When people mention the "crown jewels" you tend to think about being on a pitch and the ball you kick hitting two other balls that you might kick. This time though it is the continuing discussion about the list of sporting events reserved for free-to-air television. That list having last been reviewed ten years ago when Test Match cricket was removed, much to the chagrin of many of us cricket fans. The panel that will be looking at the list is being led by former Football Association chief David Davies. Helping him with the review are England women's football boss Hope Powell, journalist Nick Pollard, who was formally the head of SKY News, and Professor Chris Gratton from the Sport Industry Research Centre at Sheffield Hallam University. The remaining quartet being two former sportsmen in athlete Colin Jackson and cricketer Angus Fraser, along with sports presenters Eamonn Holmes and Dougie Donnelly. Deciding what stays and what goes from the crown jewels list looks like being a long process though with a conclusion expected to be reached sometime after the summer. Davies himself commenting to BBC Sport : "I am delighted that we have secured such a range of expertise and I look forward to working with the panel as the review moves forward over the coming year." The broadcasting rules of the game at present are that there is an A list and a B list. The A list comprising the Olympic Games, the FIFA World Cup Finals, the European Football Championships, the FA Cup Final, the Scottish Cup Final, Wimbledon (finals weekend), The Grand National, The Derby, Rugby League Challenge Cup Final and the Rugby Union World Cup Final. Meanwhile the B list, which Test Cricket was relegated into in 1998 contains : Cricket Test matches played in England, Non-finals at Wimbledon, Six Nations Rugby matches (involving home nations), All other Rugby Union World Cup matches, the Commonwealth Games, the World Athletics Championship, the Cricket World Cup (finals, semi-finals and matches involving home nations), The Open Golf Championship and The Ryder Cup. The rules decided in 1998 being that the A list (crown jewels) are those deemed too important to be restricted to people with satellite or cable television. While the B list allows subscription broadcasters to bid for the right to screen matches, provided there are satisfactory arrangements in place for a terrestrial broadcaster to show highlights. Obviously since 1998 Setanta have come on the scene plus there has been an explosion in SKY subscriptions, also not forgetting the amount of different ways there are to watch sport through your computer in this day and age. The validity of a crown jewels list in today's digital times apparently being one of the main things that the panel will be looking at over the course of the year. Personally I prefer watching a lot of things on the BBC due to a lack of adverts. Although my favourite other sport is golf and it comes as a little bit of a surprise to me to see The Open Golf Championship on the B list, while The Derby is on the A list. I also wasn't aware that only the finals weekend at Wimbledon is on the protected list while the rest of the tournament isn't, suggesting that the BBC could be involved in a good few bidding wars in the future. Auntie Beeb could be in a better position at the moment though with the way the economic situation is likely to unfold over the next years. Advertising revenues having apparently fallen all across the television network over the last 12 months, with some newspapers having also reported a revenue slump. Commercial radio is apparently well down, and even online advertising, which was expected to come out unscathed, also seems to be flatlining. As the credit crunch hits more and more of us then you can see SKY or Setanta being cancelled across more and more homes across the country. Setanta in particular having grown so quickly and chucked a lot of money at a lot of sports recently could find itself struggling a lot more than SKY. That is if you are able to cancel your Setanta subscription given the bad press they have had in that department recently. With quite a few of the panel having, or are still working for the BBC in some capacity, you would hope that the A list will come out of this review pretty intact, or even with a few more things promoted into it. The fact that the United Kingdom's leading governing bodies for sport have recently pledged to keep their main events on "free" television, according to a new voluntary code of conduct, giving hope that we won't have to pay even more to watch sport in the future. |