Google and Apple may not exactly be the first names that spring to mind when looking for alternatives to challenge Sky's dominance of sports broadcasting in Britain, but it should be no surprise that two of the giants of the tech and online world are eyeing up sport as a way to lure consumers into their new offerings.

The road to redemption from Hillsborough has been a lengthy and painful for many, many people. Hundreds of people lost family members or friends on that day in April 1989, and the feeling that the establishment was closing ranks in order to cover up the truth behind what exactly happened to result in the deaths of ninety-six innocent people has been a bitter pill for those that survived or have otherwise had to live with their loss to have to swallow.

The Homeless World Cup and Alzheimer Scotland. Two charities doing fantastic work. You know the donation drill.
Penultimate post time.
A suggestion from @theftblproject just minutes ago planted the seed for this post.
His Tweet read:
"In your very first post you wrote "Maybe Mr Romanov knows where this is going" - Five years on, does he?

Sorry Ray, but as Rupert Murdoch has announced we are to pay for content to view The Australian online I guess I won't be reading your football articles anymore!
But with Rupert on the nose perhaps he'll see the light in coming days and Ray will return to our screens in coming months - watch this space.

The end to an arduous 22-year campaign for truth surrounding the Hillsborough disaster could at last be in sight as the UK government has confirmed it will release all contemporary documents relating to the day in question.

After a 139,000-strong online petition and a moving parliamentary debate led Home Secretary Theresa May to announce up to 300,000 files will be released.

The Sun's Hillsborough source has never been a secret it was the police

I see that the Hillsborough family support group has called on The Sun to reveal the sources for its notorious story about the 1989 football disaster in which 96 people died. The paper ran a splash, headlined THE TRUTH, which blamed Liverpool fans for causing the tragedy.

Tearing up the pooled TV deal is a recipe for the rich to get richer | David Conn

Since the establishment of the Premier League clubs have divided TV revenue between them, but this is under threat So, in relaxed, celebratory mood a year on from the court battle which ousted Tom Hicks and George Gillett from Liverpool and installed new Americans, Fenway Sports Group, as the club's owners, the managing director, Ian Ayre, mused out loud about breaking up the Premier League TV deal.

Why ongoing battle over Prem TV rights could be as entertaining as the matches themselves

Rupert Murdoch must surely be wondering whether at some point this year he smashed a mirror without noticing. But as the 80 year old Australian was forced to close the News Of The World and appear before a House of Commons Select Committee examining the small matter of phone hacking, at least the tycoon could be sure of one thing: that his television empire is safe.

In the first of a possible new series, EPL Talk offers the rash, abrasive and mostly ignorant views of a tabloid publication from the far-flung reaches of Rupert Murdoch's empire, Talk of the World. Rest assured, the views expressed below do not...
This is a content summary. Visit http://www.

What, the inevitable question that will now be repeatedly asked will say, are they trying to hide? A little over two decades has passed since the Hillsborough disaster, and still no-one has been brought to account in any meaningful day for what happened on the fifteenth of April 1989. Since then, discourse on the subject has ranged from what we all know and understand on the subject that this was a failure of crowd control, a failure of policing and basic safety to the innuendo-laden and frequently hate-driven perpetuation of a pack of lies that was spread shortly after it occurred.

The healthy obsession Labour MP Tom Watson has with the fall of Rupert Murdoch, son James, and the News Corporation media group has deflected attention away from the Department of Culture, Media and Sport select committee's recently-published report on football governance. And this is probably a plus.

It's sometimes easy to laugh at Yanks. I remember watching a pulsating FA Cup tie at Stamford Bridge in 1995 when Manchester United roared into a miraculous 5-0 lead against Chelsea only to concede three goals in the last twenty minutes, leaving them desperate to hang on for the 5-3 win. As the huge crowd drew breath at the end a lone American voice was heard saying, 'Wow, that was some game!

" I'll persuade the Israelis to give up Jerusalem if you come back to the hotel with me"

The corollary. Sepp Blatter, FIFA president for life!

Mohamed Bin Hammam is banned from all footballing activity for life as the FIFA ethics (now that is an oxymoron) committee finds him guilty of bribery charges as feared but we all know who is smiling through all this.

Have fun with this interactive graph from the Wall Street Journal that allows you to click and drag the victims of the NOTW phone hacking in line with the chain of villains who actually carried out these black ops. All unintentional of course but worthy of a snicker or two.

