Varied diet of sport ensures licence fee is worth it
With the BBC a regular target for critics, Alan Tyers asks whether the corporation offers value for money
As everyone knows, the BBC is outrageously biased towards/against the Government/the Labour Party. Its relentless, uncritical promotion of the Remain/leave position over Brexit was nothing short of a scandal, although not a surprise, given that this rat’s nest of Commies/ neo-lib shills had previous with its one-eyed Yes/no partisanship in the Scottish Independence referendum and its continuing persecution/lionisation of Jeremy Corbyn.
For the above reasons, among others, some people have had enough of the BBC and want it to lose the funding it gets via the licence fee; some of those people, coincidentally, are among the politicians who the BBC’S current affairs arm holds to account. Some others are in positions of influence at the BBC’S commercial rivals. Some others are citizens who object to being threatened with the pokey for not paying a tax on telly ownership. Others yet simply think they should get everything they want when they want it, for free, like children do.
All of these groups contain sports fans, so the question put here as the nation considers whether to usher Auntie towards Dignitas is this: do sports fans get good value from the BBC?
The answer, and
I do apologise for the nuanced view, is: yes and no.
“No” if they want to enjoy live football from our nation’s sporting behemoth, the Premier League, or indeed the Champions League. They cannot watch the national football team outside tournaments, nor the cricket team, and only some of the rugby union.
Not much golf and hardly any racing, car or horse. All of this we know, but it sometimes feels strange that we just accept it.
On the football side, for a generation Match of the Day provided a free-to-air bridge to the Premier League, and its coverage set the agenda for debate. Whether MOTD retains its heft in the social media era, when action and opinion can be delivered in bite-size chunks by all and sundry, is questionable. And not having a dedicated sports channel means that, for TV viewers, the amount and quality of coverage, build-up and analysis that pay-tv can deliver is streets ahead, in football, cricket, golf and others.
Tennis, or rather Wimbledon, is the annual event the BBC goes all in on, using its muscle across its various platforms, and it does it very well.
And for those major football championships and Olympics, the resources put in and the nation-uniting drama that comes out, mean that there will always be wide yearning to have these on the Beeb.
BBC Sport seems happiest with events where there is some societal narrative beyond what happens on the pitch: see its excellence at the Women’s World Cup; the fact that the Paralympics has been added to the “crown jewels” list.
The free market would not, could not, provide this; either you are going to think that is the sort of thing a wealthy country should spend a few quid on or you think it is crowbarred social engineering. Either is fair enough. Ultimately, though, is the moderate to serious sports fan getting telly satisfaction from our BBC on stuff the free market would serve up? The answer to this is “no”.
But on other questions, “yes”, a wonderful, varied, nerdy, local, passionate “yes”. TMS. Brilliant Radio Five Live coverage of not just football but golf, tennis, horses, athletics, boxing. A massive, albeit dry website.
Flicking through the options now I see countless podcasts and local sports shows: Wheelchair Quad Nations, the Irish Premiership football, Peter Crouch, Hibs women, non-league football, 3½ hours of coverage of Gloucester rugby on Saturday. A podcast about Atletico Madrid, a West Midlands football phone-in. “The Scrimmage: A Norwich City Podcast”, which sounds more dramatic than perhaps it actually is. An hour of Northampton Saints news with BBC Radio Northampton. “Cat a Charlo sy’n pwyso a mesur beth aeth o’i le yn erbyn y Gwyddelod yn Nulyn”, which is a reality TV show about archery in Elvish.
A nation is more than its GDP, a culture is more than its mainstream juggernauts, and no other system bar a licence fee can give sports fans all that. And for three quid a week? It would be the biggest own goal of all time for us to give it up.
Others think they should get everything they want when they want, for free