Sky cancelling Ringside?

First topic message reminder :

Lots of talk that Sky are cancelling Ringside or that it may become an online only show.

Anybody heard these rumours?
Do they have any substance?

Surely Sky Sports needs all the content it can get!
Ringside is its flagship boxing show and you would expect they need something like this to keep up the interest and drive all the PPVs that we'll be getting....

tarriq.ibrahim wrote:I just can't fathom why Sky would stop screening Ringside on TV. It's only in the last year that I subscribed to all of its channels, I only previously had Sky Sports 1 and the number of repeats that are on is ridiculous so why they would cancel originally programming to take it online is beyond me?

I never miss an episode and really enjoy it, particularly the Ringside specials they've done e.g. Hatton, Barrera, Benn etc. Ed Robinson is very good too.

It will leave a big gap for me on a Thursday at 6pm.

I think Ed Robinson will be missed most.............Usually word perfect, informed and not as over the top in his hype.....

My advice give him a weekly half hour show where he can go over the business that week and future business.........

Does anyone watch "Speedway" ???............WTF is that crap !!!!!

Sky have just ploughed so much into fotball i guess other sports will suffer sadly

Weren't they outbid for the European games..??

Big promo at the end of last nights show pushing all their online content and they said the show will be back on tv after the summer break

Sky have a cringey promo for this new "digital" platform...

http://www1.skysports.com/watch/video/9895271/ringside-goes-digital

The moving around the screens bit is terrible...

Worse though....

https://i.servimg.com/u/f18/18/84/51/22/image11.jpg

They can't even get their own website correct.

theanimal316 wrote:

Scottrf wrote:His background is Sky boxing? He was a commentator many moons ago.

I am.aware.of that Scott.  I should have clarified further,my question was regarding his background before joining Sky.

If I remember rightly, in 1989, Adam began his media career by working through the night photocopying scripts for TV-AM. Adam joined Sky Sports as a production trainee in 1994. His rich, distinctive voice was immediately recognised and at just twenty-three, he was thrown into a range of voiceover work while he was still making the tea! Adam covered all angles of television production behind the camera, from running the VT trucks to cutting sports packages, before quickly rising through the ranks to become one of Sky Sports’ leading reporters. He interviewed many famous stars from a variety of sports and sent in reports from all over Europe and the USA. Football, cricket and tennis have always been passions but Adam’s niche came in the incomparable and exciting world of boxing.

Because of his adaptability, Sky asked Adam to anchor Sky Sports News, inserts for Sky News, as well as the various live and pre-recorded boxing programmes.

As a trained journalist Adam is a natural writer, and his boxing blog on the Sky Sports website is extremely well-read. Adam’s distinctive voice makes HIM a great choice for voiceovers, and he is a popular public speaker at corporate events – where he can MC, host Q & A’s and even conduct lively auctions. In the summer of 2010 Adam was commissioned to write his first book on boxing with a major publisher, the book was released in spring 2011.

Hopefully by doing away with the show Sky can put some money into better cards.

Wont be holding my breath though.

So who's cancelling their Murdoch propaganda subscription?

From reading around the interweb it seems there are quite a few disgruntled customers.

I wont be cancelling. Never had a subscription in the first place

I never buy any Murdoch product infact

Yeh, no Ringside = give up football, cricket, rugby, F1, GoT, HBO programming, movies etc etc etc.....

Primarily a boxing fan toppy and ringside is the least of the problems. No point paying for sky sports when everyone is on ppv. Trying to confirm the end of my contract so I can close all of it permanently and just buy the boxnation stream.

Primarily a boxing fan toppy and ringside is the least of the problems. No point paying for sky sports when everyone is on ppv. Trying to confirm the end of my contract so I can close all of it permanently and just buy the boxnation stream.

Same here Shah, whats the point in paying a premium to watch the boxing when most of the decent fights are on PPV and most of the best overseas cards are on boxnation.

Bad move cancelling ringside as it is a catch up programme for some too. (Especially if you've been sat with no tv for a week or 2)

I could never go back to just digital TV. Lose too much programming.

We'll be keeping the documentary channels, just the sports i'll be getting rid of. Would have switched to Virgin but they don't offer it where I live BT doesn't have the channels either.

It appears it's going online only. Disappointing given that boxing is on the rise again, the amount of time/channels sky have and the amount of other guff they show

Well I thought that was a given?

They will probably still have the odd one promoting the BIG cards but apart from that.....

