Pre-season Invective - Part II: The TV Rights Deal

 

 

A new football season is upon us and the big news over summer has been the battle over TV rights. Whilst Channel 9 in the Big Fella’s dying days looked set to snare the rights by offering an amount equivalent to the GDP of New Zealand, Channel 7 managed to pinch the rights by bidding the GDP of Bangladesh. As a result, the great game is set to move back to Channel 7 after a 5 year sojourn in Packerstan.

 

This move will not be made without controversy. Almost as soon as the announcement was made, Sam Newman was predictably pouring scorn on Channel 7 in the pages of the Herald Sun:

"Seven almost ran football into the ground over 40 years... The only way Seven won't do a dreadful job is if they poach the best people from Nine to prop them up."

Footballinvectime.com heartily concurs with Sam's thoughts. Seven's production qualities, programming priorities and general judgement and nous were appalling when it last had the rights. If it is to spend almost $800 million to get them back, let’s hope it spends some of that on lifting its game.

 

Unlike when Channel 9 won the rights 5 years ago, and immediately promised all sorts of new innovations in football broadcasting (and God knows, didn’t football broadcasting need it), Channel 7 seems to be offering nothing new, just more of the same. For the last 5 years, Kerry Stokes has acted like some Government-in-exile, continually sulking about losing what he thought was Channel 7’s rightful birthright, like some spoilt kid with a sense of entitlement who has lost his favourite toy. As we all know, a sense of entitlement generally doesn’t bring out the best in people and Channel 7 is no different. Instead of its complacent gloating at getting the rights back it should have a good hard look at the reasons why it got football so horribly wrong in the past, and why its demise 5 years ago was so unlamented. For starters, footballinvective.com has compiled this far-from-comprehensive shame file of some of Channel 7’s previous clangers.

 

 

The Channel 7 Shame File - it's previous Crimes Against Football:

 

Channel 7 stands condemned for its appalling judgement in relation to:

 

1.  Its choice of ‘flagship’ commentators. Why it ever traded in Peter Landy for Bruce McAvaney is way beyond the collective intellect of footballinvective.com and, we suspect, any other moderately intelligent Australian. The cricket equivalent would be Channel 9 trading in Richie Benaud for Jana Wendt. Why, oh why would a football station give their chief commentary role to a bloke who is not even a football commentator (he started his career calling horses) and, as we all know, prefers athletics to footy anyway. We used to cringe at those ads when he was on Channel 10 which used to say "his sporting knowledge could fill a book". Well so too could Slug Jordan's - but that didn't make him a great footy commentator, did it? ("take the boy off")

 

2.  Its general concept of what football fans find 'entertaining'. Channel 7’s idea of how to present football is the like some kind of Griswald Family Football Special - you know, the sort of boring, uncreative 'family' type genre of show that is so lame and inoffensive that it appeals to no one. Consider, for example, its many failed attempts over the years to come up a program to compete with the '”Footy Show”, such as:

·         "Four Quarters" (circa 1995) - yawn central;

·         "The Game" (circa 1996) - yep, bet you don't remember that one either;

·         "Live and Kicking" (circa 1998) - They threw more money on it than anyone knew what to do with. The only result was to kill off the media careers of Harvey Silver and Jason Dunstall (Silver has nobody to blame but himself for his brazen colberting of Channel 9 in pursuit of CASH, whilst Piggy can rightly consider himself conned)

·         The short-lived revival of "League Teams" in the late 90s, featuring a painfully geriatric Bob Davis in exactly the same format that the show used in the 1960s - which just goes to show that Channel 7 has not had an original idea in 40 years.

 

3.  Its general conception of what people find funny. For those with long memories, remember those ridiculous club mascot cartoon characters that would ‘grace’ the screen and lairise when the final siren went in 1988 (as shown below – click to view the full animation). When idiocy such as this appears in a football telecast, something is clearly, horribly, wrong.

Thankfully, these ‘mascots’ lasted only one season, meaning that the Coodabeens were able to boast for years about being responsible for their demise, having run an incessant radio campaign against them. The Coodabeens have made many great contributions to the football world, but this is surely amongst their greatest.

 

4.  Its choice of theme songs for its football coverage. In contrast to Channel 9, which came up with the catchy and classy "More than a Game" theme song, which has now lasted 12 seasons (and counting), consider all of the embarrassingly bad Griswald Family theme songs that Seven has had over the years, for example:

·         "Ball, Yeah!" (circa 1992)

·         "The Name of the Game” (is Ur-straylian) (circa 1994)

·         "Aussie Rules I thank you for 100 years" (circa 1996)

·         etc, etc

Quite frankly, Channel 7 has not had a decent theme song since “It’s all in the game” back in the early 80s. It was so long ago that the song even refers to South Melbourne.

 

5.  Generally not listening to its client base and treating its audience with contempt. Remember the big controversy in the 1990s when Channel 7 insisted on always showing the countdown clock in the last quarter of a close game, thus spoiling the suspense for those watching? Footballinvective.com distinctly recalls that in response to continual complaints from footy fans, a certain Channel 7 big wig replied that the more people complained about the countdown clock the more determined they were to keep it. In contrast, Channel 10 came up with the perfectly reasonable compromise of the 5 minute warning, after which the clock was banished.

