First the Masters, then the Ryder Cup, then, in 2016, the Open were all snaffled off to satellite. By 2020, for the first time since the game was televised, the BBC did not have the rights to a single live event.
Still, we thought, it had the highlights, a fix for our golf-watching addiction. Now we are told that there will no longer be a late-night summary of the action from Augusta. Not so much as a hint of a hole. Next year, the organization which used to lead the way in the coverage of the sport will show just four evenings of highlights from the Open.
But what makes the decline so depressing is this: they have not been outbid for the Masters highlights. This is not a case of being blown out of the water by the deep pockets of commercial television. They have stepped out of the bidding process of their own volition.
It is all too expensive, is the claim. Sending the commentators to Augusta has been deemed way too costly for today’s straitened times.
Except this idea that the BBC is impoverished is wholly misleading. In its annual report of 2021-22, the corporation published a record income of £5.3 billion, £3.8 billion of which was extracted from the pockets of the license fee payers. There is plenty of money to cover events. They were there at the World Cup, they will be there en masse at the Coronation. And rightly so. That is what a national broadcaster does: it covers the things that matter. Unless, it seems, they happen to involve a golf club.
Because it is not hard to conclude that this is not a budgetary measure. Rather it is an editorial one.
After all, the golf-loving market is older, greyer, less inclined to share its feelings on TikTok than the mythical young audience the BBC’s top brass are so pathologically determined to pursue.
Never mind that, unlike the majority of under-25s, those of us hunkering down on the sofa to watch golf actually pay our license fee, we are not wanted. Our interests are not considered priorities. For the BBC, golf is now officially history.
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