Ah, bless Auntie. Once again, the country’s favourite whipping boy is getting a drubbing and has been forced into apologising… for putting stuff on that people want to watch.
Okay, so perhaps the coverage of the Six Nations Rugby and football throughout last Saturday was a touch excessive, but come on people! It’s one Saturday out of the year when the BBC actually gets to the shout from the rooftops about having retained a halfway decent sporting event in the Six Nations. And considering the corporation has paid £160 million to retain the rights to the tournament, I’d want it front and centre on my premier channel. I’ll concede that it may have been prudent to put one of the matches on BBC2, and maybe shunt Match of the Day over there too, just to break things up and a repeat of The Weakest Link on.
The BBC’s quite reasoned response has a wonderfully world weary quality to it, as if the person writing was shrugging as they did it in a “What can you do” kind of way…
“We realise that not everyone enjoys watching sport. But there is undeniably a large section of our audience who do and as a public service broadcaster, we are obligated to cater for them as and when we can.”
Here at TV Today, we are very much supporters of top flight drama, comedy and light entertainment as a default setting, but I also like my sport. It’s as much a valid addition to the schedules as four nights of EastEnders, and the ratings for all the games shown at the weekend indicate that I’m not alone in this.
What about the man on the street that absolutely detests everything the BBC puts out apart from sport? Where does this poor chap go to air his complaint? “All there is on the BBC is summat about cockneys, Graham Norton, that thing with the police box and Adrian Chiles five nights a week! It’s becoming a drama, comedy and Adrian Chiles channel! What do I pay my licence fee for?!?”
…and so on.
In some respects, I’m surprised we didn’t have any complaints along the lines of: “Dear the BBC, I’m disgusted that somebody saw fit to air an episode of Outtake TV right in the middle of your excellent coverage of the Six Nations rugby. This channel is just turning into constant Anne Robinson, night after night!”
But herein lies the curse of being a public service broadcaster – the BBC has to be all things to all people and when you get to the bottom line, Auntie will never, ever be able to win. I have something of a reputation for being a BBC apologist – I love the corporation and what it stands for, and really, there’s no apology needed in this case. It’s just one of those things and a lesson in not being able to please all of the people all of the time.
And don’t worry, those of you out there who don’t like sport, before you know it we’ll be back to repeats of The Vicar of Dibley and that bit from Only Fools where Del Boy falls through the bar. Gets me every time that one does…
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