SABC gives cricket audience the finger
SOUTH Africans who discovered this morning that the SABC is not broadcasting commentary on the first oneday international cricket match between Sri Lanka and the Proteas in Colombo had better get used to radio silence on sport events.
The state broadcaster has pulled the plug on live ball-by-ball cricket commentary on Radio 2000 in favour of periodic voice reports, and it plans to do the same with its coverage of major soccer and rugby matches.
Although the official line on the blackout of live commentaries was put down to a failure to secure the rights, insiders claimed Radio 2000 managers purposely did not budget for cricket rights because they did not want sport cluttering the schedule.
Not only will the move deny listeners live coverage, it will put dozens of freelance commentators and production staff out of work. “We need to know where we stand,” said one freelancer.
SABC spokesman Kaizer Kganyago explained the decision to snub the cricket audience thus: “We don’t have the rights.” He confirmed that the Sri Lanka tour’s one-day international series would not be broadcast by the SABC “on any of our platforms”.
Asked why the SABC did not hold those rights, Kganyago said: “We were unable to secure the rights.”
Cricket South Africa has sometimes allowed the SABC to broadcast matches free of charge because the organisation has said it does not have the money to put games on the air, much less to pay for the rights.
Funding may not be the problem. Rather, it seems Radio 2000 managers are against devoting large blocks of airtime to live sport. Insiders say Radio 2000 managers had not budgeted for cricket rights because they want to turn the station into a commercial one. Accordingly, the station has been removed as a platform for broadcasting cricket.
Full match coverage on the World Cup in Brazil is being carried on SABC stations only because the broadcaster still holds rights it secured for the 2010 tournament, which was played in South Africa. Kganyago said he was “not aware” of plans to also shelve live soccer and rugby coverage. But another SABC source insisted “the sword has been put over rugby and soccer”.
Cricket updates will be heard on Radio 2000 only every 15 minutes during the one-day internationals in Sri Lanka, even though the times do not clash with World Cup soccer matches. The test series starts on July 16, three days after the World Cup final, but will suffer the same fate.
The SABC brings sport to many more South Africans than pay channel SuperSport. In October 2011, 23 773 441 viewers watched coverage of Australia’s tour on SABC3 and 2 002 706 tuned in on SuperSport.
In the latest listenership figures from the South African Audience Research Foundation, released in May, Radio 2000 had 919 000 listeners between October 2013 and March 2014, up from the 868 000 it received between September and December 2013. Talk Radio 702 had 856 000 listeners, SAfm 646 000 and newcomer Power FM 91 000.