BBC Radio Stoke’s Checkatrade snub shows rank hypocrisy
After Tuesday night’s game, previous comments will now come back to haunt the BBC Radio Stoke sports team.
For a radio station that proudly boasts to be “the only place for live match coverage of every Stoke City, Port Vale and Crewe Alexandra first-team game” you would have thought missing Vale’s Tuesday night game would be embarrassing enough. But when you add in recent comments it smacks of rank hypocrisy.
This is very same competition where stay-away fans opting to watch from home via the iFollow service were labelled a “disgrace” by a BBC commentator…
It’s only a Checkatrade Trophy game after all, but then again this is very same competition where stay-away fans opting to watch from home via the iFollow service were labelled a “disgrace” by a BBC commentator.
They were clearly ill thought-out comments at the time (what about fans staying home due to childcare commitments, disability or illness, financial issues or work commitments) but the radio station may now come to regret that childish rant.
After all, the iFollow service so derided by the same commentator, ironically actually turned out to be the only place for exiled fans to follow the action. Not the radio station whose jingle constantly claims that they are the only source of live coverage.
Let’s hope the radio station learns some lessons from this episode. It may be wise not to criticise long-suffering and loyal Port Vale fans over imagined lack of loyalty when your own staff, on a paid shift, cannot even make the game.
Oh, and perhaps it’s time to edit that “only place for live match coverage” jingle too!
Peter Smith
14th November 2018 @ 3:30 pm
It will be interesting to see if Radio Stoke have the decency to comment on this, though I suspect there will be a discreet silence on these perfectly reasonable criticisms.
It is also worth noting that whilst ifollow was the only place to cover the game, the £10 charged did not this time include any commentary whatsoever – just the view of the match.
For the first part (and possibly all) of the game there was no commentary available for those with a normal ifollow subscription – just a message saying ‘The match will start soon’ – in addition, once anyone paid to watch, they cannot switch to listen only.
Whatever anyone thinks of the Checkatrade (which is not much in my own case) there is no excuse for both Radio Stoke and ifollow not giving proper coverage to what is still a first team fixture.