There was in interesting interaction on Canberra local ABC Radio 666 on Friday morning. The well respected local sport journo Tim Gable was interviewing Jess Bibby from the Canberra Capitals about their crucial game this weekend against Bulleen.
Jess was talking about a game that would shape the finals, that was so popular it had been moved to a larger stadium, and involved arguably one of the world’s greatest players in the code in Lauren Jackson.
Overcome with passion, the breakfast host Ross Solley said out loud, “We should be covering it!”.
There was a curious and telling silence and his question went completely ignored. Interestingly Tim was about to jump on the plane to Perth to cover the Brumbies opening game for 666 that night.
The interaction was also poignant because the two on-air talents have a running gag that no footy player will get out of bed early enough to make it to the studio for an interview at Breakfast – Jess did.
It got me thinking about ABC radio sports coverage this summer and the fact that overall I think it is in grave danger of becoming no better than its competitors.
Time and again (despite excellent coverage of all sports on Grandstand at a magazine and results level) live national coverage is only given to male rugby or cricket codes. This seems to have changed little in recent years despite a number of other national code opportunities.
Yes there was some coverage of fantastic netball tests when the World Cup was on, but it hardly compares to the blanket live coverage I’m talking about.
The other thing that has irked me is the Grandstand cricket coverage. Other than the usual token foreigners (well, actually Roebuck is the only one I can think of) the coverage was the most unbalanced in terms of foreign representation that I can remember.
Generally the ABC does a great job of getting commentators from visiting nations – this has been sadly absent this year.
The “Aussie Aussie Aussie” tone has been compounded by the use of Justin Langer. I have no doubt lots of people love him. I found him a serious apologist for the team and think he failed to answer a single direct question about specific players – which makes sense, he’s on the “Change Room Staff”.
Having someone so close to the team makes a bit of a mockery of the outcry from people years ago about Eddie McGuire calling the footy.
Finally, and this might be indicative of a poor season, but I can’t see why cricket interrupts local programming so much. So many test and ODI days over the course of the summer just get a bit too much.
On Australia Day I had the pleasure of listening to Angela Catterns and Wendy Harmer going national. It reminded me of the excellent programming I’d been missing out on – and the fact I’d had to listen to Drew Morphett for eight hours a day in its place!
I reckon Mark Scott at the ABC will be taking a long look at this summer. The number of people in the stands is a nice analogy for the radio audience I think. I reckon it’s time some ABC radio sport was moved to the Internet exclusively – where it belongs!
And let’s hope they use some of those digital channels to cover more female sports – and not see them used for more and more male rugby and cricket!
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