The AFL season is all wrapped up and has led me to reflect on the difference between season 2011 and all previous seasons I have experienced.
At the beginning of the year, I scrawled my signature across the dotted line and became a Foxtel subscriber.
I wanted to watch sport, primarily AFL, but any kind would do as long as it was live. What I got was exactly that.
There was no backtracking on promises and no alterations to the scheduling of matches. If Foxtel had the rights, it was live and it was ad-free.
No longer did I have to hold my breath as I waited to find out whether my team’s match would be on television (forget about seeing it live).
If I couldn’t attend the match, my new friend Fox Sports was there, providing the best coverage I could ask for. My affection grew for Fox Sports, the more I compared it with the free-to-air stations.
I didn’t miss the delayed telecast or the ad breaks following a goal that seemed to extend from one, thirty-second ‘hurry up and get back to the football’ commercial to a two-minute ‘what was I watching again?’ short film.
In April this year, the AFL announced a record-breaking deal with Channel 7 and Fox Sports, signing up for the broadcast rights from 2012-2016.
Channel 7 finally cottoned on to its viewers’ frustrations and after years of pressure, agreed to show live football on a regular basis.
There are a few catches of course. If you live in Victoria where the deal is sweetest, you can breathe easy, for now.
But outside Victoria, little seems to have changed. A one-hour turned 30-minute delay for WA viewers is nothing to cheer about.
Forgive me for being sceptical, but this new deal conjures up in my mind, the old adage, ‘Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me’.
When free-to-air channels promised HD broadcast of AFL matches on their sister channels ONE HD and 7 HD, I believed them.
When they dumped HD broadcast in June this year, in favour of American sitcom re-runs, I promptly signed up for the Fox Sports HD channels.
Sydney Morning Herald journalist Adam Turner referred to the cutting of HD broadcasts as the ‘great Aussie High-Def swindle’ as many footy fans bought HD televisions only to be cheated out of 1080p sports broadcasts shortly after.
The big loser in all of this is the common man who cannot afford the $90+ per month for the most basic Foxtel sports package.
Advocates of Freeview and the Keep Sport Free campaign are entirely justified in their crusades for this very thing. The problem is the failure to understand why people choose to pay for sport.
Pay television has respect for sport. It has respect for its viewers, but above all, subscribers hold it to ransom.
They have the power to take their money and run after their contract has elapsed if they aren’t happy.
For free-to-air, viewers are at the mercy of the programmers and men in high places.
Despite Channel 7’s attempt to do right for its viewers for the next five years, I am wary of the wriggle room that is likely to be embedded in the latest contract.
Seven has been known to perform Nadia Comaneci-inspired back-flips when it comes to their broadcasts in the past but this time, I won’t be fooled.
2012 will be the year of choice and time will tell whether the AFL-viewing public will endure being taken for a ride yet again.
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Now that was a quick change of mind!
