BBC respond to SRU critics

June 27, 2010   ·   0 Comments

The BBC have responded to SRU chief executive, Gordon McKie’s attack on the BBC earlier in the week when he described the corporations offer for rights to the Autumn tests as “derisory”.

McKie has not backed down from his position, adding “We feel that the coverage is overly biased towards football, notwithstanding that football is our national sport, and what we are asking for is a resetting of the coverage to promote other sports, including rugby.”

According to The Scotsman, the BBC felt slighted by the comments and angry with the “derisory” term used by McKie, pointing out that until this year the Autum Tests involving Wales, Scotland and Ireland were sold on a collective bargaining basis by the three unions, and that this was no longer the case.

BBC Scotland Head of Sport Ewan Angus said: “They chose to break up that position which delivered a sensible and coherent approach to the scheduling of those matches, and now that it has broken up, everybody wants to put their match on at a time which suits best for their audience. That in itself makes the Autumn Tests slightly less valuable.”

Angus indicated that the BBC do want to show the Autumn tests, adding : “We make no secret of the fact that when it comes to sport, what we have to do is to reflect the tastes and interests of the audience, and you can’t escape the fact that in Scotland, football is the biggest game in town by a country mile.”

“We do place a lot of emphasis on rugby and we absolutely agree that there is a significant interest in rugby on the part of the audience, but we can only do so much and we do operate across three platforms – online, radio and television.

“At the moment we have a regularly scheduled rugby programme on Friday night on Radio Scotland which includes a live commentary almost every week. But we put a lot of emphasis on the Six Nations because rugby, whether the SRU like it or not, it is much more a big event sport than say, football.”

Meanwhile , the Scottish Parliament are set to debate the issue of the Corporations treatment of Rugby this Thursday.

Tags: Autumn Tests, BBC Sport, Rugby, SRU