Welcome to The Addition, where I cover the crossover between culture, media and sport.

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As had been speculated upon, Mark Chapman, Kelly Cates and Gabby Logan will replace Gary Lineker as the presenters of Match of the Day. The trio will divide responsibilities across MOTD, MOTD 2 and MOTD Champions League.

Commenting, Alex Kay-Jelski, Director of BBC Sport said:

​Read more on the blog​

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Women's football in England has made huge strides in recent times, with more fans than ever before watching games on TV and from the stands. Yet, many are still put in a difficult position if their club's men's and women's team's games clash. Spurs have this once again this weekend, with the women kicking-off at home against Leicester at 12.30pm and the men going away to Everton at 2pm, live on Sky. Commenting in his pre-match press conference, Spurs Women's boss Robert Vilahamn said that "we should be good to make sure we don't play in the same time. But in the future, when everybody's having a really professional women's team and men's team, you will be having a really big problem too, with the schedule, right?" He added that the broadcasters "also need to make sure they can dictate it, because they provide a lot of money into the business as well, so you need to respect that, but obviously you want to have so many people as possible that could come and watch the games."

Tortoise Goes For The Observer

The deal that would see media start-up Tortoise buy-out The Observer has been controversial from the start. Tensions quickly escalated and staff at the newspaper went on strike. Former Guardian journalist James Ball gave a good explanation of what was going on on the podcast. You can listen to that here. Now that the deal is all but done, the industrial action has stopped, although I suspect newsroom resentment remains.

​Per The Financial Times, government officials have written to both organisations. However, neither that story nor conversations I’ve had suggest the deal itself is in any danger. This is all standard procedure - even locals merging would have to through stage one of the Enterprise Act. However, it is another hoop for those keen to complete the deal to jump through.

An interesting thing to note, given all the furore, is that Alan Rusbridger joined his fellow former editors in signing a letter that called for the current deal to be stopped. That’s the same Alan Rusbridger who explored the sale of The Observer during his tenure.

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