I'm very pleased/fortunate I have sky+, I'm usually out on a friday so being able to watch it Saturday lunchtime (about when I get up) was excellent, but it's suddenly disappeared. I missed a few because of this.

But generally I'm pleased with bravo, only other really annoying thing is having the scrolling text messages on the screen during live games.

A semi-spoof, George, on the grounds that the second paragraph might, if I was lucky, create a 'red rag - bull' interface if you were about...

I don't consider it unreasonable to say that C4 didn't help the viewing figures by messing around with the scheduling, but it would be facile & unreasonable to say that this was the only cause.

Only the most ardently blinkered C4FI viewer could try to deny that viewing figures prior to this messing about had declined to the point where C4 were sufficiently disappointed to ponder whether or not renewing the contract was worth the money.

My sole criticism of the way C4 ditched the programme was the way in which the channel seemed to lose its nerve in admitting that the game was up.

When asked, often by foro users of the time, C4 always came back with a 'Football Italia is an important part... flagship...blah... vibrant sports coverage...blah' response rather than simply saying - 'we're very sad about it, but as a public broadcaster [which they are], we can't justify spending the money on acquiring the rights once they run out. The rights will cost much more [which at the time they would have done] and the viewing figures don't justify the expenditure. Sorry, but that's the way it is'.

Given the loss of viewers by the penultimate season and putative cost of the rights renewal as it appeared at the time, an alternative outcome would have been quite wrong.

Since I only have 'Poor People TV', i.e. terrestrial, I get my J.R. fix here. It's also good for micro-highlights.

There was also very little information from Channel4 concerning them giving the rights up.

On the last Gazzetta of the final season, they showed a montage of "Great moments from the past 10 years of Italian football" - translation: "The best bits from the now-former-C4 show, Football Italia" - but there was never any explicit mention that the rights were considering being relinquished.

We spend a fair amount of time on the Channel 4 site, and despite constant questioning, we were never given any answers as to the situation.

How 'ordinary' viewers were meant to know the situation, I don't know.

As a result of the confusion, we were left with NO coverage on any UK channel for half the season.

I don't blame C4 for axing Football Italia, but I feel they could have been slightly more co-operative with fans who simply wanted to know whether they were going to have to fork out hundreds for an Italian Sky dish - as some on this forum did, IIRC.

Slightly off-topic, but what has happened to Dave Farrar? He was a good commentator on the Serie A Eurosport games, but I haven't heard him recently.

He also appeared to be a semi-regular viewer of this forum - as proved by his name-dropping of Badman and myself, amongst others...

I was wondering the same thing a few months ago.
Dave Farrar was pretty much the only highlight of eurosport's coverage.

He did have a european section on fivelive on a monday at one point but i haven't listened for a while. He always stuck up for the italian teams though.

Is Peter Brackley still working?

Indeed he is, Giovanni - he commentated on Bravo's Juve-Fiorentina offering on Sunday.

I think Dave Farrar was commentating on Eurosport's coverage of Lyon v Marseille in the French Cup this evening.

Marseille pulled off a shock 2-1 win, by the way...

I remember the massive thread on the old foro campaigning for it to be reinstated. They should have kept everyone more informed but nevermind.

At least the foro survived.

MLV, I think it was Eurosport's other commentator, John Roder, who named-checked Badman and you. He is now a regular on Match of the Day, incidentally.