Onlinegooner has been emailed an exchange that took place last week between Marcus Glazebrook and ITV. Marcus is happy for us to reproduce it on the website

From Marcus Glazebrook: Once again I feel the need to write to you regarding the Champions League coverage next week on your station, as yet again ITV have chosen to neglect Arsenal Football Club and show them on your backwater station of ITV4, whilst Manchester United are shown on the flagship station of ITV1.

I have written to you twice before on this subject, and received replies such as "we will always show the home game in our schedule" and other feeble excuses but this continues to happen. Last season and this season Arsenal have been drawn on the same Champions League night as Man U, that is 5 fixtures last season and 4, so far, this season. Do you know how many times you have shown Arsenal? I will gladly enlighten you, the grand answer is …. zero.

Your continued media bias has led me to complain to Ofcom before, which I will again be doing following this email, I have also taken the step of including an Arsenal Fanzine to raise the issue with them.

Perhaps all Arsenal fans could have a boycott ITV for a day.

Recent press reports indicated that ITV was in some trouble and advertisers were pulling the plug left right and centre, perhaps they, like myself and others I know, are sick of the fact that ITV is turning in to nothing but a mouth piece for Manchester, ignorant of the fact that almost a third of the country live in the south east.

Some years ago you used to do the Champions League based on regional stations so at least my grandfather, who has 5 terrestrial channels only, could watch the game he wanted to and not have a team 400 miles away forced on him by an anti-southern television network.

Your response will have the usual rubbish on it about showing the most interesting game (ignoring the fact that Arsenal and Sevilla are two of the most attacking football teams in Europe) or we always show the home game (Arsenal 7 Slavia 0 was on ITV4) so I will hardly be waiting with baited breath, and I’m sure I’ll have to write to you again over the same thing.

From a disgruntled Arsenal fan who lives in the south east (that’s SOUTH of Manchester)

The reply from the duty officer at ITV: Thank you for your email. Scheduling concurrent Champions League games on ITV1 and ITV4 is always a difficult decision. A number of factors are taken into consideration when deciding which channel games will be shown on, including whether the game is played at home or away, the form of the teams involved, any history between the two sides, and the projected audience volume for the game.

This can lead to inequalities in certain years, when some teams are shown on one channel more than another. In the long term, these inequalities do even themselves out. To give the example of Champions League games from 2004/5 and 2005/6 seasons: Arsenal were shown eight times on ITV1; Manchester United and Chelsea six times each; and Liverpool five times.

ITV 4 is now available to over 80 per cent of UK homes.

Kind regards,

Marcus’ response: Without being privy to the previous schedule to check your figures, although it is something I will look into Excluding qualifiers
2004/05 CL games
Man U - 8 games, 4 av to ITV
A’senal - 8 games, 4 av to ITV
2005/06 games
Man U - 6 games, 3 for ITV
A’senal - 13 games, 7 for ITV

That means in 2004-06, Arsenal were shown in 8 out of 11 games – ratio of 0.73 (let’s not kid ourselves here, ITV had to show the last 3 games as no-one was in it bar Arsenal, whilst everyone was still there the ratio was 0.625), this rate drops to 0.44 next Wednesday morning when we would have been shown 8 times in 18 games.

Man U were shown 6 times in 7 games – ratio of 0.86, this increase to 0.94 next Wednesday morning when they would have appeared 15 times in 16 games.

Or put another way, Arsenal played 7 games more than Man U but only appeared twice more than them

It also means that Arsenal will have not been shown on your national terrestrial channel in the Champions League in nearly two years. The last appearance was the final in May 06, the last 16 in the Champions League for this season kicks off in Feb 2008.

No matter how it is dressed up that is a disgrace, even Celtic have played more on ITV1 in that time and both Glasgow clubs are shown in Scotland on your regional ITV network, And unless I am very much mistaken, ITV4 is not a free channel. It is available for those people who have a Digibox, Sky or cable.