IF you thought getting up at 4am to watch England was bad, it could have been worse – you could have been watching ITV.
At least BBM got to see Steven Gerrard’s early opener for the Three Lions. Anyone watching ITV HD back in Blighty saw a car advert instead. Nice to know some things haven’t changed back home eh?
And that wasn’t t
he only thing fans were pissed off with.
The advert-whore channel was also criticised for shoehorning in commercials every time there was a break in play, host Adrian Chiles looking like he’d been kept up all night by vuvuzeula horns and an inappropriate item on the Battle of Rorke’s Drift right before the game.
Unsurprisingly, the scores of people who had forked out for a new high definition TV just for the World Cup were a tad miffed. TV watchdog Ofcom received “several hundred” calls from irate fans complaining about the inexplicable jump to a Hyundai commercial.
One Twitter poster wrote: ‘ITV missed England’s goal because it was playing an advert. A joke and embarrassment quite frankly.’ Another added: ‘ITV HD is a joke. First England goal of the World Cup, and there was a Hyundai advert.’
And if you think the pundits on SBS are bad, ITV had Andy Townsend and Kevin Keegan. Come back Craig Foster, all is forgiven.
