{"id":14,"date":"2009-11-18T13:14:10","date_gmt":"2009-11-18T02:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wildcard.gnubies.com\/?p=14"},"modified":"2009-11-18T13:14:10","modified_gmt":"2009-11-18T02:14:10","slug":"when-sports-bodies-dictate-the-agenda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sams-blog.com\/?p=14","title":{"rendered":"When sports bodies dictate the agenda…"},"content":{"rendered":"

RUGBY matches telecast in New Zealand on Sky TV are made highly watchable by the two commentators – Grant Nisbett and Murray Mexted. Nisbett follows the game and Mexted, a former All Black, adds some spicy comment.<\/p>\n

But that is all in the past. Mexted has been shown the door by Sky simply because he criticised the New Zealand rugby union authorities for their decision to cut four teams from the provincial Air New Zealand cup tournament next year.<\/p>\n

Mexted was apparently told<\/a> by Sky that the NZRU was a commercial partner and should not be criticised.<\/p>\n

This isn’t the first time that Sky has shown such sensitivity; earlier this year when the Indian cricket team toured New Zealand, its officials took exception to the fact that Craig McMillan, who is associated with the Indian Cricket League, an unauthorised rival to the Indian board’s Indian Premier League, was a commentator for the one-day series<\/a>.<\/p>\n

McMillan was pulled from the team after the complaint during the fourth one-day tie. He was also supposed to be a commentator for the second Test at Napier, alongside former Indian player Ravi Shastri.<\/p>\n

Shastri is said<\/a> to be the one who raised the red flag about McMillan.<\/p>\n

The Indian cricket board is king when it comes to cricket, be it the shorter variety or Test match cricket. The Indian team is a drawcard anywhere in the world given the huge number of Indians who are interested in what is to a large extent a boring game.<\/p>\n

This trend has been present for some time – sports bodies trying to control media coverage. In Australia, the Australian Football League (Australian rules football) has tried to dictate terms to the the media.<\/p>\n

The AFL has its own official website and supplies official pictures of the players to the media; these pictures cannot be used by online media.<\/p>\n

Other sports do try to extract the maximum commercial gain from an event by selling rights to an official media organ – and the sad thing is that the media goes along with this.<\/p>\n

Which means that actions like that of Sky TV are partly to be blamed for the sports bodies acting like prima donnas<\/em>. When principle is thrown overboard, the public tend to get the short end of the stick.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RUGBY matches telecast in New Zealand on Sky TV are made highly watchable by the two commentators – Grant Nisbett and Murray Mexted. Nisbett follows the game and Mexted, a former All Black, adds some spicy comment. But that is all in the past. Mexted has been shown the door by Sky simply because he … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “When sports bodies dictate the agenda…”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5,18,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-australia","category-cricket","category-media","category-rugby-union"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4458,"url":"https:\/\/sams-blog.com\/?p=4458","url_meta":{"origin":14,"position":0},"title":"Australia: 24m people, but not one decent rugby commentator","date":"September 11, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Australia is one of the better rugby nations on the face of the earth, with two World Cup wins to show for its efforts in the game, the same as South Africa and just one behind New Zealand. 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