Crikey might be getting sued by Steve Price but we still recognise a good column when we see one and the official line of this website endorses what he said even if Jackson and Edna take issue with a couple of points.

We’ve re-produced Pricey’s rant below and we’ll give our slant on it later where he drops a bucket-load of premium quality fertiliser all over Channel 9’s debut effort at broadcasting the AFL. (Or more precisely, the first hybrid International Rules match between Australia and Ireland.)

But the most interesting part of this piece is that Pricey has given it with both barrels to Channel 9, whose Adelaide station is owned by his employer, Southern Cross Broadcasting. To make matters more intriguing, he used another member of the celebrated Consortium Rupert’s Hun to do it. Even more surprisingly, the AFL saw fit to publish it on their website, www.afl.com.au.

Pricey reserves his biggest digs for former 3AW stablemate Sam Newman and accuses Eddie Everywhere of complicity in Newman’s (and Nine’s) continual sledging of Channel Seven’s coverage over the years. Pricey’s beef is that Nine have bagged Channel Seven’s coverage for years and when it finally came their turn to step up to the plate, they struck out. Pricey claims that there were no innovations other than the mobile boundary fence camera, the two debutant commentators were the nothing-out-of-the-ordinary Dwayne Russell and boundary rider Billy Brownless (who went missing during the game), and there were a litany of technical glitches during the night.

We don’t want to dwell too long on the validity or otherwise of Pricey’s criticisms, but we weren’t that disappointed with Nine’s coverage. Yes, the technical glitches that Pricey details were all embarrassing and it was surprising that they would have happened in the usually polished Nine sports production team. We’re surprised that Pricey stuck it up Dwayne Russell yes he’s no Bruce McAvaney, but Rex Hunt?! Sure, Rex is an entertainer, but if you want to know what’s going on on the field, turn to the Tobin Brothers on 3LO. We’ve heard enough of Dwayne Russell on the radio to know that he’ll hold his own he’ll probably never be an “A-list” commentator, but in the old days he would be a chance for the Reserves Grand Final. Yes, Billy Brownless went missing, but to call him Dipper without the mo is an actionable slur in our book. Billy should get on the blower to defamation guru and award-winning free speech crusader Adrian Anderson at the esteemed legal practice of Corrs Chambers Westgarth. Dipper can barely say his own name, let alone distill a coach’s half time address into a 30 second grab. Billy is an ex-footballer so you’re not going to get a recitation of War and Peace in between injury updates.

As far as innovations go, what did Pricey expect? TV coverage has gone about as far as it can go in any sport and each year the “exciting new innovations” that herald the broadcaster’s new season covering whatever sport it might be are usually more hot air than significant improvement to broadcast standards.

We had two main gripes with Channel Seven’s broadcast. The first was the contempt in which they held audiences when scheduling broadcasts particularly in the northern states. We don’t expect that will improve much under the Consortium. Channel Nine has control over Friday night broadcasts and has already indicated that in the key Sydney and Brisbane markets it will play rugby league in prime time on Friday nights and AFL whenever it damn well pleases probably after the Letterman show.

Our second gripe with Channel Seven was its commentary. Yes, it had its standouts who we loved, but there was far too much dead wood Dipper springs to mind as a case in point, add to that Dougie Hawkins, Ossie, Hutchi and Matthew Campbell.

As we said, Russell and Brownless didn’t set the world on fire in their commentary debut and probably never will, but they are a darned sight better than Channel Seven’s linguistic demolition gang.

So, while Nine’s coverage wasn’t a huge improvement on Channel Seven, we think Pricey may have and this would be another first gone a wee bit over the top in his criticism. Surely not?

But the thing that captured our attention was the fact that Pricey went in boots and all against indirectly at least his employer – something Eddie Everywhere pointed in his Saturday Hun column under the headline “Price is wrong”.

As all of Crikey’s sole subscribers would be aware, Channel Nine’s Adelaide station is owned by 3AW’s owners, Southern Cross Broadcasting. Channel Seven was notoriously thin-skinned about criticism of itself and all things footy in the past who can forget the “death valley” saga last year when Kerry Stokes put out the directive that commentators were not to make fun of Colonial Stadium’s much-maligned playing surface?

But not so this year. Sure, Pricey copped a bagging on Crikey for his Colonial backflip, but he’s shown in this episode that he’s very much his own man by sticking it big time to one of his employer’s interests.

And what’s with another member of the Consortium, News Limited, allowing Pricey to air his anti-Consortium spray? We wondered how the happy family of Channels Nine and Ten, Foxtel and News Limited would be able to co-exist when the arrival of the Consortium was heralded. Well, Pricey has just fired a shot across the bow and Channel Nine would not be happy to have a fellow Consortium member being used as an outlet for yet another critic of their coverage.

