Two days of live golf on the BBC every year. For many of you, I know, these are probably two days too many, but for those of us who adore the game, despite being so awful at it, two days is definitely not enough. Do you remember when major sporting events were ‘listed’ so they had to be on terrestrial TV? Technically still here but in reality on the way out, with the government far too frightened of Rupert Murdoch to insist the great unwashed have access to top quality sport.
Those two days just happen to be the final two rounds of the US Masters at Augusta, to my mind the best tournament there is. Yes, I know history says the Open is The Big One, but the Royal and Ancient Golf Club (R&A) have blotted their copybook by taking their tournament away from the people, tarnishing its great name by handing it, lock, stock and barrel to Rupert Murdoch. I’ll watch the Open on Murdoch’s Sky Sports, but it will be with a heavy heart. The Open as well as the Masters should be free to everyone, full stop.
With golf participation in free fall, I find it strange that the R&A should risk accelerating it still further, but it’s all about the money, money, money. Not everyone, like me, obsesses with sport and younger people need to be encouraged to discover sports and then play them. If it’s no longer accessible, then youngsters will lose whatever interest they had. Murdoch has got maybe 99% of all TV golf and he won’t stop until he gets the lot.
It is true that without Sky, we might never have seen so much sport. Overseas cricket, including England tours, tennis, La Liga, baseball etc etc, but it is also true that what we all once had we have no longer. No live club rugby union or league is on terrestrial TV, except the Rugby League Challenge Cup and even that is shared with Murdoch. It won’t be shared for long.
The principle of listed events was surely the right thing to have. Whilst we all understand the need for sports to thrive financially, they should not be sports purely for the wealthy to watch. Cable and satellite TV is incredibly expensive for many and others, the most sensible and principled, simply refuse to part with a penny piece if they think Murdoch will get his filthy hands on it. (There is another group which is more than happy with the terrestrial channels already available: they lives away from the telly.)
With the future of the BBC in real doubt, we know that the events we all loved to watch, that gave the nation a shared experience, are not there any more. David Cameron, who remains in thrall of Murdoch, has installed at his Culture and Media department a man, John Whittingdale, who openly opposes the very principle of public service broadcasting. Given his head, and that could be as early as June if the UK leaves the EU and Cameron resigns, the BBC will be gone within four years. We won’t be fretting about listed events then. The public service TV company that will replace it, paid for by voluntary contributions, will show little more than repeats of the New Zealand version of Antiques Roadshow, if we’re lucky.
Major sporting events should be our entitlement. The nation should be able to see the major events, like Test matches, Wimbledon, the Open Golf championship, top flight football (at least some games) and the Olympic Games. I am not interested in the economic arguments because the truth is that all the money from Murdoch, which is to say from us, his idiot subscribers, usually ends up in bulging pay packets of the players.
With the genie well and truly out of the bottle, it will only be a matter of time before the BBC’s remaining sports disappear to Mr Murdoch and the two days a year of golf we now get on terrestrial TV will seem like the good old days.
