Wednesday, November 14, 2007
BBC NI not catering for Gaelic fans…
PADDY Heaney has gained quite a loyal following since his respected GAA column started a few short years ago, so the BBC won’t be taking his powerful argument and criticism lightly. Heaney points out that despite the growing popularity of Gaelic games, BBC Radio Ulster seems reluctant to give them the coverage he believes they deserve. The call comes after the Gaelic Players Association voted to strike over the distribution of player grants.
Belfast Gonzo @ 01:18 PM
Perhaps because the Gaelic season never actually seems to end and it receives saturation coverage on television, the radio budget has run dry?
Posted by on Nov 14, 2007 @ 01:48 PMGood article by Heaney. Measured, not ranting. Hope it has some effect?
Posted by on Nov 14, 2007 @ 01:54 PMThe fact that GAA and football take place on different days of the weekend really ought to make equal coverage a simple matter of rostering.
Posted by on Nov 14, 2007 @ 01:57 PMA timely article by the best sportswriter in the north. BBC’s neglect of Gaelic games is a longstanding disgrace. There’ll be at least 12,000 or more at the Ulster Club semi-finals this weekend. The cost of bringing live radio broadcasts from both games probably wouldn’t even come to £1000. Yet are Radio Ulster providing coverage?
I stood in Crossmaglen recently alongside about 9,000 others at the Armagh county final. Did Radio Ulster cover the game? Of the Tyrone county final (att. 10,000) or either the Derry county final or replay (att. c.11,000)? Did they hell.
Fair play to local soccer and rugby for the coverage they receive. If the soccer lads can get live radio coverage and extensive TV coverage for games attended by no more than a few hundred (or less), good luck to them.
But GAA fans are entitled to better than they are getting. We need to break with the habit of sullenly stewing and muttering “Sure what would you expect?”. We need to be more forthright than we usually are in making our displeasure known.
(I understand the hapless Mr Glynn at BBC Sport - who sounded somewhat ragged last week on TalkBack as Mr Heaney tore him to shreds - has been inundated with thousands of calls, emails and letters since this article first appeared. Good. I don’t actually think the decision-makers at BBCNI are simply bigots with a sectarian axe to grind. Rather I think that BBCNI is just such a unionist-dominated workplace that the decision-makers are genuinely - and quite unbelievably - unaware of how big GAA is! Well, hopefully they’ll have their eyes opened now!)
Posted by on Nov 14, 2007 @ 02:17 PMI was going to say something derogatory towards BBC radio ulster’s existing sunday programming e.g. its a graveyard for past presenters ,Bennet, Walter Love etc.
However, having just looked at their scheduling it would seem that they are providing the breadth of content that sets the worlds best public broadcaster appart from commercial radio i.e. talking heads playing the latest drivel that music moguls churn out to the great unwashed.
I may not want to listen to ‘Strike up the band’ but i am glad to live in a country where we have a broadcaster that schedules it alongside ‘book corner’ and ‘culan’.
Sunday radio should be different, if you turn on the radio, you should know its sunday. In our house we couldn’t eat the after-mass fry without Fr.Dot d’Arcy chattering away in the background.
So after defending the present content and still with my earlier point wanting more GAA content let me present the solution.
Radio Ulster (as any listener to Gerry Anderson on a Tuesday morning will tell you) has the capacity to split coverage between its MW and FM service so any matches can easily be covered on the 1341MW service.
Posted by on Nov 14, 2007 @ 02:23 PMIn saying that though it is a fact that Catholics are less likely to pay the bloody tv license.
Posted by on Nov 14, 2007 @ 02:26 PMI too think the GAA is hard done by and the service needs to be significantly improved and continually monitored.
But in the interest of debate I would have to point out that if the BBC simply went by attendence figures at games then there would be little coverage of other sports at all.
I have seen 1000+ crowds at underage finals which would it seems to me push these games up the list pass other sports, however is the Down under 16 football final more significant than an all-Ireland basket-ball final or an international ladies hockey game?
I myself have no firm opinion on the matter.
But if there was more GAA on the TV could that harm the attendence figures?
Posted by on Nov 14, 2007 @ 02:29 PMGaelgannaire
“I have seen 1000+ crowds at underage finals which would it seems to me push these games up the list pass other sports,”
The issue is not that other sports receive good coverage. That is a good thing. The issue is that Gaelic football receives very poor coverage, despite being, by some considerable distance, the most popular spectator sport in BBCNI’s target area.
“But if there was more GAA on the TV could that harm the attendence figures?”
This was an argument within the GAA during the 1980s, when only the AI finals and semis were broadcast live. However since the early 90s, the massive expansion of live GAA coverage on RTE has coincided with an unprecedented explosion in the popularity of the games. So whereas in 1989, say a Munster hurling semi-final was being watched by 30,000 in Thurles, now they’re 50,000 in Thurles for an equivalent game, and half a million tuning in on TV. So the GAA has learned that its potential audience is not set at a fixed number, and TV/radio/press coverage is a hugely effective way of maximising it.
As for Chekov’s remark that GAA receives “saturation TV coverage” - er, I think you’ll find BBCNI has brought live coverage of THREE matches in 2007. The MacRory Cup final (att several thousand), one Ulster semi (can’t actually remember which) and the Ulster final (att 35,000).
But that’s still too much for you, isn’t it?
But I think Chekov has demonstrated an important point here. When it comes to GAA, there are those who want to see it, those who don’t care, and those who actively DO NOT want to see it. (As in: Get that oul fenian bogball off my screen.) And the BBC tends to sympathise more with the latter, even though they are a small, bigoted minority.
