Call it the curse of the radio column. No sooner had half this space turned all soft and gooey last week with praise for BBC Radio 5 Live than a significant portion of the station's Irish listenership lost access to it entirely.
Only a minority of radio listeners in urban Ireland use the FMcable services on offer from NTL (formerly Cablelink) and Irish Multichannel to hear the BBC services. And it's only a minority of them who regularly tune in to the news-and-sports service from 5 Live. But if my e-mailbag is any indication, that minority of a minority is well represented among readers of this column. So that's my no-apologies out of the way for this week's hot pursuit of a story that's part-technical, part-legal, part-political and, perhaps, entirely confusing.
It's a story that's been well anticipated previously here, because it's about one of my pet peeves: radio sports rights. In this funny old world, sports events aren't public events: they are owned, lock, stock and barrel, video and audio, by their organisers; a commentator can't buy a ticket, go into a ground with a mobile phone and tell us all about it. And, I suppose, in this era when she or he could, almost as easily, bring a webcam along too, it's hardly surprising that legal teams at the FA, FIFA, F1 (to name just the Fs) etc are hard on the case.
That's why, a couple of weeks ago, attentive listeners might have noticed the cable version of BBC Radio 5 Live dropping out for the duration of the Italian Grand Prix, replaced by a message saying the service was unavailable on the Astra analog satellite. (We didn't know we were listening to it on the Astra analog satellite, but that's where the cable engineers get the transmission.)
Then last week, just before the Olympics started, the message returned, full-time. So whether you wanted to hear news of Bad Blair Days, chat about new movies, football phone-ins or, from Sydney, the weeping of Aussie ex-swimmer Tracy Wickham as Ian Thorpe took gold (sentimental symbol of a sentimental nation), it was a matter of taking your chances with the crackly reception on 909 or 693 medium wave. (But do, now that you've got a good reason, start listening to Saturday afternoon Premiership coverage on Today FM, which is just about as good as the vanishing competition.)
What's the problem? Well it seems 5 Live has been getting worried about minding its relationships with the various bodies which sell it rights to sporting events. Those rights are "UK specific"; but by sending events up to the satellite, they've been letting the commentaries spill into other jurisdictions. "We haven't been slapped on the knuckles," a 5 Live spokeswoman told this column. "It's more that we're ahead of the game. We're playing by the book - that's the BBC way."
Eventually analog satellite is going to be turned off anyway, replaced by digital satellite, which can be encrypted to prevent undeserving (unlicence-paying) foreigners from grabbing the service; it will also make it possible to encrypt specific programmes. But 5 Live has now gone and gone permanently from the old-fashioned analog satellite, long before other services, because of the sports-rights issue.
There's another complication. The cable operators here haven't been pirating the spill-over BBC services, after all; they have a long-standing legal agreement with the BBC to take its radio channels, including 5 Live and the World Service. The agreement doesn't specify the means of transmission, however, and it appears that NTL could simply try to find another signal, other than the discontinued satellite transmission, and then just resume normal service. "The agreement has existed for 30 years," a spokesperson for NTL told me, admitting however that there "are no hard and fast solutions" in the current techno-legal context.
Messy enough for you? Hang on tight while we negotiate the still-more-treacherous waters of Internet rights. Go to the BBC website (www.bbc.co.uk) at the moment and you'll find that the usual live stream of 5 Live is not available there until October 1st. And this time it's not just the high-minded "BBC way" that's responsible: the good people at the International Olympic Committee are watching very, very closely to ensure that there's only one way to obtain Olympic "actuality" via the web. Sadly, but inevitably given the bidders in this particular auction, it's the NBC (www.nbcolympics.com) way
So 5 Live, shot through with Sydney, is off the web entirely; but it's not the only service that's affected. Have a look at our own national broadcaster (www.rte.ie/ radio) and you'll find that RTE Radio's Olympic coverage is not available either live or via the invaluable archive service. (And no, it's not available either on the Astra satellite.)
This is one helluva ironic turn of events for the new global medium. The Olympic games, international in scope but deeply national in interest, should be an instant Internet classic: the Irish person in San Diego or the Brit in Hong Kong should be able to log on to his or her own national broadcaster and follow the progress of Irish or British athletes. Instead, the only webcasting available, audio or video, comes with a deafening soundtrack of "USA! USA!"
And don't imagine that the IOC/NBC definition of what constitutes "actuality" from the games is tightly restricted. The NBC monopoly includes audio commentary on Olympic events, commentary on any of the ceremonies, including medal-giving, and interviews and other audio from venues where IOC accreditation is required.This means, in theory, that most snippets of post-event interviews with Olympic contestants should be blanked out from the web streams of all the world's radio stations.
The Olympics are only the tip of the iceberg, albeit the tip that's sunk 5 Live's satellite service. The situation is bound to get messier, for a number of reasons: the global appetite for sports, in audio and video; the multiplicity and complexity of "platforms" on which events are and will be available; and the capacity to introduce specific charging for events via digital technology.
The market gets trickier, and the marketplace rules. But if the loss of 5 Live here and the absurd restrictions on Internet Olympic coverage are any indication, don't count on the consumer being the beneficiary.