as hard as it is to be a baggies fan this year - it is even harder to remain a hard core supporter of any of the less high-profile or lower league clubs, when you live in north america - and that includes just about every team outside the BIG 4. even top-flight teams like villa or spurs are not always in regular rotation on the basic cable broadcasts (3 premiership matches per week - 2 on saturday and 1 on sunday with no repeats); and don't appear to have active supporters clubs here. in a sport where most clubs get relegated sooner or later - and where i live - if that is ever your team's fate - it means virtually losing your team altogether, as the football league and the currently operating TV networks have yet to provide any extensive television coverage here for any of the english game that takes place outside the premiership. there is also no international online radio coverage, except through the clubs themselves' websites, only available to fully paying site members and is heavily controlled by the football league and FA through the use of digital restrictions management. in this way - and still in the days when we were just beginning to get football every week in the form of week-old broadcasts of "match-of-the-day" - i lost the baggies from 1986-2001, and had gone through spells supporting coventry city (on account of cyrille regis), then wimbledon, and i ultimately developed a pretty fair passion for sheffield wednesday, who themselves eventually disappeared into the lower leagues and were not possible to follow in any informed way anymore.
i don't know the exact numbers - but setanta and fox-sports between them (and at considerable extra cost to me as a cable-TV subscriber) only broadcast perhaps a dozen championship and/or league 1 matches a year; and the only real look we get of any clubs outside the premiership, comes through the modest number of FA CUP games that we see after the 3rd round proper - and the promotion playoffs at the end of the year, which, happily, are all broadcast live. we do, on the other hand, have the opportunity of seeing every single fixture from the premiership, either live, or at some point throughout the ensuing week in repeat.
on top of this, all BBC online radio broadcasts of local matches are blocked to non-UK users. this means, for example, that if a west brom, walsall or wolves match is broadcast on black country radio online - the stream is cut off at the international servers. i doubt very much that has anything to do with the BBC - as i'm sure they'd be happy to stream us the broadcasts (we get the internationals, premiership rugby, and rugby league), but the copyright holders (football league, the FA, the premiership?!?!) all obviously believe in trying to exert as much control over their product and access to it as they can; probably somehow believing that allowing for international audio broadcast of english football over the internet would interfere with TV revenues in their important markets (i.e. australia, new zealand).
as well, the online radio broadcasts that are offered by the clubs through their official premiership and football league websites are available only to full paying members. this i don't have so much of a problem with, i think it merely reflects the extensive influence of outmoded and non-creative thinking that leads to the use of what amounts to online cottage-industry business models applied to a product that is worth a whole hell of a lot more and could be distributed better, more freely - and certainly more to everyone's overall satisfaction. after all, this is professional football, and not online pornography (which depends on membership fees to sites for its revenue); and as such, with its large potential listening markets they should be giving us the matches for free and looking towards creating more valuable online advertising space, and direct marketing of subsidiary products, as their means of revenue. not to do so, is to be practicing a ridiculous, pathologically corporate, corrupted post digital, backwards - and probably ultimately detrimental - greed over what really amounts to control over chump change (relatively speaking). but it must be in their DNA and they don't know how to think in any other way: never give anything away for free! etc. etc... what i really object to is the use of DRM (digital restrictions management) softwares as a way of restricting the users actually accessing hard data for copying or redistribution of the content, and that it helps microsoft, and its proprietary cohorts (Adobe, Apple, Sony...) to re-enforce their near monopoly on all things computer related.
RICHARD STALLMAN ON DRM
as if it just isn't bad enough that the media is only accessible through using microsoft software (MAC and Linux are not supported), and that they engage in DRM, but the professional football industry has not yet figured out what the online pornography industry has understood for a long time: last week's action is obsolete, and everyone who uses the service will be back next week (even with a membership fee required) to listen/watch/download new content. in this way, sports events are very different than a film, or musical recording; and in terms of content, actually devalues (relative to its initial worth) at a quicker rate than that of online pornography; but unlike pornography it helps to create markets for other, directly related, diversified, tie-in merchandise; especially shirts, scarves and other portable regalia; as well as increasing the worth of their advertising space thousands of times over. i mean, i spent enough money at the west brom online shop buying shirts this year - and i buy plenty of replica jerseys, dvds, books etc. all of which the governing bodies of english football - as well as the clubs - see revenue from through licensing and copyright etc. how much more from me do you want that you can't let the BBC radio broadcast matches online to international listeners?
i feel - like many of you probably do as well - doubly disappointed in this season, as we were expecting to make enough of a mark that we'd at least survive; and so far, it has been quite the contrary despite all the good passing, and possession football that we play - we're quickly beginning to look doomed to a return to the championship and - in terms of results - suffering a truly miserable season in the process. a return to the championship, which - would be a hell of a lot more fun for those of you with the good fortune to be able to go to the hawthorns live; or those of you in europe who seem to have access to enough media, that no matter where you live, you can still follow the baggies on TV or radio. all i'm left with is the live text scores on BBC and to hoping once again, for promotion and get the baggies back on TV. the last 2 years that the albion were in the championship, with the manchester united or liverpool match in the corner of my eye, playing on the televison, i would spend 2 hours at the computer every weekend reading the minute-by-minute action as it came in on the live-text page, continually hitting my "refresh" button screaming, "c'mon you bag-gies!!!!", dreaming of how good it was gonna' be to have west brom back in the premier league and back on the weekly TV broadcasts again... now that's been a real let down!
No comments:
Post a Comment