EHW wrote:
I would imagine that the audience of Boots n All was almost exclusively hardcore RL fans. I doubt many people were scanning the TV guide at 8pm on a Wednesday and decided to give Boots n All a go if they were not RL fans.
Boots n All used to be good when it was the only chance you got to see the highlights from the previous weekend and it had exclusive previews of the coming weekend games with interviews etc...
All the highlights are done in a separate program/available online; and all the other content filler stuff is available online on individual club websites, social media, BBC online and SKY website.
Who wants to wait 6 days until Wednesday to hear what Phil Clarke thinks of Castleford's 2nd try from the previous Thursday, when 2 minutes after it happened you can get instant reaction on the internet from around the world.
It had rightly moved away from the games themselves ie highlights. It can talk about incidents and issues in the game, like for instance Paul Rowley and Leigh, or Wayne Bennett as the new England coach. Or it can look at issues in the amateur game, or at funding of clubs etc it has the full breadth of RL to talk about.
I'm sure the audience probably was predominately hardcore RL fans, but there's far more chance of non-hardcore fans/general interest people watching it on TV rather than online. It also gives RL another little nudge into the consciousness of people when they see it on the TV guide than if it's missing entirely. That kind of gradual, drip-drip effect is one RL has to utilise if it wants to increase its profile. It's partly why we never gain any traction, we have odd flurries of activity and publicity (GF/CF and internationals) and then absolutely nothing. For 10 months of the year people barely know RL exists.
To further retreat on to the active-choice modem that the internet is would not help us at all.
