Albion fans' fury at BBC blackout

7:36am Monday 25th June 2012 in News By Bill Gardner

THOUSANDS of Albion fans anxious for highlights of their team in action will be left in the dark next season.

An internal BBC email leaked to The Argus has revealed no Albion match reports or previews will be shown on sports bulletins in West Sussex from August.

Instead, viewers in towns including Worthing, Crawley and Haywards Heath will only see highlights from games involving Reading, Southampton, Portsmouth, Bournemouth and Aldershot.

After the digital switchover in March, households in Brighton and Hove and east of the River Adur now watch BBC South East Today, which will continue to show Albion highlights.

But West Sussex viewers still served by BBC South Today will suffer from the corporation’s decision to scale back Brighton and Hove coverage on the programme.

Outraged Albion fan David Boreham from Haywards Heath described the BBC’s decision as “a joke”.

He said: “They seem to think all Seagulls fans come from Brighton but they couldn’t be more wrong.

“Albion have thousands of licence-paying fans across West Sussex and they are all going to be furious about this.

“This ridiculous decision has been made by people who clearly don’t understand football and don’t understand Sussex.”

The leaked BBC South Today internal email read: “We won’t cover pre-season friendlies of Brighton or Crawley or deliver football previews of those teams.

“They won’t feature in our Monday night goals round up at 18.30. We won’t be going to their weekly press conferences – they are for BBC South East Today staff to cover.

“This is in line with our phased approach to reducing coverage of stories and events in Brighton and Hove and Shoreham.”

Liz Costa, vice chairman of Albion supporters' club, said the move was “outrageous”.

She said: “We have 20 coachloads of fans from West Sussex coming for every game so for the BBC to decide they don’t deserve to see highlights of their team is disgusting.

“So many people are going to be disappointed by this decision.”

A BBC spokeswoman admitted the internal email was genuine and said: “Following the digital switchover in March this year, people in Brighton and Hove and as far west as the River Adur are now served by BBC South East Today. The BBC made this decision so that people living in the Brighton area will see more stories about where they live. This means supporters of Brighton and Hove Albion will see more stories about their club.”

Comments(35)

Wiggsy says...
7:55am Mon 25 Jun 12

Wont Meridan cover this? That said, their news and sport is hardly what you'd call localised to here!

Bring back Southern!!!

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All 9 of me says...
8:09am Mon 25 Jun 12

cheer up Albion ............ oh what can it mean, to a ..........

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Chi Gull says...
9:25am Mon 25 Jun 12

I can't see that we are really going to miss much. The coverage was limited anyway. There will still be the football league show and clips on the net, or you can subscribe to the clubs internet service ... or those of us outside Brighton can move there !

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Jimmy Stewart's Imaginary Rabbit says...
9:45am Mon 25 Jun 12

We were always treated as the poor relations anyway. At least this is more honest as opposed to them pretending that that the few seconds a week they did give us was 'fair coverage'.

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golddene says...
9:50am Mon 25 Jun 12

not a problem if you switch to freesat, there you can get coverage of all regionalised BBC broadcasts so switch over and relax

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Ligand Fields says...
9:50am Mon 25 Jun 12

Argus, do you have to use the word "fury", "angry" and "condemn" in EVERY headline? You make it sound like the streets of Brighton are thronged with slavering maniacs, biting each other's faces off in a feral rage about the most tedious of life's little inconveniences. God only knows what your headlines would be like if something IMPORTANT or DANGEROUS really happened.

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Ballroom Blitz says...
10:02am Mon 25 Jun 12

Personally I'm FURIOUS that ANY football is shown on terrestial tv. Keep it all on Sky. I don't want to pay for football in my licence fee. Id rather watch a good play... or even paint drying...

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Ligand Fields says...
10:12am Mon 25 Jun 12

You can currently watch paint drying for free on Hove Esplanade, where B&HCC's "intelligent comissioning" has seen the various railings and covered-seating shelters fenced off for around 4 weeks now, as brave painters on a public sector contract battle against the elements to do sod all as slowly as possible.

