For once some good news. Sky BSB or whatever it’s called is set to lose it’s monopoly on showing live football .

How was such a thing ever allowed to happen in the first place? Could it be yet another example of the government saying one thing and doing some else altogether?

With the development of new medias, emerging internet technologies and wider access to broadband and wi-fi there is a chance to radically re-organise the way information (in this case football matches) is created, transmitted, broadcast or whatever. Yet what do we find for the past 15 years? A monopoly by a cr*p TV operator which is incredibly expensive for the average person.

Which government minister is it that has regular (i.e. as often as weekly) meetings with Murdoch? Gordon Brown? Tessa Jowell? Whatever. We have de-regulation of some of this media, but we don’t have control, and we certainly don’t get any say in how TV is structured or what’s produced for it.

Footnote: Am I the only person who is finding it increasingly difficult to watch big matches anyway due to the huge advertising boards at the touchline which produce ever more colourfully kaleidoscopic moving images? For one particular advertiser (obviously not effective because I can’t remember which), there is a series of balls which bounce around - is it just me, or have others lost sight of the football with the distrations?