Television was introduced to Australia in 1956 which meant, among other things, that the ABC’s historic broadcast of that year’s Melbourne Olympic Games relied upon obviously inexperienced TV crews, cannon-sized cameras that took an hour to warm up and, as its mission control, a Morris van that a Mr Whippy franchisee would consider a little on the squeezy side.
As such, it is doubtful that Australians were unhappy with the ABC’s live footage of the Games. Indeed, watching real-time action on their (or someone else’s) boxy black and white sets must have seemed as extraordinary as the world-beating deeds of Betty Cuthbert and co.
More recently, however, Australians, spoilt rotten compared to our 1956 forebears, have been known to be more than a little discontented with how local networks cover Olympic Games. And complaining about it has become a quadrennial exercise – like our interest in show jumping, or the existential funk we flirt with when, after marvelling at how quickly four years have passed, we struggle to recall anything of note we’ve achieved in that period (besides, that is, a more haggard reflection). It must be said, however, that when it comes to our Olympic-class moaning most of our gripes are anchored in solid ground.
Bearing in mind your blood pressure, think about what we tend to get from our Olympic broadcasters, usually one of Nine, Seven or Ten: commercials, commercials, commercials; blanket promos of the network’s upcoming “blockbuster” programs; retrograde, flag-waving, shrimp-on-the-barbie jingoism that ignores the big picture to concentrate on the gallant loser in green and gold; on-delay races; matches never seen; endless promises about something “coming up” but, like Godot, it never appears; schmaltzy montages where Australian athletes’ backstories are strip-mined for any kind of hardship (growing up without a TV would do, or being left-handed) so that it can be turned into a redemption story; fawning, post-event interviews with “Cathy” and “Sam”, athletes who don’t need surnames because they are, like, part of our family; and sailing. So much sailing.
But if there has been one saving grace that has somewhat alleviated our suffering at the hands of the commercial networks it’s that we’ve always been able to concede that, well, “at least we’re not paying for this rubbish”. (The coverage, that is, not Australia’s Olympic campaign – we’re very much forking out for that: $49 million per gold medal was one estimate from 2012.)
Well, you may not have noticed, but those days are almost gone. The growth of online broadcasting and the amorphous world of the internet has changed the landscape and exposed Australia’s admirable but outdated “anti-siphoning laws”, enacted in 1992 to protect Australians’ televisual access to the most popular sporting events.
For instance, while Nine was the free-to-air broadcaster of the London Games in 2012 (which brought Eddie McGuire, and even Alan Jones, into our lounge-rooms, whether we wanted them there or not) Foxtel was a joint rights-holder. And its coverage blew Nine’s out of the water. While Nine stayed old-school and shoehorned the Games into, effectively, a “single” channel (it broadcast the same footage on its SD and HD channels) Foxtel had eight dedicated channels, and on its excellent iPad app, you could more or less watch, live, any sport you wanted, when you wanted. The catch, of course, was that you had to be a Foxtel subscriber.
This year, however, Foxtel will play no part in coverage of the Rio Olympics as Seven has bought exclusive rights. Seven, however, has learnt from Nine’s mistake of thinking it’s still 1956, while it has also has taken a leaf out of Foxtel’s book. By doing so it will become the first free-to-air broadcaster in Australia to charge for watching sport. The irony of this hasn’t been lost on the pay TV industry which is banned from buying (outright) Olympic broadcasting rights because the law says Australians shouldn’t have to pay to watch the Olympics.
Besides screening some 900 hours of the Olympics on all three of its digital channels (Seven, 7two and 7mate) and website, Seven will offer a “premium access” app, at a one-off cost of $20, which will provide another couple of thousand of live-streaming hours of every competition session from Rio. Though many of us may need to hire a teenager for tech support (like showing us how to something on our tablet to play on our HD TV), if you’re mad for handball or table tennis or judo you can watch it. All of it.
Without yet seeing how well Seven pulls this off it is impossible to offer a critique but, overall, Seven’s approach seems sound enough. Free-to-air TV networks haven’t quite cottoned on yet, but people these days want to watch things when they want to watch them – not when the networks think they should. In this respect Seven’s multi-channel, multi-platform approach – which the BBC displayed to even more comprehensive effect during London 2012, as those who know their way around a VPN discovered – comes close to satisfying our desires. And while Seven does have its hand out for money, you would think that for most people there will be more than enough free coverage available.
But for how long will that last? In the future, will the amount of sport coverage we need to pay for outweigh what’s offered for free? Are we at the top of a slippery slope?
No doubt we’ll hear a lot more about this in the future. In March, the major media players submitted documents to a Senate enquiry on current media legislation, but the looming election put possible media reform on hold. Change could be coming, however, along with more debate about whether we have some kind of inalienable right to watch sport – or just particular sports or events, you know, the good ones – free of charge.
In the meantime, we’ve got what we’ve got, and while we can’t yet judge Seven’s coverage, it appears that we’ll have a lot more choice about what we watch during the Games than we’ve ever had before on free-to-air TV. So if Bruce McAvaney starts laying it on with a trowel we can switch channels and escape to something more to our liking. That’s progress.