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esh lad says...
10:14am Mon 25 Jun 12

Since the digital switch-over I thought we were part of Kent.

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Cabin fever says...
10:24am Mon 25 Jun 12

Ballroom Blitz wrote:
Personally I'm FURIOUS that ANY football is shown on terrestial tv. Keep it all on Sky. I don't want to pay for football in my licence fee. Id rather watch a good play... or even paint drying...
Considering that 'a good play' costs more than you pay for your license fee, why don't you convince yourself that you've paid solely towards production such as that, rather than football?

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Charismatic Andrew says...
10:47am Mon 25 Jun 12

Ligand Fields wrote:
Argus, do you have to use the word "fury", "angry" and "condemn" in EVERY headline? You make it sound like the streets of Brighton are thronged with slavering maniacs, biting each other's faces off in a feral rage about the most tedious of life's little inconveniences. God only knows what your headlines would be like if something IMPORTANT or DANGEROUS really happened.
"streets of Brighton are thronged with slavering maniacs, biting each other's faces off in a feral rage".....

..... that's Brighton on a good day..... you should see it when things really hot up!

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Ligand Fields says...
10:50am Mon 25 Jun 12

We don't all live on West Street, Andrew! :p

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worthingite says...
11:01am Mon 25 Jun 12

If Albion ever do go up you will have to pay £25+ a month to watch it on Sky Sports !

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farside says...
11:34am Mon 25 Jun 12

I get better Albion coverage over the course of a season in the Midlands and West Country :-)

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Roger Marrow says...
11:39am Mon 25 Jun 12

East Sussex la la la
East Sussex la la la

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pjwilk says...
12:04pm Mon 25 Jun 12

They can get rid of that awfull Radio Sussex radio commentry as well what a load of c***p

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Cabin fever says...
12:16pm Mon 25 Jun 12

worthingite wrote:
If Albion ever do go up you will have to pay £25+ a month to watch it on Sky Sports !
As far as I checked, Match of the Day is on terrestrial TV...

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Portlock Seagull says...
12:30pm Mon 25 Jun 12

Get yourself a ST and you can see it in the flesh! Plus as others have said the highlights are on FLS anyway. Albion have always been poor relations in terms of TV coverage on both BBC and ITV when compared to other regional teams. So is this really a surprise? No. And do we really care therefore? No.

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Ligand Fields says...
12:36pm Mon 25 Jun 12

I would pay good money to keep football OFF the BBC. For every 5 minutes of asinine sports coverage, they could be showing something decent like Doctor Who or 'When Cats Go To Jail'.

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gmgc81 says...
12:49pm Mon 25 Jun 12

South Today's always deemed Brighton an afterthought after Southampton, Portsmouth, Reading and Bournemouth. Regardless of where Brighton are in the league the Hampshire clubs always come first.

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Number Six says...
1:06pm Mon 25 Jun 12

pjwilk wrote:
They can get rid of that awfull Radio Sussex radio commentry as well what a load of c***p
There should be a full stop after the word "Sussex"

I don't really do local media (I only come on here for a decent snigger) but I live west of the Adur and I'm sure I get South East today

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albionino says...
2:24pm Mon 25 Jun 12

Doesn't Virgin Media in Brighton carry South Today and not South East Today?

If that's the case, then this introduces an even bigger problem - no match reports on Albion games for Brighton residents either!

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Borrom says...
2:28pm Mon 25 Jun 12

Charismatic Andrew wrote:
Ligand Fields wrote:
Argus, do you have to use the word "fury", "angry" and "condemn" in EVERY headline? You make it sound like the streets of Brighton are thronged with slavering maniacs, biting each other's faces off in a feral rage about the most tedious of life's little inconveniences. God only knows what your headlines would be like if something IMPORTANT or DANGEROUS really happened.
"streets of Brighton are thronged with slavering maniacs, biting each other's faces off in a feral rage".....

..... that's Brighton on a good day..... you should see it when things really hot up!
It depends what you mean by 'Biting each others' faces off'. Not nice when done in the Floridian manner, but highly pleasant as a euphemism.

