Bring back public service sportcasting

By Greg McDonald

Millions watching last night’s FA Cup derby between Everton and Liverpool saw ITV make an inexplicable goal-missing blunder, which should prompt a long overdue change in our attitude to televised sport.

By missing the only goal of a two-hour encounter by cutting to unscheduled adverts during the dying minutes in many regions, ITV made the best possible argument for our national sports being shown free and uninterrupted on the BBC.

Unlike American football fans, for whom sport is the bits between the Coke ads, British football fans pay a license fee to the Beeb, and it’s time we demanded our money’s worth.

National sports like football, cricket and tennis owe their success not to commercial channels or a few greedy stars, but to hundreds of years of communal culture in which rules have developed, techniques have evolved, fitness has advanced, and a unique character has emerged as one generation inspires the next.

We whine that not enough of our kids want to play sport – but it’s hard to be inspired by Steven Gerrard when he only plays on Setanta at the Dog and Duck and under-18s aren’t allowed in.

It’s time we – the kids especially – all got our sports back, particularly since the tedious old argument that the BBC shows too much sport is long out of date in a digital age of vastly increased choice.

Sport is part of our national culture and common heritage. Last night’s ITV bungle was mere incompetence – the wider acquisition and exploitation of our common culture is inexcusable.

Comments

[James]

Great article!

[Mick Bradley]

How about the Beeb having a 24 hours sports channel like "Sky" has "Sky Sports"? In which it can show whatever sport is about at the time live, plus they have the "red button" facility too, there's even more scope for other sports to be shown on that as well.

I'm glad the Beeb have got F1 back...

[PJ]

What are you on KC? This country is getting so fat.. how will making all sport pay-per-view help? Kids need to watch Lampard, Gerard, Rooney and then go out and try and emulate them.
The schedules are chocca-block with drivel, cookery shows, home improvement shows, reality rubbish, fly-on-the-wall documentaries, who can lose the most weight shows- that to be honest, an uninterrupted game of footie is a breath of fresh air.
(Not too bothered about darts or horse racing but millions are.)
Probably the best bet is a BBC sport channel that licence payers can subscribe to if they so choose for a small subsidy. They might even be able to reduce the normal licence fee for non-sport lovers if the take-up was great enough.

[KC]

A fantastic reason to get all sport off our free channels completely.
No more changes of scheduled programming to make way for overpaid dumb animals to kick a ball around, sports can be shown on a pay to view channel which wont cut to Ads at the wrong moment and if they do you can then complain about it as you are paying for it.
And no the BBC shouldn't be showing it this isn't a free channel and paying to televise matches should not come out of the licence fee.

[Salvo]

Blimey it's not very often these days I agree with the orange ed but I have to say spot on. Football used to be accessible to everyone but the way the prices have risen to actually go-see in the last ten years, it's become the preserve of the rich.
At least the matches should be on terrestrial tv and preferably the BBC

[Equilibrium]

All Internationals, in any sport, should be shown on the BBC, and many more club matches. The working man is already hit hard if he wants to take his kids to a match, and he has to pay extra to watch on television, and all to pay the obcene wages of the players.