It was an outcome which would never have been foretold among those whose mission is now persuading a digital generation to click on BBC Sport’s output rather than someone else’s TikTok or YouTube content.
A peak audience of 5.5million people in the UK were glued to that old-fashioned concept called BBC1 last week, as they watched the Team GB men’s curling final.
It’s demode to say it, but many will have done so while communing around a TV. Countless had become armchair curling experts amid two beautiful weeks of Winter Olympics. The BBC broadcasts of the Games had 26.3million viewers in all.
It’s not the only time lately when that experience of tuning in to something transcending clicks and instant gratification was to be found on the BBC. Against a beautiful Peak District backdrop, Macclesfield’s defeat of Crystal Palace unfolded before our eyes on a sunny Saturday lunchtime in early January.
The ensuing digital clips were fine – bandaged captain Paul Dawson leaping to score and sending the roof off that modest stadium – but it was the unfolding match, the national suspense, the collective willing-on of the underdogs, the excellent Mark Chapman’s half-time talk with the Macclesfield manager’s brother, Wayne Rooney – which made it so fine and compelling.
Sport as it actually unfolds. Sport with its myriad dramas and unpredictabilities. Sport as we had once come to expect it from the broadcaster which takes our licence fee.
The BBC’s Winter Olympics coverage showed sport as it actually unfolds. Sport with its myriad dramas and unpredictabilities… not merely social media clips
Against a beautiful Peak District backdrop, Macclesfield’s defeat of Crystal Palace unfolded before our eyes on a sunny Saturday lunchtime in early January
The media landscape is changing at a mesmerising pace. The BBC, in the throes of existential crisis, are facing the financial challenge of streaming platforms which are making the commercial battle for live sport extremely competitive.
But it was not just those of us brought up on the live football commentary of John Motson, Barry Davies and the great Hugh Johns whose hearts were heavy when hearing the BBC’s director of sport Alex Kay-Jelski tell the Financial Times Business of Football summit that you don’t need to show live sport to stay relevant.
‘We’re not competing against who we were competing with before,’ he said. ‘The BBC might have thought, traditionally, it was up against ITV, or Sky, or other broadcasters. Well, guess what? We’re not. We’re in a race to not be swiped. Up against people selling you holidays, or clothes companies, or two-for-one chicken breasts on sale from the supermarket, or football teams, or athletes.
‘We still have reporting and live pages and digital video that draw in millions and millions and millions of people. You can still be relevant – you can still matter – if you don’t show the sport.’
BBC Sport’s need for intellectual curiosity and imagination in a complicated media landscape extending far beyond outside broadcasts is undeniable. All in the industry are facing the same challenge. Clips are certainly working for them in terms of Premier League, Champions League and cricket coverage.
But it was what Kay-Jelski didn’t say, as well as his bleak and provocative suggestion that the BBC’s sports output is competing with poultry purveyors, which reinforced the sense that the national broadcaster have given up on live sport, in their pursuit of digital clicks.
What you really wanted to hear was that BBC Sport are fighting for their lives to hold on to the rights of sports held dearest by the British public, in the face of aggressive streamers who want to monetise them. That the list of televised sport’s free-to-air ‘crown jewels’ must, as a matter of national significance, be extended to preserve them for those who cannot or will not pay for an ever-growing number of commercial bolt-ons.
A group of MPs have let it be known that they are supportive of such an extension. Here was some momentum to seize on. On all of the above, we heard nothing.
The BBC’s director of sport Alex Kay-Jelski told the Financial Times Business of Football summit that you don’t need to show live sport to stay relevant
Some broadcast staff in the BBC’s Six Nations coverage, already split with ITV, are thought to be wondering how secure the future looks. Wimbledon five years from now? Who knows?
The Boat Race is the most recent live sport event lost from the BBC, with word coming down last autumn that the corporation had ‘fallen out of love’ with it. Granted, not an event guaranteed to feed the clips or ‘second screen’ culture. But one which is still held in huge national affection, with a 2.6million viewership.
The event, enthusiastically picked up by Channel 4, has now gone the same way as the Grand National, The Open, Test cricket, the Paralympics and Royal Ascot. Each of those pillars of British sport came with the licence fee in the early 1990s. No more.
This summer will see the Commonwealth Games not staged on the BBC for the first time – a disaster for organisers involved in their own fight for relevance. The Games have been picked up by TNT Sports.
That’s the same broadcaster whose low-rent coverage of the Ashes this winter was encapsulated by commentator Rob Hatch mistaking a replay of Jamie Smith’s run-out as a live wicket and excitedly announcing that Ben Stokes had been dismissed.
In December, my colleague Mike Keegan’s reporting provided a graphic sense of how the BBC’s pivot to digital content, and the 16-24-year-old demographic it craves, is being viewed by staffers who believe in the concept of covering sports news on TV. His report related how a Q&A session with senior management, called a ‘culture cafe’ became a ‘slanging match’ at times.
It also highlighted how, in the same pursuit of the digital traffic, BBC Sport have recruited dedicated correspondents for Liverpool, Newcastle United, Chelsea and the Manchester clubs, as well as a ‘football tactics correspondent’ and a ‘football issues correspondent’. Chasing online audiences which the nation’s big clubs bring does not cohere with a Royal Charter which that states the BBC should be for everyone.
Kay-Jelski’s words this week suggested that he is fine with facing down the criticism. ‘It’s OK if a lot of these innovations don’t make everybody happy,’ he said. ‘It’s also OK if some of the traditional forms of its media content or sporting content don’t make people happy.’
How long before Wimbledon joins Sue Barker in departing our free-to-air screens?
But for two weeks this month, we were reminded that linear TV is not dead, as we sat together in front of the box in the corner of the room and watched skiers and snowboarders and skaters fly in northern Italy.
We witnessed the extraordinary outcome when BBC Sport commentators, editors, engineers and studio staff cohere. We were reminded of the understated brilliance of Hazel Irvine, one of the nation’s very best sports presenters.
And it was all ours to view, for free. The very best of our licence fee.
My friend bought his young kids a carpet curling kit and says they were so besotted that they practised every day of the Games. Such is the wonder and absorption that live sport brings. You don’t fall in love with clips.
