Re-runs and highlights, the corona impact on channels
MUMBAI: It’s 2011 again, and India is rampaging through to the World Cup. Yuvraj Singh, unaware that he has cancer, is driving Brett Lee through the covers in flamboyant style, making light of the pressure of a quarter-final chase. Or Virender Sehwag, flaying the Pakistani pace men in Mohali in the semis. Let Ravi Shastri’s baritone bark, repeated ad infinitum, bury itself deep inside your head: “Dhoni finishes off in style, India lift the World Cup”.
Tune into any of Star Sports Network’s 16 sports channels right now, and you can drown yourself in past glory.
In a normal world, this is the time when Star would be busy with pre-ipl programming, whipping up interest around the game’s biggest T20 gala. But this is a world in lockdown, with all live sporting events suspended. That leaves sports broadcasters with little option but to endlessly beam re-runs, archival programming, and documentary features.
The Star network, which holds the rights to cricket played in India, has had to fall back heavily on triumphant moments for Indian cricket. For the next 30 days, Star will air re-runs of the best IPL games, and highlights packages of the best batting, the best wickets, etc. It’s not just the IPL—A host of content for which Star holds the rights, including the Premier League, Bundesliga and F1 are all suspended.
“Rights come at a premium. Once the live event is over, the pictures lose their value significantly. Old footage is useful for a programming series. But to continue doing that for the network becomes a low revenue to no revenue option,” says an industry insider who worked with a leading broadcaster till recently.
In the US, leading broadcaster ESPN’S executive vice president Burke Magnus spoke to espnfrontrow.com about the day the NBA decided to suspend games: “Thursday, March 12, 2020 is a day none of us will soon forget,” he said. “We had an all-hands programming “war-room” environment in the big conference room on the third floor of ESPN’S Building 12. We had individual sport category programming teams relaying information as they were hearing it and also executing changes in real time, while the core content strategy group and our programming senior staff were making in-the-moment decisions. By Friday (March 13), we began working from home for the foreseeable future, so we went from our most hectic on-site work environment one day, to relying on cell phone, email and text the next.”
India’s other major sports network, Sony pictures, that runs a bouquet of 10 sports channels, faces the same crisis.
Sony, after losing the high stakes IPL rights battle to Star, acquired rights for cricket in England to go with its South Africa and Australia rights. Euro 2020, Sony’s prime sporting acquisition, is already Euro 2021. Sony also holds rights for Tokyo 2020, scheduled to begin in four months time, but whose future looks increasingly uncertain.
For now, Olympic programming content like ‘Unforgettable Olympics Moments’ and ‘Great Comebacks’ will have to do. The live Olympic handover ceremony remains on schedule for this Thursday. As does the WWE Wrestle Mania on April 5, which will go ahead behind closed doors.
Sony is incidentally airing a five-episode documentary series on Indian women’s cricket this month, which fits perfectly into the gaping hole left by the absence of live sport. Charu Sharma, prolific commentator on live sporting events in India and an old broadcasting hand, says that “TV companies have to work extra hard” to hang on to viewers.
“There is this famous TV quote—‘if it’s not live, it’s dead’,” he says. “Who wants to watch a dead event?” Re-runs and archival material is of very low value. It’s about live sport, happening at that point in time, regardless of what time it is happening, or at which part of the world.”