None of the many Macedonian TV channels decided to broadcast the major matches during the past two days: the derby of the First League between Vardar and Rabotnicki and the friendly game Azerbaijan vs. Macedonia. Disaster!
What is more important than domestic sport? Or particularly in this case, football. An Indian and Turkish TV soap operas, a basketball friendly not involving Macedonia, tennis match not involving a Macedonian player or two games that thousands of Macedonians are dying to watch? The stupidity of the Macedonian TV channels seems like it’s endless. They deserve heavy criticism for what they have done this Tuesday and Wednesday!
On Tuesday (09.08.2011), Vardar and Rabotnicki were playing at 20.00 CET at the new National Arena Philip II of Macedon in Skopje. A derby of Skopje with origins dating back 60 years, a game featuring Macedonia’s most popular club on one side (Vardar) and Macedonia’s most successful club in the past 5-6 years (Rabotnicki) on the other side. But, for the TV channels, this wasn’t important. Let’s see what the most popular Macedonian TV channels broadcasted during the derby:
MTV: friendly basketball game Serbia vs. Croatia
Kanal 5: a Bosnian soap opera
Sitel: first Spanish and than Turkish soap opera
Telma: some tv serie of origin we couldn’t locate
Alfa: a reality show
The very next day, the Macedonian national team was playing a friendly game away to Azerbaijan and once again none of the major channels decided to broadcast the event. Instead, this is what they broadcasted between the hours of 17.00 and 19.00 CET when the game took place:
MTV: tennis event Masters from Montreal
Kanal 5: a Turkish soap opera
Sitel: an Indian soap opera
Telma: the same tv series from the previous day
Alfa: some show
Pardon me for this but… WTF?? Is this normal? It’s the 21st century and the football fans can’t watch their games on TV, instead they have to look for streams on the internet! The worst offender is the MTV channel who is actually the national television network and for who every citizen of Macedonia is obligated to pay a tax. The other four channels listed above are next to blame, but we shouldn’t forget that there are also many other channels in this country that decided not to broadcast the two games. Don’t they want higher ratings? Macedonia is a sport loving country and the national team has been struggling lately but there is still plenty of interest among the fans to watch their games. Vardar and Rabotnicki is the Skopje derby and there was a lot of enthusiasm for this game since Vardar has a new team this season with many new players while Rabotnicki is the talk of the town after their success during Europa League qualifications.