England Manager Sacked - A Roundup

As I promised earlier, here is a roundup of how the news media, with particular interest to the sporting news media, is reporting the story.

BBC Sport: McLaren sacked as England Manager.

ESPN Soccernet: McLaren insists, "saddest day of my career".

EuroSport: McLaren sacked.

Fox Soccer Channel: England fires coach McLaren after failure.

CBS Sports: England fire coach McLaren after failing to qualify for Euro 2008.

Setanta Sports News: McLaren takes it on the chin.

Sky Sports: Mac accepts England axe.

SportsNet Canada: McLaren era ends in England

Setanta Sports News launch date confirmed.

Just a few days ago I reported that Setanta Sports News would be added to the BARB figures on November 29th. Now, Digital Spy are reporting that November 29th has been cofirmed by Setanta and Virgin Media as the official launch date for the ITN-produced station.

The channel promises headlines every 20 minutes and will launch on Virgin Media channel 518 and on free-to-air digital satellite. No idea yet about position on the Sky EPG.

This promises to be a major new addition, and the possibility of this channel coming to Freeview remains very strong in my honest opinion. This is the first new sports news channel since EuroSport 2 replaced EuroSport News on the Sky platform. Contray to popular belief, EuroSport News didn't close, and continues to air in Asia and Australia. Indeed the news broadcasts on EuroSport 2 are simply relayed from EuroSport News, with branding changed as required. Perhaps this might cause EuroSport to reconsider bringing EuroSport News back to the UK and European markets, especially since EuroSport 2 is using less and less news coverage these days and providing more programming of its own.

TNA Doubles it's iMPACT!

Some very interesting news for the pro-wrestling industry was announced at TNA's No Surrender pay-per-view last night in the US. From October 4th, TNA Impact! becomes a two-hour show on Spike TV on US cable.

It is anticpated that UK satellite channel Bravo 2, which is currently airing Impact in the UK and Ireland will also expand their slot at around the same time. Whether EuroSport will do the same with their airings is not yet known.

This will prove to be quite troubling for WWE. Until now, TNA's 1 hour shows were not regarded as serious competition by WWE. But with the expansion of Impact! to 2 hours, WWE cannot afford to take the newcomer lightly. Now, it can truly be said that TNA has arrived. It has monthly pay-per-views, it has it's own World Championship, as it now no longer has use of the NWA world Heavyweight Championship, and now, its main show, Impact!, is expanding to 2 hours weekly.

Let the new wars begin! WWE vs TNA. The battles are just beginning...