Re: BBC SPOTY Team award : Tue Dec 15, 2009 10:42 am  

Old Feller wrote:

As I understand it the 10 shortlisted canidates are selected by various publications.
The winner is decided by a popular phone vote, like X Factor et al.
So all the Man U fans (from south of Watford) must have voted for Giggs plus all those who think that soccer is the only sport.

Had a feeling it was a public vote when Giggles won it. F-cking joke. Honestly.

Oh and Head High - LOLZ!

Re: BBC SPOTY Team award : Tue Dec 15, 2009 11:18 am  

Tony Soprano wrote:

Why do some people think Rugby League is bigger than it is? It gets about as much exposure on the beeb as is relevant to it's market.

But that is the problem, it doesn't get the exposure in relation to the overall average crowd numbers on national TV. It is still the UK's third biggest weekly spectator sport after Football and RU and it is only just after RU and until about 3/4 years ago RL was number 2!

Despite this the Beeb treat it as a regional sport and while providing excellent coverage at a regional level, the national BBC sports news teams on all national TV and radio stations give it poor national coverage despite having a team in London and Wales. Interestingly, I think this is born out of ignorance on the part of the sport reporters not a deliberate BBC agenda. I spoke to one of the Radio 2 sports reporters early this year after, on the morning of the Leeds v Saints game that was likely to decide who was going to win the league leaders shield, he gave a very long sports report and mentioned the start of the RU season and some games in detail along with lots of less supported sports than RL and did not even mention the game at all! When I challenged him about this on the phone he said he did not realise that RL was quite as big as it was and said he was now a little embarrassed that he had not even realised how possibly season defining the game was!

As for the England Men's Cricket team that was a bloody joke, it should have been the England's women cricket team. Clearly the panel of Beeb sports 'experts' are also male chauvinist pigs... because I bet they were all men.

As for Giggs, well it is a public vote and nobody sets the rules and says to the public it must be about this year etc, etc. They voted for him because he is a football great and has had yet another great season. If it was about real history making sporting achievement it would have been Cav who clearly should have won. He is already the UK's most successful professional cyclist and has won more stages of the tour in one tour than anyone... ever! Given the nature of tour routes it will be a record that he himself might struggle to beat.

Re: BBC SPOTY Team award : Tue Dec 15, 2009 11:48 am  

The decision to show re-runs of 'Allo 'Allo or Keeping up Appearances in the rest of the country when the SL show is on in the North of England is a perfect example of a slight bias against RL in my opinion. Other than that there isn't much the BBC could do in terms of its scheduling. It shows a Super League highlights show, the Challenge Cup live, at the very least international highlights at a decent time slot (and of course this year showed the England v Australia game live) and I think it shows highlights of the WCC, so its not too bad.

The biggest problem for me though is as Mr Armadillo describes, in that the reporting of RL on the news/sports news segments of radio and TV is way below what it should be.

Re: BBC SPOTY Team award : Tue Dec 15, 2009 12:54 pm  

Is it that time of year again already?

Perhaps if more people outside the heartlands of the game could be persuaded to get off their bums and go support it through the turnstiles then fans of rugby league may have a better case for it being anything other than a regional sport. As it is probably more people went to watch Ice Hockey over the course of the last 12 months than watched SL in London and Bridgend, yet I don't see a clamour for it to be treated in a similar fashion.

Rugby league is - primarily - a regional sport, and it gets treated appropriately by the media. It's not "bias". It's not "old school tie". It's reporting what you think your audience is going to be most interested in given the time you have available. Looking at the crowds Leeds United and Bradford City pull in, it would appear that even League One and Two football is more deserving of media attention than top flight rugby league, even in the areas where it is supposed to be strongest.

Re: BBC SPOTY Team award : Tue Dec 15, 2009 1:23 pm  

Andy Gilder wrote:

Is it that time of year again already?

