End of the road for the popular highlights show
The league highlights programme, which attracts audiences of up to two million, was not broadcast on Boxing Day and will not appear on New Year's Eve and Bank Holiday Monday January 2nd.
Moreover, it looks as if it's going to be lost completely at the end of the season.
A BBC Sport insider told www.mirror.co.uk: 'It is coming to the end of a three-year contract and it will not be renewed.'
Rumours began to build up in the twitterverse earlier in the week following non-appearance of the show on Monday evening despite a full programme of fixtures across the three divisions.
Fans’ fury continued as regular host Manish Bhasin told his followers on the social networking site that the programme didn’t air because of a ‘budget decision’.
The show is useful to footy fansites getting up the first showing of their team's highlights, presenter Manish Bhasin also telling his Twitter followers: 'It's on til May and who knows maybe even longer....but...'
A BBC spokesman told the Mirror that the Boxing Day and Jan 2 league fixtures were not part of its deal and the broadcaster was unable to schedule a show for New Year's Eve games.
The corporation has committed to making 15% cuts in it's sports budget due to the license fee followed by Sky Sports putting pen to paper on a new three-year deal with the Football League paying them £195million.
Free-to-air broadcasting rights are still up for grabs which could allow the Beeb in at a cut price rate, or maybe ITV returning to the days of regional highlights and the odd live game, or national on their digital services.
The Shrimpers highlights will be available at least 48 hours after the matches are played on all the three dates above and S24 will bring them to you as soon as we can.
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