Throughout the tournament ITV has been keen to offer something different from its public service rival, signalled by its selection of Adrian Chiles as anchor, where in the past reliable ex-BBC men like Des Lynam and Steve Rider have been drafted in. Their advertisers will have appreciated this shift, but for the rest of us the effect was that ITV's coverage became too jokey – as opposed to funny – by half.
The fact their highlights package on semi-final night included a clip of Ned Boulting saying "Hi, I'm Ned Boulting, and I am in a shebeen," and another of Chiles being hit in the nuts during a kickaround, tells you all you need to know about ITV's World Cup.
-----
Not that it was necessary to travel too far to be patronised, especially if you were African. Both channels managed to patronise a whole continent with their embarrassingly pro-Africa slant. In fairness, the BBC had a nice sequence of football playing kids mirroring World Cup incidents last night, but Andy Townsend and Gareth Southgate visiting Regina Mundi church in Soweto and exchanging platitudes with Chiles was just plain embarrassing.
On third-place final night Chiles would not shut up about Luis Suárez denying Ghana a place in the semi-finals, when as everyone knows – and Craig Burley said on ITV – any player would have reacted as the Uruguayan did. Africa good, the rest of the world bad, seemed to be the mantra this World Cup. If it is possible for a continent to be patted on the head, ITV and BBC managed it.
