'Off the Ball' quit Newstalk

totallegend

.ak wrote: »

The reason OTB is so popular is because of the light-hearted/banter aspect. If it doesn't have that in it's reincarnation it'll sink.

That's what I'd be worried about if they moved to RTE, that they wouldn't have the same freedom or editorial control, or that Ryle Nugent would step in and say "hey guys, we love what you do but we have some suggestions to make it EVEN BETTER"...

Ever heard 'Ball Busters' on a Saturday? Christ.

jamiedav2011

phog wrote: »

The banter is alright during the show but when the sports news is been presented they go off topic at times and it can be difficult to know exactly who/what they're on about, especially, if they talk about stuff that was topical earlier but you're only catching up on the news. Sports news to me should be just that, opinions/analysis can be added later.

What I mean by stale is that they generally use the same pundits week in week out.

Some of the segments were some of the best in Irish sports media though.
The American guy on Tuesday nights was excellent, Johnny and Eoin on Thursday was great radio, Graham Hunter and Gabrielle Marcotti are two of the best footie journalists out there and their rugby coverage is the best in the land.

What made the show great was that it wasn't just 'sports news' delivered like RTE do, there was real analysis, but also lots of humour and you felt like you knew the lads after a while.

Also, after years of broadcasting, they weren't getting annoying, which is a difficult thing to do.

chupacabra

Most of all, I'll miss Dog Chat.

tazman77

http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/door-still-open-for-off-the-ball-presenters-despite-mass-walkout-29108504.html

'Off The Ball' had 39,000 listeners, compared with 131,000 for George Hook's 'The Right Hook', 95,000 for Sean Moncrieff's programme and 61,000 for the lunchtime show.

An earlier start for 'Off The Ball' would have meant taking time from one of these, which would have hit ratings and advertising revenues.

CGD

I think it was an engineered move and they have something lined up already. No main stream station will give them the 6pm slot 5 days a week. Their listernship numbers are good not great I think they might live to regret it!!

totallegend

'Off The Ball' had 39,000 listeners, compared with 131,000 for George Hook's 'The Right Hook', 95,000 for Sean Moncrieff's programme and 61,000 for the lunchtime show.

An earlier start for 'Off The Ball' would have meant taking time from one of these, which would have hit ratings and advertising revenues.

Very simplistic way of looking at it (as would be expected from the Indo).

It ignores the fact that radio listenership is higher before 7pm than after across all stations, it's nothing to do with George Hook being a fantastic audience-magnet.

A much fairer comparison would be Off The Ball versus other stations in the 7-10 pm time slot; I'd say it's one of the few in which Newstalk is anyway competitive with RTE or Today FM.

kippy

tazman77 wrote: »

http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/door-still-open-for-off-the-ball-presenters-despite-mass-walkout-29108504.html

How accurate are those figures I wonder?
Do they ever take into account (for example) online listener ship?
I would suspect that a large portion of the OTB listener ship would listen online or via some other medium?
I know I listened online or via pod casts most of the time and I know a good few people who would rarely have listened to the show via "traditional" means.

That being said, Hooks show is the biggest pile of WUMMERY on radio at the moment, an absolute joke of a show if you ask me. There defo doesnt need to be 2.5 hours of it.

Is there a space in the radio spectrum in Ireland for dedicated sports radio station, if only it were to be on stream for a few hours a day?

phog

kippy wrote: »

How accurate are those figures I wonder?
Do they ever take into account (for example) online listener ship?
I would suspect that a large portion of the OTB listener ship would listen online or via some other medium?
I know I listened online or via pod casts most of the time and I know a good few people who would rarely have listened to the show via "traditional" means.

That being said, Hooks show is the biggest pile of WUMMERY on radio at the moment, an absolute joke of a show if you ask me. There defo doesnt need to be 2.5 hours of it.

Is there a space in the radio spectrum in Ireland for dedicated sports radio station, if only it were to be on stream for a few hours a day?

At a guess listening to podcasts or online don't really create many options for raising advertising revenue.

kippy

phog wrote: »

At a guess listening to podcasts or online don't really create many options for raising advertising revenue.