I hate watch vids on Sky aswell with the f___ing adverts which you are unable to skip, sometimes the stream will the buffer and show another f___ing advert. Ill probably give it a miss now

A mate of mine works over at SKY, mainly on the football, but he told me a couple of days ago that they are/have dropped it as it isn't cost effective and the commercial advertising around it is poor. From here on in they're going to be doing more of the 24/7 type shows for the bigger fights and PPV.

Somebody mentioned minority sports like windsurfing etc being shown on SKY. SKY don't make those programmes they buy them in. It's far cheaper to buy a ready made show than produce your own that has no sell on value. I mean SKY can't sell on Ringside to other channels, whereas a production company can make a windsurfing programme for little money, in comparison, and sell it all over the world.

Programmes like windsurfing tend to be voice over led, easy to version into any language, whereas Ringside have presenters hardly anyone knows outside of the country mentioning SKY every 30 seconds.

And the reason for dropping it, is it's all down to the amount of money they've spent on the footie.

Amount they've spent on footie but they've lost the champion's league and massive amount of the premiership?

Group Cpt Lionel Mandrake wrote:Amount they've spent on footie but they've lost the champion's league and massive amount of the premiership?

Which means certain customers moving over to BT, plus clubs are now getting about the same money for finishing in the bottom 3 as they would for winning the PL in past seasons. The money has gone through the roof! £5.136bn between SKY and BT is a phenomenal amount of money. You are correct in your point that SKY lost the champions league but what happened to SKY's shares when that happened? They slumped big time.

Believe it or not BT has a far bigger spending power than SKY. If BT decide to go into boxing, on a large scale, they have the spending power to take it all away from SKY. I doubt they'll go for it as sadly it has become a minority sport in the UK. No real sponsorship deals and the advertising revenue is low.

When a media buyer places a commercial at x time on a x channel it obviously costs money, which is governed by the number of eyes watching the TV. You could stick a commercial in the break on something like Ringside and it would cost you hundreds of pounds, stick it in a break with Man U v Chelsea (or the like) and you'll be in the 5 figure region.

The fact is SKY can drop a show like Ringside and the impact on their customer base will be minimal, lose half of the premier league and the Champions League and your subscription will drop massively. I've helped launch channels in both the UK and Italy and the number one priority has always been to get footie on the screens. Stick football on the screens and people watch, stick boxing on the screens and a lot of people will switch channels.

Sadly boxing hasn't been big in his country since the 80's and early 90's which is why it doesn't make financial sense for channels like ITV to buy into the sport. If the Benn, Eubank and Watson era were here today, it would be PPV somewhere. Barry McGuigan is doing the right thing in wanting to put his boxers on ITV, but that's simply so they can become a household name, he'll jump to PPV as soon as the numbers and following add up.

So has anyone bothered watching Ringside since it went online only? I know I haven't. I watched it every week without fail when it was on TV but haven't been remotely interested since it went online. Any time it gets mentioned on Sky's Facebook page, the overwhelming response is a torrent of abuse demanding they put it back on TV. I'm sure its not the highest rated show in their schedule but with no Champions League etc, and them showing F1 on the regular sports channels rather than the dedicated F1 channel, their schedule is hardly rammed to capacity.

tarriq.ibrahim wrote:I just can't fathom why Sky would stop screening Ringside on TV. It's only in the last year that I subscribed to all of its channels, I only previously had Sky Sports 1 and the number of repeats that are on is ridiculous so why they would cancel originally programming to take it online is beyond me?

I never miss an episode and really enjoy it, particularly the Ringside specials they've done e.g. Hatton, Barrera, Benn etc. Ed Robinson is very good too.

It will leave a big gap for me on a Thursday at 6pm.

Why?

The new Danger Mouse is on CBBC, nuff said.

Group Cpt Lionel Mandrake wrote:So has anyone bothered watching Ringside since it went online only? I know I haven't. I watched it every week without fail when it was on TV but haven't been remotely interested since it went online.  Any time it gets mentioned on Sky's Facebook page, the overwhelming response is a torrent of abuse demanding they put it back on TV. I'm sure its not the highest rated show in their schedule but with no Champions League etc, and them showing F1 on the regular sports channels rather than the dedicated F1 channel, their schedule is hardly rammed to capacity.

Same as well Captain. Use to have it on Series Link but haven't watched an episode since it went online only. There's been some Sky cards recently that although poor, I didn't even know they were on. Seen others on the forum say the same thing. I know Eddie has put on poor shows recently but I think that without having Ringside it's stopped some regular boxing fans watching their Fight Night's