40 Years Of Hurt

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But there is one aspect of this World Cup that has been very positive from an English point of view (although I’m really clutching at straws here), and that is the BBC coverage. Of course the BBC coverage is always going to be head and shoulders above ITV, after all who cares what Gabby Logan thinks about football? I’ll listen to comment and analysis by Gary Lineker, Alan Hanson and Ian Wright ‘till the cows come home, but some random blonde that has been rolled out in an attempt to win over male viewers? No thanks.

But it’s not the undeniable quality of the BBC coverage that I’m talking about, it’s the delivery. You see for the first time, the BBC didn’t just broadcast the World Cup over the airwaves, it also broadcast all its live games over the Internet. This meant that a whole host of football fans could keep an eye on the games while they still got on with their work. OK, many would see this as a huge distraction in the workplace, but is it really worse than having masses of workers phoning in sick so that they could stay at home to watch?

Human resource issues aside, for me the BBC’s decision to broadcast the World Cup over the Internet is a huge step in the right direction, while it goes a long way to proving a theory I’ve had for the past few years. You see, I don’t believe that broadcast will be the default distribution medium for entertainment for much longer. As broadband becomes more and more widespread and the download speeds get faster and faster, it just makes perfect sense to receive your TV through your Internet connection rather than through an aerial or satellite dish.

In fact there are already services like Home Choice that offer TV and movies on demand through a broadband connection, while BT is soon to launch BT Vision, which will also offer you TV through broadband. But what’s so special about what the BBC is doing, is that it is offering its Internet broadcasts to anyone, whether they have a TV licence or not. Of course the BBC can do this since it is funded by the TV licence fee and doesn’t need to sell adds or make a profit to survive, but the ability to watch live sporting events online at no cost whatsoever is pretty damn impressive.

But there’s one aspect to the BBCs Internet coverage of the World Cup (and Wimbledon too) that doesn’t quite fit in with my vision of the future – it’s only available to UK residents. You see for me the whole point of using the Internet to distribute entertainment is that it’s global. So, if I want to sign up for HBO in the States, I can do that over the Internet and I’ll just be another subscriber, albeit one in another continent. But something tells me that geographical boundaries are here to stay, whether they make sense or not.

You see many television production companies make more money by selling programmes to foreign broadcasters than they do from their own subscriber base. So why would they want to sell direct to customers in another country, when they can just sell to a local broadcaster instead and let them have the hassle of customer care and retention? The simple answer is that they wouldn’t, which could put the mockers on my broadband TV delivery dream.

Regardless of the obstacles in the way of my ideal entertainment distribution model, I must take my hat off to the BBC for once again pushing the boundaries of television. While the big televisual news for World Cup 2006 was high definition broadcasting, I think that the live, online streaming of the matches was equally, if not more important.

And on a final note, well done to David Beckham who resigned as England Captain today. Although many football fans (some of my staff included) didn’t feel that he did a great job while wearing the armband, I can think of few players who wore an England shirt with more pride than the outgoing skipper. If you really don’t think that he deserved to be Captain, just watch a replay of the World Cup qualifier against Greece, and I don’t just mean the last minute free kick.

Now, let’s just hope that Thierry Henry leaves Ronaldo for dead before putting a hat-trick past Ricardo on Wednesday!

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