Doesn't the online show also contain adds? (as in it is live)

.ak

kippy wrote: »

How accurate are those figures I wonder?
Do they ever take into account (for example) online listener ship?
I would suspect that a large portion of the OTB listener ship would listen online or via some other medium?
I know I listened online or via pod casts most of the time and I know a good few people who would rarely have listened to the show via "traditional" means.

That being said, Hooks show is the biggest pile of WUMMERY on radio at the moment, an absolute joke of a show if you ask me. There defo doesnt need to be 2.5 hours of it.

Is there a space in the radio spectrum in Ireland for dedicated sports radio station, if only it were to be on stream for a few hours a day?

It's a lot easier for a radio station to monitor online listeners, so I would say yes, it does include those.

kippy

.ak wrote: »

It's a lot easier for a radio station to monitor online listeners, so I would say yes, it does include those.

I wonder though......
I'd assume those figures are from some agency that works them out on a survey type basis and are in now way reflective of actual listenership across all methods of access (in a similar way to television viewing figures which don't take account of those that watch TV on a recorded or online session with the ability to skip adds if they so please)

totallegend

kippy wrote: »

How accurate are those figures I wonder?
Do they ever take into account (for example) online listener ship?
I would suspect that a large portion of the OTB listener ship would listen online or via some other medium?
I know I listened online or via pod casts most of the time and I know a good few people who would rarely have listened to the show via "traditional" means.

The figures aren't 'monitored' in the same way that TV viewership is. They do a quarterly interview of around 15,000 people and ask them which radio stations they listened to the previous day, so yeah, I'd imagine it includes online streams.

It's a decent sample size so I'd imagine the figures are pretty accurate.

GerM

totallegend wrote: »

Very simplistic way of looking at it (as would be expected from the Indo).

It ignores the fact that radio listenership is higher before 7pm than after across all stations, it's nothing to do with George Hook being a fantastic audience-magnet.

A much fairer comparison would be Off The Ball versus other stations in the 7-10 pm time slot; I'd say it's one of the few in which Newstalk is anyway competitive with RTE or Today FM.

Simplistic yes but also probably broadly accurate. Up until 7pm is drivetime radio with captive listeners throughout the country commuting. A huge proportion of the country couldn't give a fiddlers about sport and certainly not enough to tune in to a dedicated sports show. I'd be very surprised if OTB could have moved to 6pm and maintained the number of listeners that Hook currently has. Sport is far too narrow a focus for the general public who want to hear topical items. The 6pm - 7pm slot on Hook contains some of the most popular radio items in the country such as the travel spot and the movie/television spot that appeal to all demographics.

If OTB moved to 6pm, the real winner would be Matt Cooper.

artvandelay48

First off, I love OTB and will be saddened by the lads departure.

BUT

It seems to me that they have engineered this situation themselves on purpose. I don't think Newstalk would ever countenance them starting an hour earlier. 7 is a natural start time for a sports show especially wrt to the evening's football matches. To my mind, the 5 - 7 drivetime slot is more appropriate for news/current affairs. Also, consider that RTE recently announced that they were going to do an evening sports show starting at 7. I can't see RTE moving this to 6 either.

So, the OTB must have known Newstalk was never going to go for the earlier slot so I think they purposefully engineered their exit and will turn up at RTE, doing a show at the same time but making much more money.

Fair play to them but they are hardly victims here.

Rickwellwood

Heard a fair amount of Ger Gilroys presentation of the sports slot on Newstalk last night and thought he was quite good. He'll build it up again like he's done before - Murph got on my wick and the others were becoming sooooo predictable - slot needs freshening up at Newstalk big time hopefully this'll happen now.

So many opinions on all sporting topics coming from all sides which is great and I listen to them all at some stage to get another angle on things no matter what sport.

I couldnt listen to Marty Morrissey, Joanne Cantwell Des C and co along with the OTB transplanted to the state broadcaster but that'll probably be the way it is if that pans out.

