BBC kicks off World Cup broadcast battle in Salford and provides contrast to ITV’s celebrity slop

Journalistic muscles were flexed with Ros Atkins factchecking real-world issues with production offering merits more achievable by working from home

Must a World Cup broadcast be on location? The BBC, for reasons of cost and environmental concerns, has rolled back to when tournaments were beamed back to the UK. Halcyon days of Brian Moore and Des Lynam accompanied by pundits in garish knitwear and beige furniture are long gone, if lamented. How to recapture their magic? Need it be a problem when the domestic market leader, Sky’s Monday Night Football, is broadcast from a business park near the M4?

ITV had the first two games – Mexico v South Africa and South Korea v Czechia – but its Brooklyn views of Lower Manhattan may yet fall victim to elements accentuated by those environmental issues. It also asks one of the World Cup’s leading questions: how dialled in is the American public? The distracting activity taking place behind Gary Neville, Ian Wright and Roy Keane suggests a city carrying out business as usual even while hot takes are cooked on the veranda.