that there’s very little on worth watching but the amount of snooker coverage is small compared to the screen time given to football and rugby. I don’t watch any sport at all, including snooker, but I’ve had to learn to live with the already poor schedules being disrupted by various tournaments. Apparently they’re quite popular with other people. I do find it annoying though that Glastonbury coverage doesn’t cover more on the main BBC channels for more of the day. I feel that it is unfairly sidelined to the evening and red button channels when Grandstand or whatever it’s called now could be cancelled or moved for one week a year.
Okay, but VV I happen to know that you have a record collection the size of Madagascar. Why do you even need a telly? If it’s visual stimulation you’re after, that’s what VU meters are for.
However, don’t get me started on Formula 1. Why can’t Murdoch buy all that crap up? Bring back Kendo Nagasaki!
He has done – after this season there’ll be no F1 on terrestrial tv.
Hoobleedinray!
But what about Kendo?
Yeah, who would want to watch two top sportsman playing in the biggest final in their sport. Wait until the working class spectacle that is Wimbledon is on. Plus a Royal wedding soon, what a country!
I wonder what the feck class has to do with things here. Either watching a game is worthy of saturation exposure on the nation’s most prestigious broadcasting network or it isn’t.
It’s only the later stages that get this coverage, it’s only been on in the afternoons, an hour in the evening and then late at night. Most of it has been on the Red Button.It is the final and Snooker is by it’s very nature lasts for hours, hence the coverage.
And the class thing? A joke, perhaps a poor one.
Not in our house! My wife has been watching each evening (and sometimes in the morning I think) courtesy of Eurosport. I don’t like it but as long as I have a laptop on my knees, I’ll have enough to watch until I’ve seen all of You Tube! At least with Eurosport you don’t have to hear the Ex players that fancy themselves as stand up comedians doing the illiterate commentary.
I like a bit of snooker now and then.
Live and let live I say.
No one is forcing you to watch it and it can be really tense and exciting at times!
“exciting at times” indeed! Wimp that I am I turned off the “Steve Davis v Dennis Taylor” final during the final session and went for a walk. I’ve not watched any part of a “World” final since.
I like it, have watched periodically over the past 2 weeks. Great stuff. Plus Steve Davis is a pundit and a huge Magma fan so I’m sure he’s tried unsuccessfully to pass a Magma best of CD to both Williams and Higgins at some point over the past 20 years.
Plus it’ll be over after tonight. Chill!
It’s marginally better than most other sport and has the advantage of not having to listen to the crowd shouting for a couple of hours plus there’s no market for replica kit so the streets aren’t full of people wearing bow ties and shiny shoes.
Speak for yourself – I live in Salt Lake City..
Sport? fffft
Snooker is a truly global sport. Viewing figures in the Far East will be off the scale.
It’s really only the last couple of days that are live on mainstream BBC – mostly it’s been on the red button or late night highlights. If the women’s FA Cup Final warrants live coverage on BBC1 on last Saturday evening then surely the snooker does.
Wait until the World Cup starts next month then there really will be saturation coverage on the main channels. (not to mention the royal wedding!)
Coverage of the matches or the punch-ups/poisonings/racist chanting? There’s another Beast from the East coming…
Never bothers me, all my TV is either pre-recorded or streaming/DVD. I choose, well what the Baroness lets me choose.
It’s weird, I have to keep going on the phone to hear what the woman on my TV is saying. Don’t I already pay a license fee??
I’m sorry, but you made me do it.
Watching it now. Incredible and gripping television. It can be on every night if it’s as good as this.
You’re watching the same ^ channel as me then?
I enjoy it. Maybe 3 or 4 tournaments a year get covered on the BBC, mostly late-night BBC2 or red button save for four or five days of finals PER YEAR. It’s the only sport I like to any degree – everything else is just noisy cars going in circles or overpaid yobbos kicking a ball around. Not worth a second of my time.
Is yer man with the upside down specs still playing?
Sadly, yer big Canadian man with the endless pints of lager ON PRESCRIPTION is no longer with us.