Perhaps if more people outside the heartlands of the game could be persuaded to get off their bums and go support it through the turnstiles then fans of rugby league may have a better case for it being anything other than a regional sport. As it is probably more people went to watch Ice Hockey over the course of the last 12 months than watched SL in London and Bridgend, yet I don't see a clamour for it to be treated in a similar fashion.

Rugby league is - primarily - a regional sport, and it gets treated appropriately by the media. It's not "bias". It's not "old school tie". It's reporting what you think your audience is going to be most interested in given the time you have available. Looking at the crowds Leeds United and Bradford City pull in, it would appear that even League One and Two football is more deserving of media attention than top flight rugby league, even in the areas where it is supposed to be strongest.

But surely if we just go on crowds alone then all that would ever be reported/covered by the media is football. Going by crowds nothing else comes close to it, but I think you'd agree that wouldn't be fair. The Guinness Premiership is primarily a regional sport too, yet does get better coverage than Super League despite the crowds being relatively similar.
County Cricket gets a lot of coverage when compared to the very small crowds they get.
There does appear to be a slight imbalance. I dont necessarily think its a bias against RL per se, I think its a London thing. Anything thats not that important in London isnt picked up and covered by the media that is based in London (just ask the people whos homes were flooded a while ago in Hull and not reported for days because someones garden in Kent was a bit wet). Which is why Harlequins are so important to SL.

[Wheels]

Re: BBC SPOTY Team award : Tue Dec 15, 2009 2:47 pm  

Head High Tackle wrote:

Just like your mum.

BOO YAR!

Re: BBC SPOTY Team award : Tue Dec 15, 2009 4:14 pm  

On the subject of the Beeb, while I don't personally like all, or even a mjority of its programming, the way it's funded makes it slightly less a commercial organisation than its rivals. It's because of the way it's funded that it is able to continue to lead the world in natural history broadcasting, which so happen to be my favourite type of programming, making me a bit biased I'll admit. When you see the quality of stuff like Life, Planet Earth, Blue Planet etc (and even the "Walking With.... " series at the time) and compare them to what anybody else does (Discovery Channel sometimes get their stuff up to the lower end of the Beebs offerings) you quickly see that nobody else is anywhere near.

That, together with its news coverage etc, is rather closer to its reason for existing than covering Rugby League is. IMO, of course. It isn't there to please everyone all the time, it's there to produce a wide variety of programmes and entartainment, not purely those which will make the quickest profit.

Re: BBC SPOTY Team award : Tue Dec 15, 2009 4:14 pm  

Head High Tackle wrote:

Just like your mum.

GOOOOOOOAAAAAL!

Re: BBC SPOTY Team award : Tue Dec 15, 2009 4:33 pm  

El Diablo wrote:

On the subject of the Beeb, while I don't personally like all, or even a mjority of its programming, the way it's funded makes it slightly less a commercial organisation than its rivals. It's because of the way it's funded that it is able to continue to lead the world in natural history broadcasting, which so happen to be my favourite type of programming, making me a bit biased I'll admit. When you see the quality of stuff like Life, Planet Earth, Blue Planet etc (and even the "Walking With.... " series at the time) and compare them to what anybody else does (Discovery Channel sometimes get their stuff up to the lower end of the Beebs offerings) you quickly see that nobody else is anywhere near.

That, together with its news coverage etc, is rather closer to its reason for existing than covering Rugby League is. IMO, of course. It isn't there to please everyone all the time, it's there to produce a wide variety of programmes and entartainment, not purely those which will make the quickest profit.

Absolutely

Yellowstone was amazing, and is something that as you say only Discovery or occasionally National Geographic can ever come close to.

Re: BBC SPOTY Team award : Tue Dec 15, 2009 5:56 pm  

BigRob wrote:

Absolutely

Yellowstone was amazing, and is something that as you say only Discovery or occasionally National Geographic can ever come close to.

Probably one of the best documentary's of the past decade - following the bison through -40 icy landscapes where they couldn't eat for months until they all gathered at the geysers to eat salt was a stunning episode.