Making A Splash

Confession time.

I sometimes suffer under the weight of the assignment given me by Nick Tedeschi, the doyen and chief taskmaster at Making The Nut. Stu Warren on Life is no easy column to write, let me assure you.

It's a column I enjoy and dread writing in equal measures. As well as reflecting on matters sporting, I feel compelled to include the occasional piece that relates more closely to the title itself. Life.

Not that I've ever really achieved the latter. Afterall, musing on this mortal coil is no mean feat.

So you needn't worry about the prospect of a long-winded or deeply philosophical piece here, readers. I dare not deign to discuss such matters with the discerning readers of Making The Nut.

This piece is merely a reflection on a disturbing trend, one that threatens to cut me to the quick, but one I am not particularly surprised by either.

Let's get one thing straight. I wouldn't go so far as to call myself a 'swimming fan'. There are thousands of them out there, no doubt.

My best guess has them situated somewhere north of Victoria where the weather is warmer and the sight of grown men in togs barely sets eyelids blinking.

Because let me assure you, my home state of Tasmania is neither suited to regular swimming nor recreational Speedo wearing.

Take Tony Abbott as a barometer for this kind of behaviour and you will soon agree it's true. Even the marauding monk is every bit the suit-and-tie-toting public servant when visiting these parts.

And while Tasmania was perhaps the most over-represented part of the world in terms of Tour de France participants this year (two finishers from a population of 500,000), we are sadly lacking in swimming pedigree.

Still, I thought, why not support the Aussie boy in the100m freestyle final at the Shanghai world championships?

'The Missile' James Magnussen was a hot favourite going in and there's nothing I like more than cheering a cert home (just part of the reason I'm such a chuffed Pies fan this season).

With barely a second thought for departing Masterchef dish Ellie as she took her marching orders from Matt 'Toad of Toad Hall' Preston, I picked up the remote and flicked to channel 50 with a dextrous thumb-stroke or two.

Hello, what's this? A 20-year-old COPS re-run, that's what. The bold and the brave of the Albequerque PD rounding up hookers and other recidivists and stating boldly, "Yep, another bad guy's going to jail tonight."

It sure wasn't the free-to-air fare I'd kind of expected Channel 10 sports subsidiary OneHD to be broadcasting to the masses given the magnitude of the event and the network's willingness to plug domestic swimming ad nauseum earlier in the year.

This is the network that made me feel like I could do without paying for an alternative TV service when it burst onto the scene a couple of years back.

Now, however, it's a mere shadow of its former self.

Sure they cut to vision of Magnussen's powerful swim and the Peter Pan of sports broadcasting in this country, Anthony Hudson, did his best to scream the commentary from behind a desk in Melbourne. But it was a piss poor performance in comparison to the glory days when swimming commentary commanded the pool-side presence of a luminary like Ray Warren. Or Gerry Collins. Or Bruce.

I read during the week about the stalled negotiations between Swimming Australia and OneHD for a new television rights deal.

We should bear in mind, however, that a fair degree of the blame must be put at the feet of FINA who pimp out broadcast rights to world championships and the like on a separate basis to the Swimming Australia deal.

OneHD will provide a delayed telecast, but I'll not be watching.

This is a growing, and worrying, trend.

Hell, I don't even get a regular fix of Nascar these days. And that's saying something!

Soon the AFL will be gone (unless OneHD sneaks in through the backdoor via some kind of grubby deal with Channel 7) and who knows how much NFL we'll see when the season eventually kicks off.

College football has been and gone, there's no sign of either rugby code (in the southern states at least) and even the regular dose of Bundesliga is a poor substute for a nice slice of EPL that I'd really love to see for free this summer.

And netball, no matter how much my learned stablemate Cliff Bingham and his in-the-know source, Ms Netball, tried to tempt me with their brilliant betting advice during last season's ANZ Championship, will never really float my boat.

So, who do I blame for having to deal with pap like Extreme Fishing with Robson Green, Airline and the aforementioned COPS?

I don't want to go into a half-cocked and ill-advised rant about ineffective anti-siphoning laws, though I may happen to hit home with a well-placed point or two.

Perhaps it's nowt but a case of basic economics.

Given recent ratings, it seems OneHD can compete just as well with their digital competitors showing cheap re-runs and slices of foreign fodder such as An Idiot Abroad as they can shelling out for live rights to the most real reality programming there is – sport.

I'm the one who's beginning to feel like an idiot in his own loungeroom.

Best flip over to the Channel 9 Footy Show so I'm an idiot alone no more.

 

Thanks to Quinn Rooney/Getty Images AsiaPac for the shot of James Magnussen celebrating.