Goonervision

It had to come. Arsenal FC has started its own television channel.

We've seen lots of approaches to the task of monetising football. Almost every club has its own web site (though few are as charming as the one for Royale Union Saint-Gilloise, the 'other' Brussels team, which includes a touching little museum of artefacts from the days when they were in the first division). We've seen ITV Digital drop a bundle on televising lower league matches - though this was at least partly due to the fact that they'd paid way over the odds for the content.

But the odd thing is that not that Arsenal are doing this. It's that they've waited so long. Man U set up its own TV channel in 1998; Celtic and Rangers signed a deal with Setanta last year. (That's why Virgin apparently packages Celtic TV and Rangers TV together - not a combination likely to appeal to many Glaswegians.)

But it's not a passport to riches. MUTV has a viewer share of less than 1% with 48,000 viewers. That might work nicely if you were very niche, but MUTV isn't. It's competing with... let's see; BBC1, ITV, Sky Sports... and all the national newspapers...

None the less the fact that these clubs can launch their own TV shows is a confirmation of two great media trends. One, the fact that we're inhabiting a multi channel universe, and channels are becoming more and more focused. (That actually has big implications, which the government typically hasn't realised, for public service broadcasting; the Reithian imperative was created for a media-poor universe, but it's equally important for a universe which is so media rich, so filled with niche, with focus, with partiality, that we need somewhere to have an objective, or at least even-handed (the two are not quite the same) broadcaster.)

And two, the costs of television have come down dramatically. (And indeed of film, as the Blair Witch Project showed. Cannes in a Van continues the trend of stripped-down film making and showing.) There's always been "cheap television" but now, *good* television can be cheap, too.

I do wonder though if the economics really stack up. The worrying thing is that on the numbers I'm seeing for MUTV, I'm not sure they do. And MUTV presumably isn't paying on an arm's length basis for its content.... the message for other broadcasters is stark.