Court martials

To be fair to us, there is precious little to watch. Which other games do our sports people, sorta-kinda know how to play? Sports channels are flooded by soccer, basketball, motor racing, golf. When was the last time we produced a champion in any of those disciplines? There’s this driver chappie, Karthikeyan who has the makings of a Formula One, and golfers like Jeev-weev Milkha Singh who might putt (!) it across others, a weight-lifter here and an Anand there, but like a possible title of a future Bond film, Too Few Are Not Enough.

Tennis has produced a pair of Indian world-winners: Leander and Mahesh. Which brings us to the Australian Open Tennis Championship, on the courts for the last fortnight. But not so as you would have noticed. Search as you might for a glimpse of Andre Agassi blowing kisses to Steffi Graf before beating Pete Sampras, you would have searched in vain. ESPN, STAR Sports and DD Sports have ignored the tournament. DD promised to telecastall the finals on its sports channel but whether or not, they would be shown on DD1/DD2 also, was hanging fire till Friday afternoon.

Tennis is a mainstay of sports channels; it is played globally and players from as unlikely a country as Morocco are playing and winning. The four Grand Slam tourneys were the aces in the pack (if you will pardon the pun). Especially on ESPN and STAR Sports. Why, they made Vijay Amrithraj and Brian What’s-his-name-Langley television’s most unusual comedy pairing.

It’s been two years since the Australian Open was last shown on DD or the sports channels. The broadcasters say the telecast fee was increased three-fold. An official at DD quoted a sum of two lakh million dollars (talk about mixed metaphors!). However much that amounts to, it sounds prohibitive.

Television is in the business of making money out of sports. And the Australian Open doesn’t make the money spent buying its TV rights. It doesn’t get the mass viewership to justify the telecast or advertising support.Cricket does. That’s why in our part of the world, we eat, drink, sleep only cricket. Games like soccer, golf are paid for by advertising in other countries and simply repeated here at transmission costs.

Earlier, TV rights for major sports events were offered to national broadcasters (Doordarshan, BBC) at affordable rates, in the public interest. So that all TV viewers enjoyed access to these events. But with the arrival cable/satellite sports channels, the tradition has been abandoned. Now the highest bidder wins it all.

Thus, between them, the organisers of sports events and the TV channels, have queered the pitch, so to speak. Three years ago the wide, wide world of sports had been expanded beyond our horizons. It appears to be shrinking once again. Now, you only get to see what pays: that is the lesson of the market. That is the result of technology which permits channels to split transmission like hairs and offer contry-specific telecasts: while we watch cricket, cricket, cricket, in thePhilippines they’re watching basketball.

So is broadcasting narrow-cast. We await the next generation; one in which each of us can choose what to watch, when to watch it, so long as we pay. Then we, the world, will seldom sit and watch any game, anything together again. A mass media is on the threshold of becoming individual. Till then you will only read about Lindsay Davenport beating Martini- -mind-your-manners-Hingis at the Australian Open.

*PS: The preposterous twists and turns of American soaps, sometimes, catch up with characters. Brooke’s son gets into a fight with Sally’s grandson. “Who is your father, Eric Jr.?” taunts the latter, “Is he,” pointing to lock-jawed Ridge, “your father or you brother?” For those of you not in the know of The Bold and the Beautiful (STAR World), Brooke was married to Ridge’s father, Eric, bore him a child, before she married the son. Helluva life for a kid, even a TV one.

* PPS: An Indian Railways advertisement shows a man cross a railway track on his way toan imaginary death under an oncoming train. The voice-over advises you to use the overhead bridge. For your “suraksha”. Doesn’t that beat everything? Most deaths occur due train accidents, derailments, bombs. A more appropriate ad would say: “If you care about your safety, don’t travel Indian Railways.” Or Indian Airlines.