Elitist Slater has scored an own goal with her dismissive approach
THE BBC’s Director of Sport doesn’t speak like the rest of us. To the great Bri ti s h public, Match of the Day is a great Saturday night in. To Barbara Slater, however, it’s a ‘global brand’.
Wimbledon and the London Olympics are viewed as great sporting events. To her, they are ‘unifying moments’ for the United Kingdom.
How ironic, then, that on the day David Cameron arrived in Edinburgh to breathe life into a 300-year-old Union, Ms Slater was taking a claw hammer to i ts remnants.
Be in absolutely no doubt: her metropolitan dismissal of the value of Scottish football to the Corporation serves only to feed t he grievance of Scottish nationalists everywhere.
The BBC throw £68million a season at Match of the Day, claims Slater, because it has a ‘ global appeal’.
In contrast, they pay an annual sum of £1million a year for SPFL highlights. Scottish football, says Slater, gets what it deserves.
The BBC are right on one score. The SPFL signed the deal they are now criticising. They agreed to it. Nobody tied their hands behind their backs. When the league signed the contract, Ralph Topping must have had some idea of what was in it.
But that was then. The SPFL are now looking — demanding — something better. They have sought common ground with the BBC and failed to find it. And Topping makes salient points.
Gary Lineker earns twice as much for his cheesy puns on Match of the Day than Scottish clubs do for a full season of highlights. That’s not right.
LET’S be clear here. No one argues that Ross County v Motherwell offers anything like the drama, quality and passion of a Manchester derby. The BBC were the only people willing to pay for SPFL highlights and have a duty to guard licence payers’ money.
Viewers i n Scotland watch Match of the Day as avidly as anywhere. It’s a simple fact that Match of the Day offers a better product. And Slater argues that the price reflects that. But that’s not the SPFL’s point. The BBC is a national state broadcaster. They are not Sky. They are not BT Sport. Those vast multinationals are private broadcasting enterprises run by wealthy men who see dollar signs in their sleep. The market is their master.
The Beeb was set up by Lord Reith, son of a Church of Scotland minister. Reith believed t he organisation should be Britain’s ‘guide, philosopher and friend’. Not just some of the nation; all of the nation.
The Beeb are not meant to go toe to toe with Rupert Murdoch in the marketplace. They can’t. ‘It’s like playing poker against Donald Trump or Warren Buffet,’ said legendary golf commentator Peter Alliss in January. ‘The BBC can’t compete against Sky’s bottomless pockets of money.’
No one wants this old institution to lose Match of the Day. It’s in the national fabric.
But to children of the 70s and 80s, Sportscene shares that billing. Archie MacPherson was the king of the airwaves for 30 years. But now hard-working Scottish BBC j ournalists are being asked to cobble together a poorly resourced product because Match of the Day is the only show deemed to matter.
In a list of ‘purpose priorities’ the BBC Trust is crystal clear. It is there to ‘cater for the different nations, regions and communities of the UK’. But right now that’s not happening. And in Scotland, people are furious.
The Beeb s hould not be throwing millions at Match of the
Day if i t means starving the provinces of a fair deal.
Scottish l i cence payers are charged the same £145.50 for their licence as everyone else. In all the BBC rakes in £300m from licence fee payers north of the border.
Scots contribute around nine per cent of the Beeb’s budget which, next year, will be £86m. But a little over one per cent will go towards a game which remains our national obsession.
The BBC say population doesn’t matter. That the sums paid are market- driven. The view of the SPFL is that population should matter. To a broadcaster with a public service remit, it should be crucial. And they have a point.
Some will think it over-dramatic to suggest that a poor deal for Scottish football could impact on the state of the Union.
But many of the disillusioned, permanently grieved types who vote SNP are middle-aged, angry men. To travel with the Tartan Army anywhere in the world is to witness Scottish Nationalism personified.
The bread and butter of the SNP is the Scottish football fan. The two speak the same language of grievance and conspiracy — the belief that Scotland gets a bum deal from England and the BBC. The words of Slater only play to their suspicions.
The Smith Commission will see the BBC lay its accounts before the Scottish parliament. Executives will be summoned to address broadcasting matters relating to Scotland.
Barbara Slater OBE started this mess. An Olympic gymnast in a former life, she will do well to spin her way out of it.