Ever since the coronation, the default view of the world for normal people up and down the country has been television. Quite literally life through a lens.

I spent the best part of a decade making programmes to appear on that screen in the corner of the living room. Early mornings, late finishes, overnights, weekends, bank holidays, cancelled holidays, home, away — I’ll let you into a secret that it’s not terribly glamorous. So news that this weekend’s England game will only be shown on the internet really caught my attention.

I understand why people are rather upset:

*you can’t watch it in a pub

*the quality is not as good

*smaller screen means harder to watch with friends

*talk of limiting audience to 1m to stop it crashing

*cost for people who already subscribe to a pay-TV service

*it should be on TV and free because it’s England, after all

I agree with a lot of these points.

Thing is, this seems to be the first time TV has failed to deliver. There’s now a chink in TV’s armour; it no longer has the monopoly. Services like the iPlayer have gone a long way toward making TV-style content accessible away from the telly. Football (and indeed sport more generally) has fuelled the takeup of satellite TV and services like interactive and HD, as well as a plethora of web innovations — will it now force mainstream consumers to take the next step in embracing and adopting this new way to consume video?