Highlights of England aways return to terrestrial

Before and after England's impressive 4-1 win in Croatia last week there was a bit of a stink over the rights to broadcast highlights of England's competitive away matches. The live rights belong to Setanta, a company with an increasinly bad public perception, and they've been at loggerheads with fans, Parliament and various football bods regarding their price for the rights to show highlights packages.

The debate raged. The nationals began to ask questions about whether England games should be either shown or highlighted on terrestrial TV as a matter of course. The same question was raised in the House of Commons (I'd dig up the Hansard link, but you wouldn't read it and their search function probably hasn't improved since the heady days of using it almost hourly), and fans bemoaned the fact that, after a good performance at last, Setanta were seemingly holding the footage to ransom.

Last Thursday, ITV sent out a press release announcing that it had agreed a deal with Setanta to belatedly show highlights from Zagreb. And I've just received another press release from those good folk at the station, which gleefully states:

"ITV can today announce that it has agreed a deal with Setanta to broadcast highlights of all of England's remaining World Cup 2010 away qualifying matches."

Good news indeed. The highlights will be shown on the correct day at 10.30pm, and add to ITV's full live competitive home rights. More ITV footy-related type stuff at ITV.com/football.

(Photo Credit: LA Times)