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Borrom says...
2:29pm Mon 25 Jun 12

golddene wrote:
not a problem if you switch to freesat, there you can get coverage of all regionalised BBC broadcasts so switch over and relax
It depends what you mean by 'Biting each others' faces off'. Not nice when done in the Floridian manner, but highly pleasant as a euphemism.

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Borrom says...
2:39pm Mon 25 Jun 12

Borrom wrote:
Charismatic Andrew wrote:
Ligand Fields wrote:
Argus, do you have to use the word "fury", "angry" and "condemn" in EVERY headline? You make it sound like the streets of Brighton are thronged with slavering maniacs, biting each other's faces off in a feral rage about the most tedious of life's little inconveniences. God only knows what your headlines would be like if something IMPORTANT or DANGEROUS really happened.
"streets of Brighton are thronged with slavering maniacs, biting each other's faces off in a feral rage".....

..... that's Brighton on a good day..... you should see it when things really hot up!
It depends what you mean by 'Biting each others' faces off'. Not nice when done in the Floridian manner, but highly pleasant as a euphemism.
Sorry, Charismatic Andrew. As you can guess my comment was on a different post. No idea how it cropped up on yours!

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The Real Phil says...
2:42pm Mon 25 Jun 12

Many viewers in Brighton have to take their signal from the IOW transmitter due to the hills. It must be assumed that they will be lucky enough not to be subjected to Albion trivia on TV.

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Borrom says...
2:46pm Mon 25 Jun 12

golddene wrote:
not a problem if you switch to freesat, there you can get coverage of all regionalised BBC broadcasts so switch over and relax
I've just checked, and all the regional stuff is also available (legally) on the internet, so, if you've got access (which you obviously have, if you can see this) and you're really bored, you can even watch all the latest from the Channel Islands.

Sadly typical of the Argus, though, to report the change in such apocalyptic terms, without telling the readers of the simple ways of getting round the problem. Why inform the readers, when you can frighten them instead?

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The Phantom says...
4:21pm Mon 25 Jun 12

Bit of a non story really - huge Brighton fan but not feeling any fury. There are more than enough media outlets to get your Albion coverage nowadays rather than the current "blink and you'll miss it" coverage from South Today. The last time I can recall watching South Today coverage was of the 3-0 win against Southampton when they had a feature on Jake Forster Caskey whilst showing Matt Sparrow's goal and interviewed Gus Poyet with the heading "Gus Poyet, Manager of Portsmouth". To be honest, my fury is best vented on other things.....

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Poccypoc says...
4:58pm Mon 25 Jun 12

This e-mail was leaked to the Argus. Liz Coasta is quoted in story. Her boyfriend works for the BBC. Just saying.

Anyone South Today viewer, or anyone anywhere, with Sky Digital can get South East Today on channel 983.

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Ringmer Rich says...
5:01pm Mon 25 Jun 12

As has been said already, What's to miss? The coverage is extremely poor anyway.

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CAKEBEARD says...
5:14pm Mon 25 Jun 12

It's a disgrace!...buggered of Bognor

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Dealing with idiots says...
7:09pm Mon 25 Jun 12

Should have built the stadium at Waterhall it would stop the caravanners.

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jarmonesque says...
7:24pm Mon 25 Jun 12

Poccypoc wrote:
This e-mail was leaked to the Argus. Liz Coasta is quoted in story. Her boyfriend works for the BBC. Just saying.

Anyone South Today viewer, or anyone anywhere, with Sky Digital can get South East Today on channel 983.
Liz Costa has a boyfriend! My Fury!, Anger! and Condemnation! That's disgusting.

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HOVEPARKPRESIDENT. says...
7:36pm Mon 25 Jun 12

Perhaps they may decide to change their minds when we have a triumphant season winning the championship and the cup whilst Reading and saints experience a quick return to the championship and early elimination from all the cups.

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Baldseagull says...
7:59pm Wed 27 Jun 12

I live in Crawley and get London programming anyway, a mate in Oxford gets better Albion coverage than me.

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