Richard Keys has warned Match of the Day could possibly be the subsequent long-running BBC Sport staple to face the axe after the broadcaster pulled the plug on Soccer Focus.
The BBC introduced on Thursday that Soccer Focus would finish after 52 years on the conclusion of the present season – a choice made amid accusations the programme has gone ‘woke’.
Declining viewing figures and widespread criticism that the present iteration of the journal present, first broadcast in 1974, is ‘pedestrian, vacuous, uninspiring and uninformative’ beneath host Alex Scott are additionally thought to have led the BBC to behave.
And former Sky Sports activities presenter Keys, 68, believes different BBC reveals will comply with go well with within the close to future.
‘It’s not Alex Scott’s fault Soccer Focus has folded – it’s an indication of the occasions,’ beIN Sports activities presenter Keys wrote on X.
‘MOTD might be subsequent. Viewing habits have modified. That’s why Grandstand & World of Sport ended. And Sportsnight. Pre-show & post-show wrapped round dwell video games will go quickly as effectively.’
The BBC introduced on Thursday that Soccer Focus can be coming to an finish after 52 years
Keys is leaving his position at beIN on the finish of the season and is shifting again to the UK to be together with his 37-year-old spouse, Lucie Rose, for the primary time since they married.
Former Arsenal goalkeeper Bob Wilson, who hosted Soccer Focus for 20 years from 1974 to 1994, hit out on the choice to axe the programme in a column for The Occasions on Friday.
‘It has run efficiently for 52 years, so goodness me, why are they eliminating it?’ Wilson wrote.
‘I’ve at all times watched the present when doable and beloved the truth that it was being loved by the subsequent era. Now that I’m 84, it was an enormous a part of not solely my life but additionally that of many soccer supporters. It’s unhappy information.
‘I’m actually disenchanted it has come to this. The BBC has mentioned will probably be changed subsequent season by an interview present about what makes footballers tick. That’s loopy.
‘Individuals need to be instructed concerning the huge video games of the weekend, the problems, the information of the week, dialogue, overlaying a variety of golf equipment and personalities.’
Followers on social media seem to see the cancellation of Soccer Focus as a great factor and the present had are available in for loads of criticism in recent times.
One posted on X: ‘Good – it has been an terrible woke joke for years. #defundtheBBC’
One other wrote: ‘Go woke, go broke!’
Keys fears Match of the Day could possibly be the subsequent soccer present on the BBC to face the axe
Writing within the Day by day Mail in March 2024, Simon Jordan added that the present had develop into ‘too smug, snug and pally-pally’ as debate raged over why a homosexual West Brom supporter had been invited on to speak about his sexuality.
Former pundit and BBC common Mark Lawrenson has beforehand argued the channel is ‘prime of the woke league’ following a rebrand that noticed him lose his job.
Followers have been break up on Scott’s position since she took over from Dan Walker in 2021, with one writing on social media following Thursday’s information that she was ‘the demise knell’ of the present.
BBC Sport chief Alex Kay-Jelski, nonetheless, has been fast to defend the previous England girls’s footballer. He mentioned Scott is ‘one in all our best presenters, is massively in style throughout the women and men’s recreation and is an enormous a part of our current and future’.
Scott has insisted she was going to depart Soccer Focus had the BBC not scrapped the long-lasting soccer present as she broke her silence with an Instagram assertion on Thursday.
‘I at all times knew this may be my final season on the present, which the BBC had been conscious of too’, she wrote.
‘My intention was to maneuver quietly into the subsequent chapter, however typically issues change.
‘When this present started all these years in the past, social media wasn’t a driving pressure, podcasts did not exist, and there was no instantaneous entry to data in the best way there’s at the moment. Now, by the point we go on air, the truth is you have already seen it, debated it, and lived it throughout so many platforms. That shift has modified the entire trade. TV audiences have been declining for years, whereas digital and on-demand viewing continues to develop.’
Scott’s predecessor, Dan Walker, hit out on the information with a thinly-veiled dig at his former employer.
Soccer Focus, which options evaluation and highlights of the sport, has been fronted by Alex Scott (proper) since 2021
‘Actually unhappy to listen to concerning the finish of Soccer Focus,’ he tweeted. ‘I beloved that present rising up. I used to look at it each week with my dad and I bear in mind how proud he was after I obtained the job.
‘It was such a privilege to take a seat within the chair for 12 years, work with an incredible staff on and off air and type so many lasting friendships. Saturdays had been at all times particular.
‘The soccer panorama is consistently altering and it’s disappointing that there isn’t house for a present that has meant a lot to so many individuals for therefore a few years.’
Pre-Covid pandemic viewing figures averaged 957,000 for Soccer Focus, and reached 1.12 million through the 2020-21 season. Within the 2022-23 marketing campaign, although, numbers had been as little as 687,000.
Final week the BBC introduced that it could reduce as much as 2,000 jobs in a bid to save cash in what might be its largest downsize in 15 years.
Workers had been knowledgeable of the cuts on Wednesday final week, with round 10 per cent of workers to lose their jobs.
