The Sport Thread

Tennis ended slightly earlier than expected so BBC1 filling with Keeping Up Appearances, but that means Politics Show will now be on at 12:15 instead.

I wonder why they couldn't find a 15 minute filler instead of the 30 minute Keeping up Appearances. Keeping up Appearances wasn't in the schedule was it?

Strange bit of scheduling, I'll agree, suspect that somehow The Politics Show were working on a fourth set basis and weren't ready for a 12.00 start. Could be interesting to see how this is made up this afternoon. It's clear that BBC TWO have a critical schedule point at 3.30 for the ACoN final so they needed to get on track at the earliest opportunity.

Another Athletics question, are the Indoor AAA Championships being shown anywhere this year? Last year Channel 4 had them

BBC One got the 15 minutes back by showing a 15 minute episode of Cash in the Attic instead of the scheduled 45 minute one.

And in the process have cut The Super League Show down from 45 to 30 mins!

Which must have been an absolute nightmare as it seemed to be pre-recorded!

It's been assumed by someone on the BBC blogs they're covering it on TV, but the way their coverage page is done it could be as little as coverage online.

Found the titles on YouTube - Gateshead very much seems the odd one out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkYQ-mF13Wo

Personally I think expanding it just devalues the whole thing - the Golden League were six fairly historic meetings which worked well as a series of their own and as part of it stood out above other Grand Prix meetings, Now that status has kind of been weakened. I think they'd have been better off just cautiously expanding the Golden League to around 8 or 9 meetings and then trying to bolster the secondary meetings, perhaps creating some kind of "Silver Series".

It almost always is, as the Politics Show uses the same facilities.

Diamond League

The BBC are listed as the host broadcaster for the two GB Diamond League events at Gateshead and London

here….

Diamond League

because of this I'd think it's fairly certain that at least the majority of the series will be on the BBC.

The Diamond League rights, which are being sold via IMG, exclude the domestic host broadcaster of an event - so the BBC will still have the two UK events by virtue of their existing deals, but this won't include the remainder of the season.

However, it does mean that the remaining events won't be worth anywhere near so much to another broadcaster.

The coverage of the tennis from Melbourne must be the first occasion in a long time since Sue Barker has presented from TC5, possibly since the demise of Grandstand?