Tommy Martin: Are shows like Match of the Day and The Sunday Game running out of road?

“Fans accuse BBC of ‘ruining’ Match of the Day” ran a headline in a Mail Online story which suggested “a row has broken out as the BBC lines up Kelly Cates as one of the three presenters to replace Gary Lineker on Match of the Day — with fans accusing BBC bosses of ‘ruining’ the popular sports programme.”

The row seemed to consist of a few blokes on X on one side and everyone else on the other. “Well that’s the end of MOTD, utter woke nonsense.” said @Welshy1892_. “They’ve ruined it,” cried someone called @steddyman, “The best thing about Match of the Day was the banter between Gary, Alan and Ian. Where has that gone now?” Where indeed, Steddyman?

As confected culture war rows go, the Mail has done better and most observers felt that Cates and Logan would be able to maintain the lofty standards of gentle footy banter that will forever be Lineker’s MOTD legacy, despite the crippling drawback of being birds.

Appreciation of Cates’ credentials extended to Keys, blogging from his garret in Qatar where he has been exiled since 2011 for his notorious views on the place of women in football. Not only has Keys changed his tune, but the former Sky Sports presenter claimed the credit for getting Cates her start in telly, much to the chagrin of her dad, Kenny Dalglish, who wanted her to stay in university. Only Keys could drop a name, pose as a feminist ally, and perpetuate the power of the patriarchy in one paragraph.

He did raise one interesting point though, in questioning Cates’ decision toleave the Sky Sports live football presenter’s chair for what he describes as a “deadly dull” highlights show. “ MOTD desperately needs fresh blood, but I’m not sure it will survive for very much longer,” he warned. “Eventually Grandstand died for similar reasons — the march of time.”

Is the bard of BEIN Sports correct? Will those jolly trumpets soon sound their last? Has Match of the Day had its day?

Viewing figures would suggest so. In the decade since MOTD celebrated its 50th anniversary the show has gone from averaging 3.6 million viewers per week to currently drawing in less than 3 million most weeks. This is in keeping with the general decline in TV audiences and the old girl has actually held her end up well, considering overall TV viewership in the UK has declined by 25% in that time.

Still, changes are afoot beyond the new presenting triumvirate. Explaining his decision to leave a role he has held since 1999,
Lineker said on his podcast The Rest is Football that BBC bosses were “looking to do Match of the Day slightly differently” and that it made sense for him to stand aside.

Slightly differently seems to mean more digital content and using the Match of the Day brand as a hub for online analysis, while adding a news element to the live show. All of this is in response to a world in which those who used to watch MOTD now consume the Premier League through three-minute YouTube highlights and go to the infinite universe of podcasts and fan channels for further analysis.

The chummy gatekeepers with the famous parping trumpets seem hopelessly outdated. MOTD’s running order used to be a hot topic, but why, in these days of on-demand entertainment, would a Fulham fan wait the guts of an hour for three minutes of their goalless draw with Brentford?

It’s the same phenomenon that explains why many have become frustrated with The Sunday Game in this country, wanting it to do the impossible in offering both breadth and depth of GAA coverage within the confines of an old-fashioned highlights show, when its competitors in the podcast-verse can spend half an hour talking about a single kickout. Yet no one is suggesting scrapping The Sunday Game, mainly because it has always just been, well, there.

And in MOTD’s case, a show still watched by three million people a week is not nothing. The BBC have not decided to replace Lineker with a YouTuber called Flubz, in a desperate gambit for younger audiences. Cates at 49 years old and Chapman and Logan, both 51, are all the age of what the BBC might consider the average MOTD viewer, people who still watch linear TV and have a longstanding behavioural attachment to nodding off in front of Saturday night football highlights.

The plan seems to be to make a play for the flighty younger crowd with a greater digital presence while still catering for the crusty folk who prefer the old ways, at least until they eventually die off. It’s pretty much the plan for the entire legacy media, come to think of it.

And while people might no longer watch Match of the Day as often as they used to, they also probably still want the lingering familiarity of it being there, chuckling away reassuringly on a Saturday night. The headlines this week are a reminder that TV shows that once did, and occasionally still do, bring millions together, retain a cultural cache their digital heirs are unlikely to ever share.

The future belongs to the seven million football podcasts and the ranty fan channels but the parping trumpets will surely live on, in some form. In a fractured cultural landscape we still need things that enough people care about to generate Mail Online headlines.

Especially if, God forbid, there is woke nonsense afoot.