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BBC gives host Gabby Logan more coverage than the sport
Danny Brierley, Evening Standard14 Aug 2008
The BBC is devoting more of its daily Olympics highlights show to Gabby Logan than any of the individual sporting events.
Research by the Evening Standard found that a quarter of the first four instalments of Olympics 2008: Games Today were taken up by the presenter.
In almost four hours of broadcasting analysed by the Standard, Logan was seen talking for more than 55 minutes.
This time included long discussions with several of the retired sports stars the BBC is using for its coverage of the Games in China.
Logan's stints on air far outstripped the broadcast time given to individual sports. More than four times as long was given to the presenter than to cycling - a sport in which Team GB has already won a gold and a silver medal.
Although almost two and a half hours were devoted to sporting action, the time taken up by Logan and her guests inside the "Ling-Ling Pagoda" in Olympic Square, Beijing, was more than that spent on any of the single disciplines.
Logan, 35, a former gymnast who represented Wales at the 1990 Commonwealth Games, has dominated the early evening coverage on BBC1. The only competition came from Michael Phelps, the American swimmer who has lit up the Games by winning a record number of gold medals. He had 25 minutes of broadcast time.
Olympics 2008: Games Today is on from 7pm to 8pm. The show averaged 3.2 million viewers on Saturday, losing out to Brendan Fraser in The Mummy, which pulled in 3.6 million viewers on ITV1.
On Sunday, its average audience was
3.6 million, an 18 per cent share of the audience, but again it was beaten by ITV1. Estimates for its viewing figures during the week are slightly over four million.
The number of viewers will raise concerns over the value for money being delivered to TV licence-fee payers. The BBC has 493 people, including presenters, journalists, commentators and technical staff covering the Games - more than the entire Team GB squad.
The corporation broadcasts the Games live through the night and during the morning, and digital viewers can use the "red button" to watch coverage of the sport of their choice.
A BBC spokesman said: "Games Today is getting large audiences - well over four million - and it is also getting high appreciation scores, significantly above the sport average, so we are confident that viewers are enjoying the programme."
Of the amount of time that has been given over to Logan, he said: "The BBC is broadcasting more than 2,500 hours of live content from the Games, including multiple choices of interactive services, so anyone wanting the action uninterrupted can get that round the clock.
"This includes all through the evening if they've been at work during the day, so there is a role for a programme with more interviews and analysis - which is what we always intended Games Today to be."
Reader views (4)
Thank you. Couldn't believe the drivel on show last night. I'd like to see some sport not presenters. Will not bother to watch again. Waste of License money. What is this obsession with talking about everything/one over and over again. Can you do a poll and present it too BBC, With football OK they are filling up time, but we had an hour to catch up with Olympics and got a load of nonsense. Cant bear to watch anymore. Please sort out the BBC, not to mention exam system! God I could go on - what is happening to this country.
Keep up the good work - your paper usually reflect what I feel. I drove my family mad last night moaning about Gabby and her mates, and was duly vindicated this evening when hubby brought home paper.
Thanks Tracey
- Tracey, Herts, 14/08/2008 21:59
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ITV 3 do a superb job each year when covering the Tour de France - the hour of highlights is wonderfully produced and presented without the viewer having to painfully endure some personality presenter prattling on. The BBC coverage is sadly a big disappointment - far too slow, without pace and visual punch. The BBC has let us down - missing great opportunities to present these Olympics with flair and originality. What are those daft animated sequences all about - and to keep repeating them is soooo irritating.
I really don't like the way the presenters take up far too much of the programme's time - why can't they just be voices behind the pictures - and have the highlights presented in a more fast-paced format.
There must be wonderful footage that we are just not getting to see.
Thankfully, the male presenters are not wearing ties and silly jackets as they do on the BBC coverage of football.
BBC = BORING BROADCASTS FROM CHINA
- Michael O'Reilly, Blackheath, London, 14/08/2008 21:39
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The entire Olympics are a total waste of time and money.
Junkets for politicians and broadcasters bills for the rest of us.
- Michael Regelous, Herts, 14/08/2008 16:58
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Hallelujah.
At last, we arrogantly disregarded viewers have a champion, in the Standard,
For years totalitarian divas within the highly politicised BBC hierarchy have diluted direct sporting contact by this grotesquely perverse policy of tediously parading their pompous 'celebrity' presenters.
No wonder this plague has now reached such crazy, unchecked, unremitting extremes.
The bankrupt, navel gazing BBC is, as my mother used to say, now 'all fur coat and no knickers'.
My son lost interest in Football Focus years ago when pundits started lengthening their rants, at the expense of precious match and skills action, when all lads want is to see football action in the only sanely scheduled, day time, BBC football viewing hour for kids who can't catch the squeezed out Match of the Day.
Why on earth sporting events can't be watched with pundits more frequently 'talking over' sports images I don't know, unless there's some perverse clause in their obscenely overpaid contracts about how much screen time must be devoted to their personal celebrity 'promotion'.
BBC's ten o'clock news is even worse, with most time spent on flashy 'promotional' graphics amidst a myriad of sickeningly touchy feely, over-friendly specialist, correspondents who are so unprofessionally pally with their first name introductions and exits.
Creepy.
But this Olympics is extreme.
And with today's interactive TV technology there's absolutely no reason why most BBC staff can't be in London.
- Dave, Grange-Over-Sands, 14/08/2008 11:28
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