My colleague Howie has posted some thought provoking comments in his blog here on his impression of James Murdock’s views on the BBC in the MacTaggart lecture, and more specifically on the increasing dominance of Sky Sport’s coverage of National Sporting events such as The Ashes.

I think there are some interesting issues here.

The MacTaggart Lecture

First of all, I listened to Mr Murdock’s entire speech. I found it to be well presented and unrelenting in its attack on our taxpayer funded, over regulated, media provision in the UK. I particularly agreed with his customer centric remarks, the respect for customer choice to decide for themselves what they want to do, rather than being fed a pre-prescribed diet and expected to follow it.

Secondly, the imbalance that the BBC creates in this regulated market maybe had a place in the analogue world. But in the digital world this imbalance creates a massive strain on the ability of every other media provider to be able to profitably invest in competitive media products and services. There is nothing else akin to the BBC Charter in media world. It is therefore by definition an anomaly, and like all anomalies it creates difficulty at some level. Today the biggest difficulty is that tax payer owned news and media content is distributed free at the point of consumption to everyone in the UK.

Thirdly, as a businessman, I fully understand the extent of the problem. How can anyone compete with a separately funded, state controlled enterprise? The BBC is completely immune to the current downturn in the economy. There is no reduction in our licence fee to accommodate the financial pain that the country is facing. By definition, as all other “competitors” are required to gain revenue from dwindling resources, the BBC simply gets stronger; its £4.6bn annual revenue safe and secure and supplemented by hoards of commercial ventures such as world-wide syndication of its programmes, numerous programme specific magazines sold commercially and of course it’s cross programme advertising.

In my view there is nothing wrong in principle with having variety like the BBC, Commercial TV and Subscription TV all side by side. However when you add into the mix, the over regulation and protectionism of the regulator Ofcom, then you create an impossible situation with pretty dire consequences. One such issue of consequence is the free BBC website. Richly imbued with access to its rich archive of taxpayer paid media content, the BBC has an immensely artificial advantage over every other media provider in the country. It effectively eliminates the capacity of competitive media providers to ever be able to earn revenue from on-line versions of their creative and news content. With the younger generation increasingly failing to buy newsprint, then the ultimate outcome is the disappearance of newsprint and its corresponding online versions within a relatively short period of time. I touched on this in my previous blog.

Mr Murdock’s little quoted final words were “The only reliable, durable and perpetual guarantor of independence is profit” and I say hear hear to that.

Free to Air Sports Coverage

In a consumer age we have every right to make our choices – including paying for subscription TV or not, but as with all choices we have to bear the consequences of making the choice. The consequence may be not being able to see the cricket. It’s not that it’s not available for you to see, but you have chosen not to pay for it. That surely is fair enough.

So then, perhaps a quick look at the rights holder, in this case the ECB and at the players who now earn much more in cricket than they ever did before, might be more appropriate. The ECB generated £300m in its 5 year deal with Sky. Commenting on the BBC’s decision not to bid at all for the rights, here’s what a BBC spokesperson said, as the Guardian reported, at the time

“We have always said that any bid for live test cricket is subject to value for money and ability to schedule. In our view neither of these criteria were met,” she added.

“We have consistently argued that not having cricket as a listed event puts it out of reach of all terrestrial broadcasters. This is the ECB’s choice and they are entitled to it. It is absurd to blame the BBC for this outcome.”

The “listed event” reference at the heart of the BBC’s argument is a fair one I think, the 1996 Broadcasting Act provided an A & B list of protected sporting events. For whatever reason, in the 1998 list, Cricket was “demoted” into the B list by the Government, meaning that the only requirement was to ensure that there were highlights transmitted on a terrestrial channel. This decision is at the heart of the problem, not the fact that Sky has more ability to invest higher amounts to broadcast sport than the publicly funded BBC

The vast sums being poured into sport for media rights, that Howie mentions have their advantages too. Sky money dragged English football out of the horrendous pit it was in at the end of the 80′s. Football violence was rife, stadiums were dilapidated and certainly not fit for families and the only football matches we ever saw on TV were the Match of the Day highlights, The Home Internationals and the odd English International (as long as it was not too far away!)

Sky’s sports coverage today is superb and with HD and Surround Sound the viewing experience is second to none. The Premiership “Product” has to be right up there with the best sporting events in the world. It’s arguably the best football league on the world – just look at Premiership club success in Europe on an increasingly regular basis.

Perhaps the Sky money is now being invested to make similar improvements to the ability of English Cricket to improve the product. Not being a cricket fan, I am much more minded to watch, as I did the Ashes this year, when there is a chance of them winning. The “it’s the taking part that counts” attitude has been far too long embedded in cricket and now at last we are starting to compete, maybe it’s uncomfortable to accept, but the Sky investment in the ECB may be making the difference already.

So, my friendly advice is enjoy the Cricket ….go get a subscription to Sky to help pay their £300m back or beware that the same outcome that the SPL’s disastrous run in with Sky, had for Scottish Football, may happen to Cricket if the £300m does not turn out to be a good investment.