From: Rab C. Nesbitt
Subject: Re: BBC Sports Coverage (was Re: Just laughing at England)
Followup-To: rec.arts.tv.uk
Organization: The Two Ways, Govan.
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1992 10:49:30 GMT
Reply-To: dam@dcs.gla.ac.uk
X-Posted-From: mac_f173_76.dcs.gla.ac.uk
NNTP-Posting-Host: sol.ctr.columbia.edu

In article <18507.9211161724@thor.cf.ac.uk> scogpw@thor.cf.ac.uk (Gordon
Walker) writes:
>In article <BxtBE9.CKC@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk> dam@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk (David
Morning) writes:

Wearing my other hat as my server's down :-)..

>Isn't all this a matter of BBC Scotland's budget and how much they think
>it should be spent on sport (as opposed to music and news stuff etc)? Down 
>here in Wales (which doesn't seem to figure much in your arguments! :-) 
>we always seem to get extra Rugby matches, and our own version of Sportsnight 
>when something Welsh is on. I can't think BBC Wales would get a
>bigger budget than BBC Scotland. But on HTV (ITV here) they seem to think 
>boxing is more worthy of coverage than football (that's when it's useful 
>to be able to pick up an English signal aswell!).

I think your missing my point, or maybe I didn't put it across as well as I 
should have. My main complaint relates *nationally* produced programs intended
for *national* consumption rather than locally produced one's for local
consumption. What we appear to have at the moment is a locally produced (in
England) program being transmitted nationally. That's quite different.

BTW I should mention that STV (our equivalent of HTV) DOES show the Cammanachd
Cup final and curling so all is not lost. The ITV companies seem to have a
better balance of local sports coverage for local consumption. I'd even hazard
a guess that Ulster TV transmits hurling - can anyone in NI confirm this?

>I don't think arguments about other sports and their interest value comes
>into BBC's treatment of Scotland, which you seemed to think it did. 
>Can you really speak for the rest of the country when it comes down to
>who's interested in what sport? How do you know that things like snooker
>and horse-jumping aren't liked/hated as much as the rest of the UK?
>Cricket, maybe, is the only one I can think of which holds to that
>argument (but you'll probably think of others no doubt).

I'd argue that show-jumping has even less of an interest in Scotland than
cricket - at least Freuchie won the UK village cricket competition a couple of
years back!
My facetious comments regarding snooker relate more to the sheer volume that
appears with monotonous regularity on TV these days, everything from the World
Championships to the Bognor Regis Under14 District Classic ....it's got 
veeerrry boring now.

No, of course I can't speak for the UK as a whole as to what is or isn't 
an interesting sport, however if we're going to have sports that are of an
interest to one local area (England say) shouldn't we also have sports
that maybe of interest to a different part of the UK? After all we are talking
UK national sports coverage with programs like Sportsnight are we not?

>Your Radio 5 point is maybe a worthy one, but doesn't Radio Scotland or
>whatever cover Scottish games (like Radio Wales does  - I think!)? I always 
>assumed it did, and that the English bias on Radio 5's coverage was not
>unintentional.

Again, Radio Scotland's input isn't relavent to the discussion. Radio 5 is
touted as a *national* radio program intended to cover sports over the country
as a whole, it doesn't. Therfore the English bias is inexcusable. Radio 5
is *not* Radio England.

>I think you should be looking at how BBC Scotland treats sport, not how
>the BBC treats Scottish sport. How the BBC treats Scotland, Wales and
>Northern Ireland w.r.t. the amount of local control (and the budget for
>that) is another matter.

And BBC England? What I am looking at is how the BBC Britain treats British 
sports. The input of BBC England to sports coverage by BBC Britain is way out
of proportion and needs its balance redressed. If BBC England wants to put out
sports programs with a predominantly English bias to England, that's fine, I
have no objection. The same applies to BBC Wales, BBC Scotland and BBC Northern
Ireland and their treatment of sports coverage. But when it comes to nationally
produced programs by BBC Britain then all 4 should have *some* sort of input.
I can't remember the last time I heard the football league results from
Northern
Ireland even being read out on Sportsnight. Don't they play football over
there?

The trouble is that BBC England *is* BBC Britain.

>Follow-ups to rec.arts.tv.uk ?????

Makes sense, I've set the follow-up line accordingly.

Rab (aka Dave)


Xref: sparky rec.sport.soccer:17012 soc.culture.italian:4766