To the TOWER with THEM

For anyone asked to speak about popular culture who then launches into a diatribe about something that he calls “Man You”, the Crown Jewels would not be likely – as I understand it – to refer to the treasures kept on semi-public display in the Tower of London and pressed into service for that rare event, a coronation. No, sir. What that dunderhead pictures when he hears the phrase “the Crown Jewels” is a menu of sporting events. Hard to credit, I know. But that is the barrel-bottom-scraping state of our culture.

My devotees will be aware that sport is not one of my subjects; though I am surprised to note how often the words “sport” and “football” and the names of sportspeople appear in the link list on the right of this page. In the narrow and self-regarding world of sport, the phrase “Crown Jewels” apparently has come to refer to a list of events that are considered in some sense “nation-uniting” – like the coronation itself, perhaps – and therefore worthy to be kept available for viewing on free-to-air television rather than being subject to acquisition for exclusive transmission by fee-charging broadcasters (i.e. the non-UK-tax-payer Rupert Murdoch). I couldn’t give a tuppenny damn whether people watch, say, some rugby match on BBC1 or on Sky Sports, always providing that programmes that I want to watch are not delayed, displaced, postponed or cancelled. The most imperilled fixture in the schedules at those times when sports events march all over them is the main evening news bulletin. God help the broadcasters if there is extra time being played in a “vitally important” game of tiddlywinks when news is breaking of the passing of the sovereign (or – worse – Madonna). Some sports producer will certainly be in an agony of indecision as to whether to hold out till the end of the game,

I am only interested in this matter because I am interested in – or, to be more accurate, I used to be interested in – broadcasting policy. Nowadays, British television by and large bores me to tears when it is not appalling me by its vulgarity and speciousness. One of the factors that has destroyed television is its own developing treatment of sport which, in its turn, has destroyed those qualities of sporting prowess and achievement that once could credibly be called honourable.

Permit me to explain. Not so very long ago – in my lifetime, at any rate – much of sport at national and even international level was played by amateurs. The last bastion of amateur sport, the Olympic Games, only fell to the inevitable as recently as the beginning of the 1990s and Olympic boxing is still restricted to non-professionals. In golf, tennis and boxing, “turning pro” remains something that competitors do only after becoming regulars in international competition and the major tournaments in the first two sports continue to reserve a limited entry for non-professionals who are on the verge of crossing over. When I was young, the Wimbledon champion often did not return to defend his or her title because he or she had turned pro during the interim. In 1968, the championships were finally declared open and prize money allowed for the first time. Professionals not seen there for some years promptly returned to the fray.

The professionalizing of sport coincided with its growth in importance to television schedulers. After years of the indefensible duplication of, most notably, the FA Cup Final simultaneously live on BBC and ITV, competition for exclusive coverage rights took hold in earnest. The administrators of the various sports saw that there was a lucrative market here and encouraged competitive bidding. But the innovations and refinements introduced by the broadcasters to make their coverage more exciting and therefore more attractive both to potential audiences and to the owners of the rights had a significant downside.

Action replays, repeated highlights and so-called analysis of incidents and decisions by referees and umpires distorted the natural arc and the internal rhythms of each game, not to say the very nature of the respective sports. What’s more, it undermined deeply the authority of those charged with controlling the players.

And advertisers saw an easy way of reaching huge captive audiences. Gradually, merchandising has swamped all sports, so that leagues and tournaments have to be identified by a brand name, players enter the arena festooned with logos, arenas pulsate with animated advertising and greenswards are painted with logos only readable from camera positions, all specifically designed to draw the eye from the sport itself.

And of course the television and marketing money has raised the salaries and fees that sports stars can command to stratospheric heights. Sport now outbids movie and rock music fame as a means by which working class boys and, to a lesser extent, girls can climb into major wealth. Not surprisingly, then, every sport – there are now no exceptions as far as I am aware – is subject to cheating and financial corruption, some of it on an industrial scale.

The whole culture of sport has been transformed in a couple of generations. Now Sky Sports dictates the day and time when events will take place, in order to maximise its own options for coverage. Never mind if the local fans are inconvenienced or the clubs find fixtures bunching or clashing with other plans. Meanwhile, in many sports, playing for your country is now considered more of a nuisance than an honour. Football managers in particular would rather not risk the limbs of their phenomenally expensive star players in international duty. Indeed, football managers lead the way in systematically undermining the authority of referees. That’ll be the day when Sir Alex Ferguson concedes that the opposing team got an unlucky break.

Predictably enough, the recommendations of the panel – charged to re-examine the Crown Jewels and chaired by former BBC sports journalist and Football Association executive David Davies – have been condemned on all sides. Giles Clarke, chairman of the England and Wales Cricket Board, told The World at One yesterday that cricket would be reduced to “extreme poverty” if the Ashes Tests played in England were obliged to be shown free-to-air. Before Mr Clarke uses such a foolish phrase again, I suggest he make a trip to sub-Saharan Africa. The people there have to eat their cricket bats.

On the other hand, administrators of events like the Derby – which, Davies recommends, should not be considered a “Crown Jewel” – are equally outraged by a sense that they have been downgraded. The fat-arsed executives who sit in offices and count the money brought in by their respective sports want it both ways: they want broadcasters to cough up so much for the rights that every other area of broadcasting is impoverished, but they also want the big audiences that only free-to-air transmission can deliver: evidently 2.4 million watched the 2005 Ashes on Channel 4 but only a bit over half a million paid to see this year’s live coverage on Sky.

How the FAE’s rationalise their two-pronged complaint is that their respective sports “at grass roots” will be the component that is impoverished if Murdoch’s riches are denied them; as if they mention the grass roots at any other juncture. I have a proposal for the seeding of the grass roots in any sport, that could be taken up whatever the outcome of the Crown Jewels proposals. Let every participant in any sporting field, whether player or administrator, who makes more than, say, £75,000 per year from the sport and its associated endorsements pay a levy of, say, 50 percent of earnings into a fund for the sport’s grass roots. I think that’s fair. How many helicopters does Michael Owen need, for Pete’s sake?

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Another broadcasting matter currently exercising commentators is that of the kind of so-called joke that gives great offence to certain sectors of the audience. As someone brought up on the traditions of wit, humour, drollery and wordplay, I cannot but find these sorts of “jokes” pretty poor at best. But then I am considerably more radical than those self-proclaimed “edgy” comedians who believe they are … erm … pushing the envelope. After all, I can be offensive without even having to use the dodgy excuse that I am being funny. Unlike that cunt Jimmy Carr.