[Arcane Astral Aeons]

BBC complain that they cant show much live sport
Football,Cricket etc
yet they can show 6 hours of the most boring sport on the planet
yes they can decide to show The Super Bowl
a game so tedious it makes golf look exciting
and us licence fee payers have to pay for this crap

is it actually a game?
loads of overpaid twats wearing helmets trying to catch a "football"
aint even round

[Ska'dForLife-WBA]

While I suspect this post is about as serious as your usual dispatches from the Klingon neutral zone, there is the ghost of a point to be discussed here.

The first thing is that it's really not the fault of the BBC. They didn't invent exclusivity rights in broadcasting contracts. They can't control the fact that Rupert Murdoch can fork out the equivalent of a decade's worth of licence fees to outbid them for every sport from football to Mongolian bog-snorkelling. The best they can do is try and win those sports whose organisers are smart and fair enough to insist on guaranteed terrestrial coverage of major events, of which NFL is one.

Without wanting to steal TalkSaft's revolutionary thunder, we need state legislation in this country (as Australia and New Zealand have) to ensure that *all* sports can have a certain number of games or events broadcast on terrestrial channels, should those channels choose to exercise the option. There'll still be adequate competition between BBC, ITV, Channel Four and Channel Five to keep standards up, and Sky will still get a good share of coverage for their money, as well as continuing to specialise in more obscure sports. Sadly, any government that tries to take such an outrageously egalitarian measure will soon find that every Murdoch-owned paper has it in for them on every front page, day after day, until they're no longer the government. It's an even bigger game than that American Helmetball, to be honest.