No free lunch when it comes to TV sport
TVNZ takes inevitable beating for Commonwealth Games cover
The heat poor old TVNZ has been taking this past week over its coverage of the Commonwealth Games was always coming. Why? Because it’s been a while since most of us watched sport on commercial free-to-air telly.
One of life’s more interesting broadcasting ironies is that TVNZ once owned a pretty decent chunk of Sky TV but decided for reasons best known to itself to sell it.
Imagine how different the past 20 years would have been if the state TV operator had access to all the sport that Sky has made its fortune on.
Now the problem with the complaints from punters, ropeable about all the ads, is that they’d be moaning if their bums were on fire. In other words, as a broadcaster you can’t win, because the moaners either don’t get it or don’t want to get it.
Sport costs money and a lot of it, and you either pay for it through advertising or through a Sky-type subscription.
They moan about Sky and its prices and how bundling is wrong and antiquated, and now they moan about TVNZ and all the ads.
Now I confess I have watched virtually none of the Games because they’re an anachronistic social