Memorandum submitted by Five
Five is pleased to contribute to the Select
Committee's short inquiry into the broadcasting rights for cricket.
From next summer Five will be showing highlights
of each day's play in all the home Test matches and One Day Internationals
at a time that suits the cricket audience. We are excited at adding
cricket to our already sizeable sports portfolio at a time of
renewed interest in the game, and are determined to do the game
justice with first class programming.
FIVE'S
CONTRIBUTION TO
CRICKET
Five was delighted that the England and Wales
Cricket Board (ECB) decided to award Five the highlights rights
for international cricket from next summer. This allows us to
add cricket coverage to our growing sports portfolio and further
expand the range of what viewers can expect from Five. We will
provide attractive and high quality coverage that is available
at a time when demand to watch cricket highlights is at its greatest.
We see the acquisition of exclusive rights to
the highlights of a major sport as a further example of Five's
continuing growth as a mainstream broadcaster.
In our eight years on air Five has gained a
considerable reputation as a sports broadcaster. We have shown
over 180 live football games, including qualifying England matches
for major tournaments and major UEFA Cup matches. And we have
been praised for our diverse and eclectic range of sports broadcasting—over
1,400 hours each year, devoted to such sports as American football,
baseball, ice hockey, golf and extreme sports.
Five is committed to showing highlights of each
day's play in Test and One Day International cricket that evening
between 7.15 and 8.00. We believe this is the best possible time
for highlights to be screened—sufficiently soon after the
close of play for the story of the day to be fresh and recent;
but late enough for viewers to get home from their work or other
activities and watch how that day's play unfolded. We also believe
there will be increased interest in early highlights from those
with an interest in cricket who do not subscribe to pay TV.
Scheduling highlights in the early evening is
particularly important in making cricket attractive to a younger
audience. Opinion poll research conducted by Five in preparing
our bid for the rights found that 50% of 18-34 year olds favoured
cricket highlights shown between seven and eight o'clock. This
is also the time of day when most children are watching; youngsters
who are important to the future of the game are unlikely to be
available to view highlights if they are shown a lot later in
the evening.
THE AWARDING
OF THE
RIGHTS FOR
2006-09
Test cricket matches played in England are Group
B Listed Events. This means that for them to be shown exclusively
live on a channel other than the four channels specified in the
Television Broadcasting Regulations 2000—ITV1, BBC1, BBC2,
and Channel 4 and S4C taken together—the right to broadcast
highlights of the games had to be offered to those channels.
In 2004 the ECB invited all broadcasters to
bid for the live and highlights television rights for Test cricket
for the four summers starting in 2006. The ECB's tender process
made the availability of the packages of live and highlights rights
known generally to broadcasters, so that television broadcasters
were given a genuine opportunity to acquire the highlights rights
on fair and reasonable terms.
None of the other terrestrial broadcasters took
up the invitation to tender for the Test match highlights. As
a result the requirements of the legislation were met and the
ECB was able to entertain bids from other broadcasters including
Five.
THE LISTED
EVENTS RULES
Five is supportive of the principle behind the
listed events regime: that the great majority of people ought
to be able to watch major sporting events free of charge.
But in recent years we have felt aggrieved that
the hurdle that needs to be reached by television channels to
be able to bid for such listed events—"that the service
is received by at least 95% of the population of the United Kingdom"—has
been set at a level that is just high enough to exclude Five.
Although Five's coverage was limited in some
parts of the country when we first began broadcasting in 1997,
subsequent expansion of our analogue coverage and the strong growth
in digital take-up means that over 93% of the population now lives
in homes with televisions on which Five can be watched.
We are confident that by the time of the 2006
cricket season we will be received by 95% of the population—and
thus qualify in practice as one of the channels able to bid for
exclusive live coverage of listed events.
However, Five will not be categorised formally
as such a channel until Parliament amends the Television Broadcasting
Regulations 2000 to include us. We recognise that the Secretary
of State has indicated that there will be a review of the listed
events rules at the start of the digital switchover process. But
we believe that a change should be made much sooner in order to
add Five to the list of specified channels. Only then will Five
be able to bid for listed events on the same basis as its terrestrial
competitors.
Five's ability to grow and develop its reputation
as a major sports broadcaster is linked directly to our inclusion
on the list of specified channels. We believe that now we are
within a few months of reaching the hurdle for inclusion on this
list that Parliament itself has set, it is appropriate that the
rules be changed forthwith.
CONCLUSION
Five looks forward to providing viewers with
high quality and regular highlights programmes of international
cricket next summer and in ensuing years. We are delighted at
the opportunity this gives us to expand our range and reputation
both among sports fans and viewers generally. But we believe the
listed events rules must be changed in the very near future to
reflect the reality of Five's coverage.
14 November 2005
| 
