Major Sports Talk Show Canceled After 28 Years

By Brian Jones

A popular sports talk show is going off the air. According to The Sun, Soccer AM will be canceled after being on the air for 28 years. The show has 10 episodes remaining, and the final is set to air on May 27 on Sky Sports. Soccer AM will end one day before the end of the Premier League season. According to The Athletic, Soccer AM will be replaced by Saturday Social which is set to target the younger viewers of Sky Sports. 

"Soccer AM has played an important role in our coverage of football for the past three decades, and we continually adapt to the evolving needs of our customers," a Sky Spokesperson said. "We now go into a period of consultation to discuss the proposed changes with our people. We are unable to provide more detail while these consultations are underway."

Soccer AM made its debut in 1995. Helen Chamberlain and Tom Lovejoy were the original hosts, and it is a 90-minute comedy show that runs through the week's soccer events with skits and challenges for guests and fans. Some of the guests that come on the show are soccer players musicians, other athletes and television personalities. 

The Sun said the staff was told on Tuesday that the show is being canceled. "It was a complete bombshell," a source told The Sun. "Morale is at an all-time low, they are raging. "It's going to be an interesting watch over the next few weeks."

Chamberlain spoke to The Athletic about her time on Soccer AM in 2020. "I was a football fan, not a fricking expert," she said. "I can spot a Rotherham shirt from 100 paces, but I couldn't tell you the best right-back in world football. That was another reason why Tim and I worked so well together. He was the one saying 'all of the shows on TV, they analyse everything, they criticise managers, they criticise chairmen, they criticise referees, he did this wrong, let's have a look at that.' We got sick of it. And we were just the antidote to all of that in-depth analysis."

"I loved all the excitement that went with football. But I wanted to make an entertainment show," Lovejoy said in the same interview. "I wanted to use football to make entertainment. I realised that football and music went hand in hand. We realised there was a massive hole in the market for like-minded people who loved footballers, indie bands, the urban music scene, soap stars — all that stuff that we loved."

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