Stakes rise as Talk Radio makes waves (26 April 1999)

26 April 1999

Stakes rise as Talk Radio makes waves

IN COMMON with at least one other regular occupant of the Test Match Special commentary box, I received a call from Kelvin McKenzie last week. Would I join the Talk Radio commentary team in South Africa next winter?

The call was not entirely a surprise because he had been on the Today programme earlier in the day, celebrating a broadcasting coup and saying that he hoped the whole of the TMS team would switch stations.

Since the head of this bright and confident addition to the many FM wavelengths had just paid £150,000 for the radio commentary rights to the series in an unprecedented 'take it or leave it' offer to the United Cricket Board of South Africa, I imagine that the remuneration for accepting might have been relatively generous, but our brief and amiable conversation did not get that far. TMS has become a minor institution in British life and those of us lucky to have been long-serving members are heirs to a great tradition. It is not lightly cast aside.

It might have been different if there were not a genuine commitment to TMS, both from listeners and from the broadcasting executives who are now inevitably going to have to find a great deal more money to hold on to the longer-term broadcasting rights. Talk Radio may or may not make a success of their foray into ball-by-ball broadcasting. They will have to devote a large part of their broadcasting day to it, because unlike Radio Four they cannot split the network to have cricket on one wavelength and other regular programmes on another.

BBC radio own the rights to ball-by-ball in home Tests until the end of next year, but winter tours are separately negotiated with the relevant cricketing authority. Once upon a time no money changed hands at all: it was just a matter of one broadcasting authority lending facilities to the visiting one, and usually a commentator or two as well.

That changed when Sky began transmitting overseas Tests on television from the West Indies in 1990. Competition has rapidly inflated the game's income from television rights and the radio price has also risen steeply. Talk Radio's burgeoning interest was known about when Mike Lewis, as head of BBC radio sport, negotiated the last domestic contract with Terry Blake, marketing director of the England and Wales Cricket Board. The BBC have exclusive rights for the World Cup, the Tests which follow against New Zealand and all next season's Tests against the West Indies and Zimbabwe.

The BBC will not be the only national broadcasting authority affected by the fact that Talk Radio have paid six times more than the £25,000 which the BBC would have expected to be charged for the rights in South Africa. Sporting executives of the South African Broadcasting Corporation and the Australian Broadcasting Commission, both government-financed, have already expressed dismay that they will have to pay more in future.

The theory that radio and television rights might in future be negotiated as a package is, despite Sky's 20 per cent stake in Talk Radio, surely nonsense, at least as far as home rights are concerned. It would make no sense for the ECB to combine the two, but they will expect more income next time and they have shown, by allowing Sky one televised Test per season and a marginally richer share of the World Cup cake than the BBC, not to mention preferring Channel 4 (adverts and all) for the remaining Test coverage for the next four years, that they will, within reason, exploit the market.

For those who love TMS, therefore, whichever side of the microphone they may be on, it is good news that various BBC executives have expressed their determination to keep the show on the road. Lewis said: "It is disappointing we weren't given the chance to negotiate for this winter's tour, but TMS remains of critical importance to the BBC and we are absolutely determined to keep the contract."

Geoff Boycott and John Emburey, knowledgeable voices of north and south, will lead the Talk productions from South Africa. Reaction to their efforts (presumably assuming Emburey does not get the England coaching job) will be germane to future negotiations: by most accounts the first effort from Sharjah was not a success, with adverts and football talk interrupting. In any case the BBC are likely to retain the airwaves, at least for home series, from 2001, but two or three years further down the line digital radio will be in full swing and any entrepreneur willing to pay the price could outbid them.

There is no doubt that there is something about sport on radio which holds the attention more than television often can or does. It can only be the scope that it allows for the imagination of the listener, although that hardly explains why so many say that they like to watch television with Radio Four commentary on and the television sound off. The peripherals of the TMS commentaries are appreciated as much as the technical observations, it seems. Not just the buses, the birdlife and the cakes (which arrive in profusion still, although it is five years since Brian Johnston died), but the infinite byways, cricketing and otherwise, into which commentary often leads.

Jonathan Agnew, who was the first to get a call from McKenzie, has appreciated that interaction with the listeners and the feeling of a natural discussion between friends was the essence of Johnners' attraction, and he has to some extent slipped into the old charmer's brown and white brogues. Aggers, indeed, has developed his own personality to the extent that he was described as a "cult figure" in Australia last winter. It happened there many years ago to Henry Blofeld, who is recovering well after a recent operation but will not be back behind the microphone until halfway through the World Cup.

Blowers and myself go back to the early 1970s, when Johnston and John Arlott were in their pomp. I shall not forget my introduction to the hallowed circle, at Old Trafford in 1972, when I was made to feel that I had been commentating all my life, so welcoming were all concerned. Dinner at The Swan at Bucklow Hill, with an irascible Jack Fingleton having his leg pulled about the fusereum disease which had produced the perfect pitch for Derek Underwood to bowl the Australians out at Headingley, was a delight. Fingo, fine writer and shrewd summariser, was adamant that it was a Pommy plot.

Arlott, of course, achieved cult status without trying. He was a romantic with a wonderful feel for the character of those whose play he described and interpreted. There was not so much laughter at the dinner table as there was with Johnners, and to dine with Arlott as a young man was an expensive privilege because he tended to order the best wine, drink most of it himself then tell the waiter to split the bill, but it was always instructive. Anecdotes flowed faster than the claret.

The professionals, by which I mean the former Test players, have taken over in television boxes everywhere since Johnston was switched from television to radio because he was deemed to be too frivolous. The wise producers, however, have grasped the point that friendliness and personality are as important as technical know-how. Listeners, like viewers, deserve an accurate and informed interpretation of the match in question, but they all appreciate being made to feel part of the club.

Source :: Electronic Telegraph (https://www.telegraph.co.uk)