Welcome to modern footy broadcasting ....
Football on TV, you get what you pay forRohan Connolly
April 24, 2011WHAT do the latest breathtaking machinations in the AFL broadcasting rights deal and a cheesy Seven promo from 1985 have in common?
Well, bugger all, really, but I couldn't help but contrast the business of televising football now to how it was done 25 years ago when I stumbled on some classic old TV footy clips on YouTube the other night.
That "Hello Melbourne" promo for Seven had a procession of VFL stars — Simon Madden, Gerard Healy, Wayne Schimmelbusch, Wayne Johnston, Simon Beasley and others — following the bouncing ball and singing — really, really badly — stuff about "You're the best home town I know". Yep, it was that bad.
Production values certainly weren't lofty, as they weren't with the Saturday night replay, the crosses to Scot Palmer in the offices of the Sunday Press, the early panel shows or the chaotic World of Sport. But those involved knew that, didn't care overly, and nor did we. We all understood it was the game itself which was the point.
And the relevance to the current gripping board table battles? Where once my instinctive reaction to the prospect of pay TV having an even bigger slice of the AFL market was a philosophically based gripe about looking after the "little guy", I'm finding myself these days silently cheering Foxtel on.
Why? Because while their AFL coverage can be at times only marginally slicker than the old Seven's Lou, Pete, Bob, Sandy et al, they also understand that the game is king.
Yes, the little guy has to fork out a monthly premium to view it (and Australia's pay TV take-up rate is still only somewhere between 32 and 34 per cent), but if he can, he'll be fine. He'll be looked after and treated with more intelligence, let alone respect, than the free-to-air networks have treated the punter for some time.
Seven, and to a lesser extent Ten's, coverage of AFL today reminds me more than a little of the current political climate in Canberra. Trying so hard to be all things to all people that they end up standing for little and not pleasing anyone much.
That's Foxtel's advantage. It knows its market is serious hardcore football fans, and caters accordingly. Though, it has to be said, the sort of things for which we're now grateful should be a given for any network.
Like live coverage of games, for starters. Like no advertising breaks after every goal, so you can actually see the score replayed and analysed by the special comments men. Like panel shows that actually talk about football and not themselves.
There can't be too many genuine football fans for whom On The Couch isn't a must-watch. On a free-to-air network, Gerard Healy, Paul Roos and Mike Sheahan would probably be encouraged to back-slap, in-joke and congratulate each other on their celebrity. On Foxtel, they actually utilise the football nous which made them well-known in the first place.
Seven's Sunday afternoon coverage has become the ultimate in commercial cynicism, delaying even games outside Victoria by an hour so it can program at its own pace, stacking the commercial breaks and making sure the final siren goes at about two seconds to six just in time for the news.
The recent Sydney-Essendon Sunday game was a real endurance test. A great game and a thrilling finish – with absolutely no wrap-up, recap of the details or even the victorious Swans' team song.
Direction was, let's say interesting, with long shots in which the players were at times impossible to identify, cut with close-ups that offered no context, to the inevitable 5000 cuts to each coaching box and obligatory silly faces of fans "spontaneously" captured in the crowd.
Topped off with some of the most self-absorbed "commentary" a football broadcast has ever delivered, to the point where Bruce McAvaney actually stopped mid-call during a passage of play to observe: "Gee, we're being a bit self-indulgent, aren't we?" Yes, Bruce, you certainly were.
Friday night football gets fitted out with all the trappings of an entertainment spectacular. No mere half-time break now, but a "half-time show", sponsored, of course, and that bloody "Megawall", in which half-a-dozen postage stamp-sized different shots of people doing not much is supposed to bowl us over in its technological wizardry.
How many of us would happily trade in all that, or the self-conscious efforts to turn footballers into "personalities", for some clear camera work and a goal not automatically followed by an ad for Bunnings?
Like a lot of people, I'm not exactly laying awake at night breathless in anticipation of the announcement of the new football broadcasting arrangements. But I'll be more than happy should Foxtel, in some shape or form, end up covering every AFL match.
I'll have to pay. But at least I'll get to see what I should, and know that I'm watching it on a station that appears to genuinely love the game as much as I do, not just as a potential ratings boost for its other programs.
http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-news/football-on-tv-you-get-what-you-pay-for-20110423-1ds9g.html#ixzz1KPrgcXfU