 

6.  Stuffing up even the most simple things in football broadcasting. For example, it even f*cked up something as straightforward as the good old Football Marathon. In 1994 Channel 7 introduced an appalling new concept for the Marathon based around it being presented by "Paul Salmon and Friends". This consisted of hours upon hours of mindless and incredibly unfunny "banter" from Salmon and his "mates" (including an incredibly inarticulate Mil Hanna and Greg Anderson) in an appallingly lit lounge room, with some of the most cringe-worthy attempts at TV spontaneity that footballinvective.com has ever seen (eg: Salmon acting surprised when Mil Hanna knocks on his door with a slab at 3:00am - yeah, that obviously happens every Friday night at Salmon's house). Almost as an afterthought, viewers occasionally got to see 5 minutes of an old footy game in between the brain-dead banter. Surely nothing could be simpler than broadcasting a Football Marathon - just dust off the tapes of some of the old classics ('66, '70, '79, the streaker in '82, etc, etc) with one or two minutes of Peter Landy's talking head in between – a great night’s entertainment for football junkies and insomniacs. A foolproof formula, you would think. Yet even the fools at Seven managed to monumentally stuff it up.

 

This is merely the tip of the iceberg of Channel 7’s litany of Crimes Against Football during its 40-year reign of error. We could go on and on about its many other shortcomings - and we will.

For example, no mention of Channel 7’s Crimes Against Football would be complete without:

 

 

Bruce McAvaney

 

Footballinvective.com is gracious enough to concede that Channel 7's coverage was not too bad up until the mid ‘80s, but the writing was on the wall once it axed “World of Sport” and lost the TV rights to “Broadcom” (remember them – associated entities of “Sportsplay” and “Powerplay”) in 1987. It never got its act together once it regained the rights in 1988, in the height of the Christopher Skase era. From then on it was on a downward slide, but things really went pear-shaped around the time that it first employed Bruce McAvaney to commentate football. Surely this is no co-incidence.

 

If anyone is in any doubt about the decline in Seven’s standards which occurred in the ‘80s and ‘90s then one need only look at two of the veritable time capsules which perfectly encapsulate their respective eras. Firstly, consider Channel 7’s splendid 1979 production “The Sensational Seventies”. One need only sit through the introduction (below) to be assured that is a quality production that captures the era perfectly:

 

Peter Landy, 1979:

 

 

“The Seventies have been a decade of change, 10 years that have re-shaped Australia’s most exciting and popular sport. From the black-and-white days of 1970, when players wore short, neat haircuts and coaches frowned on the cultivation of any facial hair, we’ve seen the sideburn, the crew cut, the afro, the headband and, of course, a procession of moustaches.”

 

Now, compare Landy’s erudite and highly perceptive words (complete with tribute to the Age of Tash) to the best Channel 7 could do two decades later, with Bruce McAvaney’s introduction to the “The Nineties: The Decade that Delivered”:

 

Bruce McAvaney, 1999:

 

“Welcome to the Nineties, the Decade that Delivered. It was a ten-year period of football like no other this century. We saw the birth of 3 new clubs to make the AFL competition truly national, and we mourned the loss of an old favourite. The Nineties produced new names, new heroes. Men like Carey and Hird, Jakovich and Grant, Buckley and Richardson, Crawford and Harvey. And what about that trio of goal kickers – Lockett, Dunstall and Ablett.”

Yep, all the usual Bruce trademarks are there – hyperbole, exaggeration, silly sentimentalism and, of course, pointless reciting of names.

 

“Sensational Seventies” features yearly replays of the best marks of the year, as well as the best examples of on-field biffo for each year. “Decade that Delivered”, in contrast, doesn’t even include marks of the year, whilst in keeping with the Australian Netball League’s desire to soften the image of the game, has sanitised virtually all biffo for the entire decade. This is but one of many possible illustrations of how Seven’s standards declined during its final two decades.

 

But back to Bruce. In contrast to other memorable football commentators (and Rex Hunt who, quite simply, is in a class of his own) it is impossible to come up with any memorable football commentary moments that Bruce McAvaney has ever provided. Compare his repetitiveness and rank inability to express a firm view on anything (the closest he gets is to say "you just get the feeling...") to the genius and quotable quotes of other current and former Channel 7 commentators, eg:

• Mike Williamson: “Jesaulenko! You beauty!”

• Ted Whitten: “Hit the boundary line!”

• Sandy Roberts: "There's another one" (goal, that is)

• Peter Landy: "Madden too tall for his opponent - on this occasion"

• Dennis Commetti: Too numerous to mention 

• Lou Richards: Poetry in motion, before he was colberted by Channel 7 following the Skase take-over and sought asylum at Channel 9.

Apparently the 5-year deal between Channels 7 and 10 includes an agreement to alternate coverage of the Grand Final each year. They will toss a coin to decide who gets to do it for 3 of the 5 years. Footballinvective.com can only hope that Channel 10 wins the toss so we are only subjected to Bruce calling 2 Grand Finals., in which case we will hit 'mute' on the TV and turn on the trusty Rexophone radio instead. We just despair at the appalling myopia of the AFL that resulted in it not insisting on a “No more Bruce” clause in the new TV rights contract.

 

Football has moved on since Channel 7 last had the rights – and Channel 7 should move on too. There are plenty of alternatives out there to take the place of Bruce. Rex Hunt has a long association with Channel 7 and is a proven TV host – why not give him the star billing? Or perhaps introduce Kerry O'Keefe and his unique brand of risqué repartee to the game of Aussie Rules? Why not import Martin Tyler from England after his World Cup duties are complete (“Oh! My word….”). Or what about getting Bill Lawry into the football commentary box (“It’s all happening here..”). Anyone would be better. Anyone but the same old Banal Bruce.

 

When the lesser football media, such as Channel 7, continues to perform at sub-standard levels, the need becomes even greater for alternative sources of football commentary. When the lesser football media cannot be relied upon to do justice to the greatest game in the world, the world needs an independent, erudite and informed source of football opinion that is truly in touch with the outlook and aspirations of ordinary football fans. In a football world in which even $800 million cannot buy quality football media, such quality is available for free each week in ’06 at footballinvective.com.

 

Let the media war begin.