And the AFL has got their happy relationship with the Consortium off to such a happy start by airing Pricey’s piece on www.afl.com.au. Perhaps the powers that be at the AFL are letting Channel Nine know that they expect the Consortium to deliver the goods and give the punters the kind of coverage that Channel Nine have been baying for for years.

Comments to:

jackson.capper@crikey.com.au

edna.richards@crikey.com.au

Here’s what Pricey had to say, 05

First game, Nine drops ball

By Steve Price

Wednesday, October 17, 2001

IF Friday night was any guide, could Channel 7 please go back to the AFL and re-negotiate the rights for television coverage of the game for the next five years.

Channel 9 debuted their coverage televising the International Series game between Ireland and Australia and it was awful. This wouldn’t be such a bad thing if Sam Newman hadn’t been quite as smug and cruel about the former home of TV footy.

Sam, who once worked for the Seven Network, has made no secret that he considered their coverage second rate. Week after week on the Footy Show Sam would run down Seven, its commentators, the camera angles and their associated football shows.

He criticised Bruce McAvaney, did skits about Talking Footy and The Game and made fun of Seven whenever he could. What Sam, and by association his side-kick Eddie McGuire have done, is set up an expectation of just how much slicker, more exciting and professional Nine will be.

I suspect they found out Friday night that it’s going to be a lot harder than they ever imagined. And I’d be surprised if Sam hasn’t been told to shut up and stop talking about the opposition because Nine itself is now the big target.

So what went wrong Friday night? Just about everything. About the only innovation, if you could call it that, was the boundary line camera pinched from Nine’s coverage of the swimming. It runs on a rail and gives you the feeling of running with the mid-fielders. Whether that can be used, given its intrusion into the line of sight for spectators, is another thing.

Surprisingly, Nine debuted only Dwayne Russell on Friday night as a commentator and Billy Brownless as a boundary rider. Both were competent but not brilliant and certainly not original or exciting.

Billy is just Dipper with no moustache and a big gut. Dwayne calls just like any other caller; he’s certainly no Rex Hunt and not a patch on McAvaney.

Also in the box was an Irishman, Paul Early. He won’t be there next year and wouldn’t be missed if he weren’t there this Friday for the re-match.

The whole Nine coverage got off to a bad start when, outside their control, Melbourne turned on a drenching rainstorm just as they tried a clever, but in the end tardy, opening with premiership coach Leigh Matthews.

As the rain poured on a shirt and collared Lethal Leigh, he kept looking at the wrong camera. The audio didn’t work. You couldn’t hear him.

Predictably, before that it was Eddie’s voice and face we first heard and saw on the coverage. Eddie should have put his ego on hold and kept well away from this wobbly start. The smart thing would have been to swan in after the mistakes had been made.

Round 1 next year should have been Eddie’s night. As the most over-exposed face on TV spoke, we heard in the background sound from the coach’s pre-match address, the voice of Garry Lyon.

Problem with that was that the next shot we saw was the players on the actual ground. Must have been a quick speech and a real sprint down the race to get on the ground. Things went from bad to worse. The first throw in the box to the Irishman Mr Early didn’t work because his mike wasn’t on.

Audio problems haunted the telecast all night. At three-quarter time Eddie kept promising we’d hear Garry Lyon’s address to the players. He kept promising and promising and promising. They completely lost the moment and by the time we got to hear all of two seconds of Garry, the game had been lost — it was over.

Channel 9 will defend their efforts on Friday night. They’ll tell us it was a first-up effort and, of course, things will go wrong when you are experimenting. But aside from the rail cam, there really wasn’t any experimenting.

Nine have created these huge expectations through both Sam Newman and the smugness of Eddie. If these two hadn’t spent the better part of eight years riding their opposition, Friday night wouldn’t have mattered. What that pressure on Seven then now means is that Nine should get it back in equal spades.

Nine must improve this Friday for the re-match. We need big names, smart ideas, new camera angles, more crosses to the boundary — what did happen to Billy during the game? — and better replays.

If Nine can’t deliver, they owe Seven and their entire football crew from technicians up to commentators and producers a huge apology. Nobody at Seven will be holding their breath.

ends

CRIKEY: Must say, full marks to Pricey for this. It really does sound like it was crap and he called it as he saw it. The column is a good talking point and so what if it offends fellow members of the Consortium. Eddie’s retort was that 3AW rates 3rd on its footy broadcasts and the AFL could yet drop them completely out of the picture if they don’t stump up more cash next year for the broadcast rights. Lift your game Eddie and well said Pricey.

* Crikey has 1820 subscribers who for $55 get a tee-shirt, 5 sealed section emails a week with this sort of material and access to our 800,000 word searchable archive so why not join the Crikey army by clicking here to read the daily email updates with breaking news and analysis.