Entertainment for Insomniacs
Created | Updated Dec 16, 2004
Egon- watching late night television so you don't have to
Some extraordinary news, readers. A British ex-pro sportsman has
become a pundit and is actually good at it. No, really.
Obviously I'm not talking about Alan Shearer, nor am I referring to
the unfeasibly BBC-employed Steve Claridge, no.
The man in question is Mancunian NBA Basketball veteran John Amaechi,
who is the analyst on Channel Five's NBA coverage and does so with
occasional humour, genuine insight, serious analysis, a wealth of
experience and hardly a single 'erm'.
The intelligent, knowledgable Amaechi fulfills the role of sidekick to main presenter Mark Webster, previously presenter of NFL American
football coverage and whose switch to the newly-acquired NBA coverage
may be connected to the loss of NFL playoff games, which will be shown
on ITV2 this year. There is also the fact that NHL hockey coverage is
unlikely to take place at all this season due to a pay dispute,
although Jaromir Jagr has offered to take a paycut from $11million to
$8million a year... which will obviously have a great effect. Anyway,
this has serious consequences for Five's late night sport coverage,
meaning that Snooker has managed to sneak it's way into the Wednesday
night/Thursday morning slot which NHL traditionally fills in the
winter and Major League Baseball occupies during the summer months.
Five's coverage of AMerican sports is unrivalled in Britain - Webster
and Jonathan Gould, along with Simon Goulding, present the NFL, NHL,
NBA and MLB, mainly with pictures from US sports channel ESPN which
also, rather strangely, provides the channels coverage of foreign
football; not just the US Major League Soccer, but also the Portugese,
Dutch and Argentinian leagues. Added to Channel 4's late night
coverage of Italian and Brazilian football, ITV's Champions League
repeats at around 3 in the morning and such diverse attractions on
those three channels as FIVB Beach Volleyball, Iron Man triathlons
and various motorsport, you realise that, even without a digital
receiver of any kind, the sports-loving insomniac always has something
to watch.
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