Â鶹Éç

First, I read that said the Â鶹Éç had had more criticism than ever in this World Cup. That is true, but overwhelmingly it's a function of the interactive world. We haven't had a blog before, and our message boards have really taken off since the last World Cup in 2002. In this new media environment, we encourage people to give us their views - positive or negative - and they do! No complaint about that, but you then need to make sure that you cross-reference against proper qualitative research and against the headline numbers. For instance, a lot of bloggers are very critical of John Motson; but our market analysis says he's still the UK's most popular commentator among the many millions who watched the World Cup.

What we believe the numbers also show is that when people have a choice they opt in all media for the Â鶹Éç. Our lead in television over ITV was 25 per cent before last night's game; and in our first head-to-head of the tournament we won by a margin of 5:1. (Worth noting that for the FA Cup Final the Â鶹Éç beat Sky Sports by a ratio of 10:1). In radio, Five Live beats TalkSport; and on the web one estimate was that 58 per cent of all World Cup traffic in the UK was coming to

We therefore look forward to continuing to be a major force in football. On television we have two of England's Euro 2008 qualifiers coming up this autumn - starting with that titanic clash with, er, Andorra on September 2nd. Match Of The Day and MOTD2 return with their contract now guaranteed until the summer of 2010. Live Premiership and international football commentaries are on Radio Five Live; and our website will maintain and improve its service too.

And finally as we've noted elsewhere in this blog: both the World Cup in 2010 in South Africa and in 2014 in an as-yet-unknown location will be on Â鶹Éç television and radio.