The BBC and cricket: we don't want it

Tuesday, 5th August 2008

Here's my theory: the BBC's casually misleading attitude to news- its refusal to accept that Israel ever has a case for self-defence, its failure to label terrorism as terrorism, its sneering reporting of anything which doesn't fit into its left-liberal prejudices - is now so deep a part of its culture that its own executives don't even realise that their own deeply misleading statements (I'm being charitable) are so easy to spot.

This morning's reaction to the sale of Test cricket rights to Sky is a case in point.

Sky paid £300 million for five years. The BBC decided not to complete. It says the price was too high (although rumour has it that the sum paid to buy the rights to Formula 1 was £150 million for the same period).

Giles Clarke, the ECB chairman, has this morning been lambasting the BBC for failing to put in a bid of any kind. As he points out, almost three and half million of us play cricket, yet the nation's public broadcaster does not consider it worth bidding even a penny to show a Test Match, or highlights.

Because far from selling out to the highest bidder, the ECB went out of its way to lure the BBC into televising Test cricket. Its tender made clear that:

a bidder may bid for part only of any package, eg two Test matches or whatever, taking place in each season. However, any such bid must be for the full duration of the contract.

The ECB made it clear to the BBC that it wanted to have Test cricket on the BBC and would find a way to accomodate it within the overall rights package. Yet there was no bid of any sort from the BBC, not for one Test a year, not for two, and not for a highlights package. Cricket, as far as the BBC is now concerned, is not worth a penny.

That should lead to further questions about just what we pay our licence fee for, if it is not in part for the BBC to televise the national summer sport.

How has the BBC responded to Mr Clarke's attacks? By issuing an entirely misleading statement. Last night, it said that "scheduling and cost constraints" had meant it had had to rule out a bid. Utter rot.

This morning's statement was a deliberate obfuscation:

The BBC is astonished by the comments by the ECB. We've always said any bid for live Test cricket was subject to value for money and fitting into scheduling and in our view neither of these criteria were met. 'We have consistently argued that not having cricket as a listed event puts it out of the reach of all terrestrial broadcasters. That's the ECB's choice and they are entitled to it, but it's absurd to blame the BBC for this outcome.

This is utter nonsense. First, the ECB said it would accomodate the BBC. And if you doubt that it would have done, look at what it has done in Wales: it has given S4C the right to broadcast Test cricket. Is the BBC seriously suggesting that only S4C has the scheduling capacity and money to show Test cricket?

Worse is the misleading inclusion of the word 'live'. The highlights package was available at a snip, Indeed, Channel Five is now to continue showing them. The BBC could have had them, and at least one Test, if it has wanted them, But instead of pwning up to the truth - that it has made a policy decision not to televise cricket - is has tried to blame the ECB.

We go to prison if we don't pay for the salaries of these people.