(On “anything for a quiet life” grounds, I suspect. Which is why pro-GAA people need to make life very noisy and bothersome indeed for the GAA-neglecting BBC.)
Posted by on Nov 14, 2007 @ 03:12 PMPresumably the fact that RTE is covering the bigger games may be a factor - Non Irons can pick national broadcaster of choice. The program the BBC did about the Down GAA player going to Aussie Rules was absolutely brilliant and not sure RTE would do such a good job.
Posted by on Nov 14, 2007 @ 03:15 PMIn saying that though it is a fact that Catholics are less likely to pay the bloody tv license.
Posted by Hogan on Nov 14, 2007 @ 02:26 PM
Can you provide evidence to back that sectarian rant up?
Posted by on Nov 14, 2007 @ 03:19 PMOh dammit!
I got snared in the anti-catholic rant monitor?
1: Stop choking.
2: Breathe normally.
3: Have a look at some of my past posts.Let me know when you’ve figured it out?
Posted by on Nov 14, 2007 @ 03:28 PMSammy
“Presumably the fact that RTE is covering the bigger games may be a factor - Non Irons can pick national broadcaster of choice.”
Clearly this is an abdication of responsibility. Perhaps people in NI should be given the option of paying their TV licence fee to RTE rather than BBC?
Besides, live television coverage of TWO Ulster championship games per year is an absolute joke, no matter what way you look at it.
(RTE cover games from all four provinces, and they are able to do so, because the will exists. They have cleared the decks and done the needful to provide coverage. Whereas BBC make excuses and reinforce the stereotype that exists in the nationalist community about the Bigoted Bastards Corporation.)
Besides, Heaney’s article concerns radio coverage firstly. Radio Ulster has both MW and FM frequencies, so the bandwidth and scheduling possibility exists. (No need to sack Walter Love.)
The costs are minimal (I’d say you could provide live radio coverage of a game for two or three hundred quid) so the resources exist.
GAA games in inaccessible rural locations in the depths of winter pull crowds of several thousand - in the summer, tens of thousands. Applying the usual formula of one attendee = 50 potential listeners, then clearly a large potential audience exists.
So the question is, why doesn’t Radio Ulster
broadcast major events like the Armagh County Final?And the answer, of course, is that nobody has given them a good kick up the arse to make them do it.
Bravo Mr Heaney!
Posted by on Nov 14, 2007 @ 03:36 PM“...it is a fact that Catholics are less likely to pay the bloody tv license.”
What’s worse - there’s a rumour round our way that they’ve recently brought in a special license for the colour, bastards! ;-)
Posted by on Nov 14, 2007 @ 03:42 PMBilly,
“Clearly this is an abdication of responsibility. Perhaps people in NI should be given the option of paying their TV licence fee to RTE rather than BBC? “
Perhaps cooperation/joint programming with RTE is the way forward.
Posted by on Nov 14, 2007 @ 04:38 PMSammy
Very good idea.
Posted by on Nov 14, 2007 @ 04:47 PMI personally wouldn’t piss on the GAA if they were on fire but this does seem prima facie discriminatory. That said, what do you expect? This is the broadcaster that encourages the use of ‘province’, ‘ulster’, ‘mainland’ and all the usual nonmenclature of unionism and then bans reporters from using ‘the North’, ‘the six counties’ etc. - utter bunch of sectarian cunts.
Posted by on Nov 14, 2007 @ 05:47 PMSir Michael Lyons was on Stephen Nolan the other morning and was asked directly about this. He implied that something significant was going to happen about coverage of GAA events, so it will be very interesting to see if anything transpires
Posted by on Nov 14, 2007 @ 05:58 PMCoverage of the GAA does appear to be lacking. May I just add however that the BBC’s ‘coverage’ of the Irish League and local football is appalling.
Posted by on Nov 14, 2007 @ 06:04 PMFair play to local soccer and rugby for the coverage they receive. If the soccer lads can get live radio coverage and extensive TV coverage for games attended by no more than a few hundred (or less), good luck to them.
I wouldn’t call one or two cup finals and a few minutes on Monday night’s news extensive. Perhaps as much as the Irish League deserves but that is open to debate. Don’t forget that Sky now own the rights to live Irish League football on TV.
Posted by on Nov 14, 2007 @ 06:04 PM“bans reporters from using ‘the North’, ‘the six counties’ etc. - utter bunch of sectarian cunts.”
Oh mope away off. I’ve heard them use “the North” on TV and seen it online (e.g here).
And you defend the use of the six counties and then call someone else “sectarian cunts”? Catch yourself on.
Posted by on Nov 14, 2007 @ 06:05 PMOh btw - do UTV not cover GAA matches? I’m sure I noticed more than 3 a year.
Posted by on Nov 14, 2007 @ 06:06 PMPerhaps the local broadcasters lost out in the bidding war?
Posted by on Nov 14, 2007 @ 06:44 PMBeano
“And you defend the use of the six counties and then call someone else “sectarian cunts”?”
What’s sectarian about saying “six counties”?
Posted by on Nov 14, 2007 @ 07:18 PMBeano
“Oh btw - do UTV not cover GAA matches?”
No.
“I’m sure I noticed more than 3 a year.”
You’re mistaken.
Posted by on Nov 14, 2007 @ 07:19 PMThe BBC did probably lose out in the tv bidding war but radio coverage is an issue that can easily be rectified.
Another area where BBC NI severely fall short is their provision for the Irish-language community. If programming was based on language capability, 10% of its output should be in Irish.
They provide substantial services for our Welsh and Scottish Gaelic friends, why not Irish Gaelic speakers?
Posted by on Nov 14, 2007 @ 07:40 PM
