Tune in, turn on, drop out: Coverage falls short

OPINION: Watching TVNZ’s coverage of the Commonwealth Games has been like taking a step back in time.

For all the criticism that goes Sky TV’s way, it’s been a PR masterpiece from the pay TV network not to bid for these Gold Coast Games and allow the state broadcaster to pick them up.

Because it’s given everyone a reminder of how bad TVNZ is at covering sport.

Their gaffe on Monday night when they didn’t intend to show Joelle King going for a gold medal in the squash final, highlighted how terrible the coverage has been.

Instead of showing this, we had two African boxers on TVNZ 1. Is there anyone out there who can remember the name of either fighter, let alone which country they came from?

There was similar outrage with the bowls, so lessons aren’t being learnt.

Yes, you can make the argument that they’re being streamed online, but not everyone has, or can afford, decent broadband.

People want to see it on a big screen, families like to gather around the TV for big sporting events, not someone’s iPhone.

It’s also perplexing that they’re not putting the other sports on their AppleTV app; surely this could have been a way to appease some viewers.

The problem for TVNZ is that Sky has set the bar so high with their coverage of big multipart events.

Just think back to the recent Winter Olympics. To paraphrase Eric Bana in The Castle, ‘‘curling, 24 hours, a day’’.

With multiple channels on Sky TV you could watch what you want.

If you felt like settling down to catch some women’s 25m pistol qualifying on Tuesday afternoon, then you could when Sky had the Commonwealth Games, under TVNZ’s model, you can’t watch that anywhere.

TVNZ obviously did a deal to get one channel on Sky’s platform dedicated to the coverage, but why didn’t they get more than one?

TVNZ were dreadful when they had rights to the ASB Classic before they went to Sky and just look at how much the coverage of the tennis events has improved.

In some countries, like Australia and the UK, they have laws to keep some sporting events on free-to-air TV, perhaps we need the opposite here.

They must be rubbing their hands with glee at Sky as the nation comes together in outrage at the poor job TVNZ is doing.

Given what’s happened at the Gold Coast, do we really want TVNZ having the rights to the next Rugby World Cup?

Can it be trusted not to stick an advert for Mortein Mozzie Zapper just as Beauden Barrett is about to kick the winning conversion in the final?