Competition keeps 'em all on their toes

icdg

Its an odd one alright in that they must have known that Newstalk would never just ax an hour off their top-rating show just like that. It would drive the drive time listenership to, er, Drivetime and The Last Word. Their current slot allowed them to cover full times in football matches starting at 7.45pm which they would lose if the show ended at 9:00pm.

RTÉ is an option but its worth noting that they recently moved their sports show to 2FM. Putting an all-talk show on a music-driven station is a risk in itself even at just one hour, let alone extending it to the three hours that the OTB crew would want. Arguably as 2FM is operated by RTE it should be offering public service programmes of this nature but that's a seperate argument, the show does not sit well on the station as it stands. The humour driven nature of the show would not last on Radio 1 however. There's also the issue of how they would be received within RTÉ Sport of course.

totallegend

GerM wrote: »

Simplistic yes but also probably broadly accurate. Up until 7pm is drivetime radio with captive listeners throughout the country commuting. A huge proportion of the country couldn't give a fiddlers about sport and certainly not enough to tune in to a dedicated sports show. I'd be very surprised if OTB could have moved to 6pm and maintained the number of listeners that Hook currently has. Sport is far too narrow a focus for the general public who want to hear topical items. The 6pm - 7pm slot on Hook contains some of the most popular radio items in the country such as the travel spot and the movie/television spot that appeal to all demographics.

If OTB moved to 6pm, the real winner would be Matt Cooper.

Fair enough, but the thing about Drivetime on RTE1, Hook and Cooper is that they're all talking about the same stories. Running a sports show from 6pm onwards would give you a clear run at that portion of the market who are sick of hearing about public sector pay, mortgage defaults and riots in Belfast; that has to be a large number of people.

If they limited the 6-7 pm slot to sports news, rugby, GAA and soccer, I think they'd get a sizeable portion of the audience; obviously you couldn't run pieces on the more obscure sports in prime-time slots.

You could also look at it from the point of view that if OTB started a bit earlier, it would hook listeners who tune in at drive time and maybe keep them with Newstalk beyond 7pm. Newstalk is dying on its arse, I'd have thought it needed something bold.

With all that said, I don't think the OTB lads ever expected to be given what they asked for, probably just a ploy so they'd have a legitimate reason to leave.

Macy0161

totallegend wrote: »

Fair enough, but the thing about Drivetime on RTE1, Hook and Cooper is that they're all talking about the same stories. Running a sports show from 6pm onwards would give you a clear run at that portion of the market who are sick of hearing about public sector pay, mortgage defaults and riots in Belfast; that has to be a large number of people.

If they limited the 6-7 pm slot to sports news, rugby, GAA and soccer, I think they'd get a sizeable portion of the audience; obviously you couldn't run pieces on the more obscure sports in prime-time slots.

You could also look at it from the point of view that if OTB started a bit earlier, it would hook listeners who tune in at drive time and maybe keep them with Newstalk beyond 7pm. Newstalk is dying on its arse, I'd have thought it needed something bold.

With all that said, I don't think the OTB lads ever expected to be given what they asked for, probably just a ploy so they'd have a legitimate reason to leave.

RTE moved their sports show/ finished Drivetime at 6.30 last summer. It didn't last, and I assume it was driven as much by shorter summer commuting times meaning less advertising for drivetime. Wasn't enough of a success for them to continue it anyway.

totallegend wrote: »

Newstalk is dying on its arse, I'd have thought it needed something bold

Way off topic, but... imo it's been dumbing down every year since it went National. I don't think it was particularly profitable when the quality was better, but it had more chance of making a niche for itself. The niche it's tried to make for itself is (imo) a right wing station like a toned down US talk station in prime listenership times.

The play communicorp should be making for todayFM 1 & 2 - one music and one talk and sport, and tbh despite the licence conditions the BAI should probably be pragmatic about such a proposal.

totallegend wrote: »

With all that said, I don't think the OTB lads ever expected to be given what they asked for, probably just a ploy so they'd have a legitimate reason to leave.

Certainly smacks of it.

Podge_irl

Macy0161 wrote: »

Way off topic, but... imo it's been dumbing down every year since it went National. I don't think it was particularly profitable when the quality was better, but it had more chance of making a niche for itself. The niche it's tried to make for itself is (imo) a right wing station like a toned down US talk station in prime listenership times.

