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Home Ashes to return to free-to-air TV

four_or_six

Cricketer Of The Year
What nobody has picked up on is that the B list which requires terrestrial highlights and includes Home Test matches and World Cup matches featuring England is being scrapped. That means there's a significant chance that the only cricket on terrestrial TV will be the Ashes, no other series will even get highlights.
ffs, so they're going to swap having free-to-air highlights every year for the Ashes live every four years? That's ridiculous.

Acutally, if you look at the changes across all sports, it's terrible. I think they've just put the Ashes in to cover it up.

Being lost:

Full live coverage:

Winter Olympics
Epsom Derby
Rugby League Challenge Cup Final

Highlights only on free-to-air TV:

England's home cricket Test matches
Other matches, excluding finals, at Wimbledon Championships
Other matches, excluding final, at Rugby World Cup
Six Nations matches involving home countries
Commonwealth Games
World Athletics Championships
Cricket World Cup - final, semi-finals and matches involving home nations
Ryder Cup
Open golf championship
 

Langeveldt

Soutie
I'm not sure what the UK's record in the Winter Olympics is like, but I've never seen anyone get excited about any of the events whatsoever, and I've never seen any bobsledding going on in the Cotswolds.. So fair enough that gets scrapped..

I think T20 is absolutely ideal for terrestrial, and even the domestic cup should be on TV
 
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wpdavid

Hall of Fame Member
I'm not sure what the UK's record in the Winter Olympics is like, but I've never seen anyone get excited about any of the events whatsoever, and I've never seen any bobsledding going on in the Cotswolds.. So fair enough that gets scrapped..

We take an interest on the odd occasion when we're in with a chance. For a while in the 1970's & 1980's that involved various skaters - Curry, Cousins, Torville & Dean. And there was the curling team in 2002. But that's about it. I won't miss it tbh.
 

four_or_six

Cricketer Of The Year
I'm not sure what the UK's record in the Winter Olympics is like, but I've never seen anyone get excited about any of the events whatsoever, and I've never seen any bobsledding going on in the Cotswolds.. So fair enough that gets scrapped..

I think T20 is absolutely ideal for terrestrial, and even the domestic cup should be on TV
Way more excitement and atmosphere where I was when we won the curling gold medal than the 05 Ashes. Was huge, everyone screaming at the TV.

Perhaps not quite so much screaming and excitement as the end of this year's Cardiff test though.
 

superkingdave

Hall of Fame Member
Strange how there was such outrage over how cricket was lost to sky, and now there is outrage about the Ashes being lost to terrestrial.. I'm firmly in the pro-terrestrial camp to be honest, it's not like English cricket is starving, and you can see their penchant for the big buck when it came to Stanford, and nobody liked it, so it's a bit rich to say they are holding cricket to ransom now..

What is also worrying is how the Ashes get different treatment to other test cricket.. A step closer to world of English cricket where we only have the Ashes and T20 methinks

I just look at how I can watch more English cricket from the other side of the world, for less money than my parents do, who live a few miles from the county ground in Taunton.. That to me isn't right..

Just on this point, at the moment the Ashes is not raised above the rest of test cricket in regards to the tv rights, exclusive home test cricket is sold as a package for all tests. If this gets the go ahead, the Ashes will be separate from other test cricket and we may get even more skewed towards an Ashes schedule.

Conversely if BBC or whomever pays jack **** for the Ashes, which they probably would want to do, then whats to stop the ECB saying, we will make the Ashes a 3 test series cos we can make more money by having a longer series against SA or India on Sky.
 

superkingdave

Hall of Fame Member
Quick question...the list if for events to be on free-to-air television...it doesn't say terrestial (because obviously with BBC & C4 they stick in on digital sometimes)

Could the ECB and SKY do a deal where the Ashes would stay on sky but Sky Sports or wherever they put it, would be unencrypted when the Ashes is on? Then SKY would still have exclusive rights, and their advertising revenue for the Ashes would be up a lot. And we would still get the best coverage?
 

Uppercut

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Or they could say, "the Ashes? What are they? This is the Arshes, it's just like any five-test home series against Australia."
 

four_or_six

Cricketer Of The Year
The more I think about this, the more it stinks.
It's that time you get in any government, six months or so before an election, where all kinds of 'populist' stuff comes out to get as many good headlines as possible without any thought as to the long-term consequences.
 

Richard

Cricket Web Staff Member
Surprised no-one has yet mentioned the fact that Sky may well decide that if they can't have Ashes Tests they don't want any home Tests at all; the ideal scenario is that home Tests as a rule simply return to free-to-air (the word terrestrial is irrelevant as in any conceivable world there will no longer be analogue broadcasts in 2017) TV, from which they should never have been removed ITFP. Ashes-only on FTA and everything else on satellite seems to me, like everyone else, to be a dreadful idea.

The effect of this decision is still a long, long way ahead - by the time the 2016 Ashes or whatever it is rolls around, we won't have had any live cricket on free-to-air TV for 11 years. It'll be a completely new World and in all honesty I think it's pretty much a case of anyone predicting things are going to be good or bad isn't really going to have much of a clue. There's no way we're going to get back to the ideal situation which we had 2000-2005, because as I say things will have changed so much - already have in fact. Whether we get something worse or better than we're currently in the midst of will only be able to be assessed nearer the time.
 
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four_or_six

Cricketer Of The Year
The ECB (no idea if they're exaggerating or not) are predicting 23,000 coaches could lose their jobs as a result of this. Does anyone know what proportion that is of the total?
 

Richard

Cricket Web Staff Member
Seems like a typically vague and hysterical figure thrown about in times of uncertainty. As I say, there's no way whatsoever that you can assess what impact this is going to have.
 

GIMH

Norwood's on Fire
Seems like a typically vague and hysterical figure thrown about in times of uncertainty. As I say, there's no way whatsoever that you can assess what impact this is going to have.
Pretty sure the ECB can make an estimate of the cost it will have to them, and then therefore the number of cuts there will have to be
 

Richard

Cricket Web Staff Member
Of course you can.
You really can't. How on Earth can someone possibly profess to be able to assess the impact of something when they can't even begin yet to assess the impact of the previous related decision (ie, the move to take all live cricket off FTA)?

The World is a more ever-changing matter than ever currently. In 7 years' time Heaven knows how much is going to be different in so many different ways which impact upon what impact the move will have.

That's aside from the fact that there is no certainty of exactly what is going to be entailed by this ruling, as seen by the number of comments questioning the matter in this thread. There is so much that we don't have a clue about that to speculate is in my view pretty pointless. Let's wait and see how the next 4 years go, never mind the next 6.
 

Richard

Cricket Web Staff Member
Pretty sure the ECB can make an estimate of the cost it will have to them, and then therefore the number of cuts there will have to be
There's no way the ECB in 1997 could have made any estimate of what the impact of the deal effective from 2006 was going to have, same way no-one can do even now, 3 years later.

Some things cannot be estimated upon, and in the course of 7 years so much can change that the head can spin even trying to think about it.
 

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