I think @davebigpicture is referring to Dennis Taylor, an early wearer of the upside down specs, later adopted by Bill Werbeniuk?
Beer and fags conspicuously absent from top tournaments for years now.
If you still want to see beer and fags, watch a proper sport – darts.
I once went to a WPD final (my in-laws lived round the corner from the Lakeside in Frimley) and it was terrifying.
I’m probably stating the bleedin’ obvious, but complaining about this sort of thing rather depends on whether you enjoy that particular genre takeover, whether it be snooker, the World Cup, the Glastonbury Festival, Wimbledon, and so on. We presumably all accept that specialist channels can have football, films, Arts, Sci Fi, etc. from morning ’til night, but get all upset when the BBC clear the schedules for something we don’t personally like. They have always done this, even in the days of 3 channels (BBC1, BBC2, and ITV) when we didn’t have all the other stuff on tap (digital , Sky, Netflix, Amazon, piles of DVDs, catch up services et al) and you really didn’t have too many other options – remember when the Cup Final was on two of those channels and the bloody thing started early Saturday morning?!
The BBC has a problem – people do not watch TV in the same way now, but we still seem to hold onto this Reithian idea that they should still provide variety every night…news, a drama, a documentary, a bit of pop music, political discussion. The BBC, ITV and Channel 4 are again in discussion about launching a joint streaming service to rival Netflix and Amazon because young people are deserting them and don’t simply passively switch on and watch the same channel all evening – the BBC nightly variety model has no long term future.
Spot on Nigel. I used to get really upset about, for example, the World Cup but I don’t let it bother me now, partly due to the fact that Netflix or similar services have an alternative. I still think that a world class event like Glastonbury and music in general is treated as the poor relation though.
BBC and ITV are already in partnership in the States, providing a streaming service called “Britbox”. That venture may not be too far away in the UK
I can’t see the whole range of programmes but a lot of what I can see on the home page is already available on Netflix in the UK. Presumably, if it were to launch in the UK, BBC & ITV would stop flogging their old shows off to Netflix and the various Freeview channels.
Great final and an amazing career comeback from Williams (who hails from my town). Can understand people complaining when there were 3 channels but these days, really? I also heard it was record temperature in the UK so not sure why people are too bothered about what’s on TV anyway.
Great reading everyone’s comments on this issue.
To confess, I love a bit of snooker myself, I’ve just gone off the boil on it I suppose. And the weird thing? Up there ^ folks are going on about having “all the other stuff on tap”, but you know, what with my record collection the size of Madagascar and that, I really don’t feel that I have anything else on tap at all as far as the idiot box goes, beyond what I had when Steve Davis was a raw beginner. I don’t want any of it, it’s all crap. I’m with Bruce, as it were.
So, after 5 decades of gogglebox consumption, a digital revolution (apparently) and the provision of near universal breadboard (or is that broadband, I get confused) to the masses, yea, even unto ye outer wildes where Foxy Towers may be found, I find myself only able to enjoy the few channels of televisual information, entertainment, and education that do not come laden with an overweening overhead of ass-wipe advertising on a military scale. How profoundly disappointing; all of this stuff has arrived, but none of it satisfies.
I’m glad that those of you who still enjoy seeing the blue behind the pink, now that you can tell the difference between them, have had a good tournament this year. But I’m also glad it’s over all the same!
Now when do we get Springwatch, that’s what I want to know?
Yep. It’s late. Like Spring itself.
*whistles beginning of Beethoven’s sixth simf*
No sir, when a man is tired of snooker he is tired of life; for there is in snooker all that life can afford. (Samuel Johnson, probably).
or Samuel L Jackson possibly?
“When a man is tired of motherf***in’ snooker……”
Weirdly, even though I hate sport of all kinds, I found myself being drawn to this particular match. I found it hypnotic and nailbiting. I feel like I’ve had a glimpse into another world…. but I’m back now.
Arthur look deeper and you will not be disappointed.
Cricket is your entry via a 5 day Test Match.