It actually did a lot of very good Dublin-centric programs which made it great, but they've all been canned since it went national.

KenCan2

Any ideas where the off the ball lads might end up. Apart from the dole queue

phog

lologram wrote: »

To each his own. I wholeheartedly disagree though. I have listened to it since before Newstalk went national and before Gilroy became sports editor and was replaced by McDevitt. Overall it has been consistently top notch and I will very much miss it. I hope the lads find a new location soon.

I will say though that I thought their rugby coverage could have been more incisive at times. Eoin would let Gerry Thornley and, to a lesser extent, Keith Wood ramble on with tired soundbites too frequently. That's a symptom of the somewhat toothless rugby journalism in this country as a whole though.

Their statement on twitterland seems to indicate that they too thought the programme needed to be freshened up. Not sure what they had in mind as they didn't go into detail.

prospect

I don't know why they would want to 'engineer' the situation so they could leave. Could they not have just said, right we have 'X' offer from RTE and we are off, unless you can match or improve on the offer, be it financial, content or terms.


Those listener-ship figures mean nothing, G.Hook has higher figures because of the time-slot. Ironically, the only time during the day that I switch from Newstalk to TodayFM is during Hooks show. If OTB was on during my commute I would certainly have tuned into it.

finlma

Any news on their reappearnace yet? They announced last week that they would be back shortly but didn't say where.

athtrasna

finlma wrote: »

Any news on their reappearnace yet? They announced last week that they would be back shortly but didn't say where.

Word was that one of them (Eoin McDevitt I think) I think is on gardening leave til May so nothing can be announced til then. Saw something about it on twitter last week

Losty Dublin

There was a small piece in a Sunday that Nova were claiming interest in them and that's been it. Whereever they show up, it's very unlikely that all of them will be on the same station, let alone the same show given the big chunk they will add to a stations wage bill.

Podge_irl

Nova doesn't really do talk shows though so I don't see that happening.

durkadurka

I heard something about 4fm.

Which I have frankly never listened to.

backgreen

durkadurka wrote: »

I heard something about 4fm.

Which I have frankly never listened to.

came across 4fm on the car radio recently..crazy stuff no limits

Gary ITR

Podge_irl wrote: »

Nova doesn't really do talk shows though so I don't see that happening.

Nova seem to target a lot at 'the lads' so it would make sense. Nova tend to have decent sports coverage when games are on so who knows.

Won't hear a thing until the Garden leave has run its course

Podge_irl

Gary ITR wrote: »

Nova seem to target a lot at 'the lads' so it would make sense. Nova tend to have decent sports coverage when games are on so who knows.

Yeah, but its more updates in between songs. I dunno if they'd be willing to put on a proper sports talk show and that's what the lads would want surely?

ormond lad

Was by chance talking to Joe Molloy of Newstalk for a short while tonight and he was saying the lads will be back(all together) on air very shortly when their release period from Newstalk is up. From what he has heard(all rumours) the lads will all be on air together and that tonight was Joe's first full night off since the lads quit as Newstalks sports department was divided in half by OTB lads quitting.
They prob will not be in the same timeslot but prob will not be in the 5pm-7pm timeslot that they wanted with Newstalk and which was the cause of their quitting newstalk

irishbucsfan

Podge_irl wrote: »

Yeah, but its more updates in between songs. I dunno if they'd be willing to put on a proper sports talk show and that's what the lads would want surely?

Maybe they would if its what their demographic want though.

finlma

Surely going to a Dublin only station like Nova is a step backwards for them. Hopefully they'll be on a national station for us culchies

Beery Eyed

To be honest, if they set up their own station & just broadcast from 5-9 about sport I'd probably just listen to that channel & never have any reason to change the dial! They could do it from the back of a rusty shed, as long as the content was the same as they had before I'd still be tuning in

CatFromHue

That's the problem I see, if the content/guests are different.

Will their possible new employer want to pay the same guests that are now on Off The Ball i.e. Thornley, Wood, Giles, Hunter, etc?

