Critical Analysis: Sky Sports Monday Night Football — Jamie Carragher FUMES at VAR ‘slowing down footage’
Genre: Sporting Media, Football
Audience: Sky Sports customers (also uploaded to YouTube following broadcast), Football fans
· Content engages with most ages and predominantly male demographics, however those watching on YouTube make up a presumably younger segment of the total audience.
· Furthermore, one may consider fans that watched Carragher and Lampard play themselves (around 16+) may as a result be more interested in their opinions, and thus more inclined to watch their analysis of events.
Characters: Sky Sports pundits (Jamie Carragher, Frank Lampard, Dave Jones) — in reference to: PGMOL officials (Darren England, Simon Hooper, Howard Webb) Liv/Tot (Jurgen Klopp, Ange Postecoglu)
· As characters within the story, Carragher, Lampard and Jones relay information, and react to the events that unfolded; they are the bridge between audiences and the game itself, ultimately bringing one closer within the action that is otherwise distanced from the viewer. As experts in their field and former players, they intersperse their analysis with anecdotes, to not only reinforce and contextualise their knowledge, and thus their opinions, but also as suggested by Glass: ‘weave in points of reflection’. [Jones to Lampard] “Frank as a former midfielder who has made many tackles like this, what’s your take on it?”
· [Lampard] “I watched this live, but I’ve been in that position many times and in those close moments, I felt sympathy for Curtis straight away… I’ve been in that situation, sometimes you get a yellow card, sometimes you get sent off.”
Narrator:
· All speaking subjects are audible and visible to the audience.
· The piece is led predominantly by Carragher (former Liverpool player and leading MNF pundit)
· As both an audible and visual media production, the analysis is conducted via reviewing the events of the match chronologically: “Lets first deal with the Curtis Jones red card, that’s the chronologically correct order to start things with.” (temporality)
Setting: Sky Sports Studio — in reference to incidents that took place at: Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, Stockley Park (VAR Hub)
· The use of a television studio as outlined above enables the analysis to be formatted as a dually multimodal production, by interweaving both mimetic and diegetic elements. We are dually shown what occurred (mimesis) and told what it is that we are being subjected to: “This is in full speed this is the view the referee had…” (diegesis)
· Consequently, such a dichotomy ultimately greatly benefits the audience experience and highlights the perks of such analysis available via the medium of television, as opposed to one conducted on a radio station perhaps. Indeed, interweaving dialogue with the element of video enriches analysis and enables the narrators to comment precisely, whilst the images are being directly relayed to the audience: [Carragher] “Watch this!”
Movement:
· The story progresses, as aforementioned, chronologically.
· The pacing of the analysis is entirely dependent on the incident in which the narrators choose to speed up, slow down, or entirely pause the action: [Carragher] “Stop it there”.
· Hence, they can hone in on the specifics of the events, and consequently make judgements with greater precision: [Carragher] ‘The reason I’m stopping it there is…’
· Over time, the events become particularly controversial, and consequently, the audience witness the narrator (Carragher) become visibly exasperated and animated: [Carragher] ‘I am sick to death of this always being slowed down!’
