Paying For The Privilege

Well, Monday night was another dissapointing night in my history of watching Australian matches. Not that the match was terrible, which, from all accounts it kind of was, but more the fact that I could not access this game on free to air television. Ihad reached my internet cap, so couldn't stream the game (not that I would, anyway, or anything) and wasn't able to leave the house to watch the game at a pub, if there was a pub in my area that actually played the game, that is. I had to make do with a radio broadcast on local radio ABC 612am in Brisbane, which actually was quite a good broadcast featuring Steve Austin and Ernie Merrick on the call. Ernie even fielded some questions at the end of the boradcast which was a nice touch.

As much as I enjoyed the broadcast of the game, the thing that's been niggling at me for the last four odd years is why can't I watch the national team on free to air television? It's not just me asking the question either, one look at Twitter last night would have seen many posts from people bewildered as to why the game wasn't shown on free to air television.

Now, I know there are many positives with the deal that FFA have with Foxtel, and I know that this is truly a dead horse, but the anti-syphoning list is coming up for review, and I'm hoping beyond hope that this means that, at the very least, we get the national team games back, hopefully on SBS, but I would also be fine with it on OneHD. What would be fantastic would to get, say, an A-League game per round, or even a highlights package show, similar to what the ABC & then SBS ran for the English Premier League during the '90s. What wouldn't be so fantastic would be for the game to be solely on free to air, as I don't think there's enough airspace to accomodate it just yet, plus, you really don't want to see the likes of Channel Seven's treatment of the NSL to happen again.

If you aren't aware of the debacle that was Channel Seven's treatment of football in Australia is covered quite well by Les Murray in his 2006 memoir, By The Balls. In the chapter titled Iran, Murray discusses the move of the NSL from SBS to Seven, "Football - then, as now - had a desperate need for prioritized free to air television exposure. Only that would deliver the kind of market penetration an underdog like football needed. If Seven was going to do that, as SBS had done for so long, well and good: so be it. But Seven had no such intentions, for all it's expenditure of $23 million. The tradegy was that David Hill (then chairman of Soccer Australia) did not demand any commitment from the network in addition to the dollars. Asked about programming commitment at the press conference where he announced the deal, Hill answered: 'Seven is a reputable television station and I won't tell them how to suck eggs when it comes to their programming strategies', or words to that effect. Seven paid the money but proceeded to bury football. It broadcast some games on it's Pay TV arm, C7, but virtually nothing on its free to air network. The National League, then called the Ericsson Cup, dissapeared from free to air screens. On SBS, this competition had enjoyed a one-hour package at 8.30 on Sunday evenings - the prince of timeslots - simply called the Ericsson Cup. But once Seven took over the rights, Ericsson got no exposure. Within a year, the company walked away from its sponsorship of the National League. Football was once again buried: a second-class sport in a country where it was a second-class citizen. Soon, the football community woke up to the deception - to having been sold down the river - and a movement was spawned with the catchcry: 'Nobody Screws Soccer Like Seven'. Its stickers are still visible on telegraph poles around Australia's mainland capitals. Australian football, for all intents and purposes, dissapeared from TV screens and its television hibernation was to last seven years."

That was in 1998. It's now 2010 and we still don't have the national league on free to air television. Hats off to Fox for their coverage and support of football in Australia, because they truly have been doing a great job, as has the ABC with their coverage of the women's natIonal league games, and of course SBS and their continued commitment to the world game. The new player, OneHD have been doing a fair job withe their World Football News show, but their coverage of both the Bundesliga and Serie A left a little to be desired.

With Australia's current anti-siphoning list ending in December this year, here's hoping for, at the very least, a return to free to air screens for the national team, and at least one game a week from the A-League. There are already promising signs, with Senator Conroy easing the current list to allow SBS to show all of the games of the 2010 World Cup live and free to air. Let's keep our fingers crossed that this is only the beginning.

There is something you can do, check out online petitions like http://www.keepsportfree.com.au/ and let the government know that the current situation just isn't good enough by writing to your local member.