Glenbhoy

Beery Eyed wrote: »

To be honest, if they set up their own station & just broadcast from 5-9 about sport I'd probably just listen to that channel & never have any reason to change the dial! They could do it from the back of a rusty shed, as long as the content was the same as they had before I'd still be tuning in

Same here, maybe I'm in the minority, but I have long since stopped with the radio on my daily commute. Hooky (by far the worst), Talbot or Mary hold no attraction to me and the commute has become podcast catch up time for me.

awec

I wonder how the listenership of internet radio stacks up against standard radio outside of the breakfast and drive time slots.

escape m1

http://www.irishtimes.com/sport/former-off-the-ball-team-returns-to-the-airwaves-on-irishtimes-com-1.1384956

Apparently they are starting to come back to us.....

Larbre34

escape m1 wrote: »

http://www.irishtimes.com/sport/former-off-the-ball-team-returns-to-the-airwaves-on-irishtimes-com-1.1384956

Apparently they are starting to come back to us.....

Would you really be ar5ed with all that palaver online, I just wanted them to be on my car radio, not have to get an app for that, and podcast it, download it, stream it, buffer it, drop it out and miss half the chat.

Just someone give them a job on a radio station I can receive, please.

CGD

Larbre34 wrote: »

Would you really be ar5ed with all that palaver online, I just wanted them to be on my car radio, not have to get an app for that, and podcast it, download it, stream it, buffer it, drop it out and miss half the chat.

Just someone give them a job on a radio station I can receive, please.

Exactly!

irishbucsfan

Listening to a radio on a computer?! What are we.. ROBOTS!?

artvandelay48

escape m1 wrote: »

http://www.irishtimes.com/sport/former-off-the-ball-team-returns-to-the-airwaves-on-irishtimes-com-1.1384956

Apparently they are starting to come back to us.....

Well done, lads. Going from an audience of thousands to an audience of tens. Could it be that they needed newstalk more than they realised?

hardCopy

Taking on a team of 5 would have been a pretty big undertaking for any other station. It's hard to see how they could have expected it to go any other way. Maybe Netflix or somebody would take them on to make a TV show, or even broadcast a video feed of the podcast taping.

19543261

Larbre34 wrote: »

Would you really be ar5ed with all that palaver online, I just wanted them to be on my car radio, not have to get an app for that, and podcast it, download it, stream it, buffer it, drop it out and miss half the chat.

Just someone give them a job on a radio station I can receive, please.

you mustnt be too bothered they arent on your radio if you arent arsed taking a few minutes to download the podcast

totallegend

I'd imagine this is just a way of keeping themselves in the public consciousness until something more concrete gets sorted out. I can't imagine that this is the plan long term.

awec

Maybe the IT plan on investing in this area?

They are a paper that has apps out there for all of the major tablets and phones, they are certainly the most tech savvy paper in the country and I guess moving themselves into the modern era is a smart way to go, and perhaps the IT will be more than just print in future?

19543261

Both sides are feeling the ground probably yeah

AngeGal

I'm clinging to the hope that the last sentence of that statement 'This month....' means this is related to Mcdevitt's gardening leave clause of three months and this is just a means of remaining in public consciousness until they can announce a new show next month. That mighn't e very realistic though, the stranglehold Denis O'Brien has over Irish media is really their largest problem.

On a more general note, such podcasts can be useful for newspapers to attract browsers to their website. The Guardian have been very proactive in their online strategy and their football weekly podcasts which, despite the name, are released twice a week regularly attract 200,000 listeners and their highest reported figure was close to 400,000.

artvandelay48

AngeGal wrote: »

The Guardian have been very proactive in their online strategy and their football weekly podcasts which, despite the name, are released twice a week regularly attract 200,000 listeners and their highest reported figure was close to 400,000.

You can't compare the IT website to the Guardian's. One's world class and one looks like a bad junior cert project.

AngeGal

artvandelay48 wrote: »

You can't compare the IT website to the Guardian's. One's world class and one looks like a bad junior cert project.

I wasn't. I was pointing out the value sporting podcasts can have.