You can do this with Ryan Giggs, Paul Gascoigne, Jude Law, and liberal firebrand George Galloway, all of them hacking victims amongst many.

Why Bryan Robson deserves his financial reward unlike mercenaries Modric, Cesc and Tevez

I stumbled across an interview the other day which had me beating the table as wildly as Rupert Murdoch in denial. It was given last summer by Luka Modric, after he'd signed a new deal at Spurs.

They are as crooked as they come. But while there is little sympathy for Mohammed Bin Hammam for allegedly bribing CFU officials for presidential votes there is no doubt that only he of all those who stand accused is being put on trial. The consequences if found guilty are severe - he stands to be barred for life from FIFA under corruption clauses.

During today's Parliamentary hearing's in the UK concerning NewsCorp's knowledge and involvement in the phone and E-mail hacking scandal that led to the closure of "The News of The World" newspaper, we had somewhat of an exciting interlude when a member of the public gallery brushed past security and attempted to slap a pie in the face of 80 year old media mogul Rupert Murdoch.

A personal view -
One story has been suffocating all other news in Britain this week - the phone hacking furore surrounding Rupert Murdoch's media empire.
Journalists have been arrested, senior policemen have resigned, politicians of both main parties are scrambling to deny their links to News International, Hugh Grant has led the prosecution and tonight comes news of the sudden death of a whistleblower.

Toppling the Murdoch Empire: Could a Pub Landlady from Portsmouth help seal BSkyB's fate? is a post from: Just Football

While the News Corporation / News International phone hacking storm continues to rumble with menace, Theo Fan reports on another threat facing Rupert Murdoch, and how the fate of the televised game and BSkyB could rely on a pub landlady from Portsmouth:

Who will have the biggest impact on domestic football in the next 10 years?

So Murdoch sends Rebekah Brooks to tell all those staff they have lost their jobs, she marched in flanked by security staff and then marched out.

Her job is safe though.

Murdoch et al must think we were born yesterday...the News of the World is gone but the urls for The Sunday Sun are already registered.

So Murdoch sends Rebekah Brooks to tell all those staff they have lost their jobs, she marched in flanked by security staff and then marched out.

Her job is safe though.

Murdoch et al must think we were born yesterday...the News of the World is gone but the urls for The Sunday Sun are already registered.

There are defining moments when a spotlight is shone into a world and all of a sudden everything is seen in brutal daylight....like the lights going up in the nightclub so everyone can see who it is they've been dancing with then trudge bleary eyed to the exit shaking their heads. Northern Rock and Lehman Brothers brought the suicidally greedy, debt-addicted bankers to their senses, the MPs expenses scandal presented us with a scandal that was beyond parody as we saw how the noses were in the troughs.

By Darshan Joshi, writing from Sydney

The powers of fate will look upon the masses of match previews as one collective jinx, but as far as European football goes, it does not get bigger than this. Sure, the winner of the Coca-Cola Championship playoff will go on to receive a payoff the size of which the likes of Rupert Murdoch have not (yet)* seen, but as far as the weighing scale entertainment potential goes, we are at our sport's zenith.

LONDON, England A British politician defied a court order on Monday by identifying Manchester United's Ryan Giggs as the soccer star fighting a legal battle to prevent newspapers from publishing allegations of an affair. The release of Giggs' name will be seen as a victory for the media over celebrities and their lawyers after [.

-
-
- Throughout the day, updates, comments and perspectives re QPR and football in general are posted and discussed on the QPR Report Messageboard...Also Follow: QPR REPORT ON TWITTER
_____________________________________________________________________________________
- QPR vs Hull: Match Reports and Managerial Comments
MAIL/Christian Sylt
Formula One boss Ecclestone puts £100m price tag on QPR
Formula One supremo Bernie Ecclestone indicated he would consider selling his West London football team Queens Park Rangers with a £100m price tag.

"If Rupert Murdoch sees something he likes he tends to pay up for it" financial analyst Patrick Yau said this week as the US based Australian media mogul was expected to pay at least 875p a share to...
Continue to the full story

If you are trading on the ICC Cricket World Cup (and after England's 'efforts' in their opening 'match' versus the Netherlands, who wouldn't be?), you should be aware that there is a varying delay in time between the action taking place on the Indian sub-continent and the hyperreality being put on your screens by the Murdochracy.

Broadcasters like to wrap the FA Cup in nostalgia and treat its history and traditions with reverence. ESPN, who screened the first of three fourth-round ties in two days yesterday, is pioneering a more experimental approach.