The great kerfuffle over what exactly was going to happen to the radio broadcast rights for Australia’s cricket season has been sorted out, and as the story goes the ABC is not being yanked off the air after all, preserving at least some of the standard sounds of summer for cricket fans across the nation.
Amid the greatest shakeup of broadcast rights in Cricket Australia’s history since World Series Cricket, there was great consternation across the online yesterday, with rumours swirling the that ABC’s hugely beloved coverage was about to be yanked away thanks to a new broadcast rights deal that would’ve seen Cricket Australia hand the contract to upstarts Crocmedia.
As it turns out, there’s room for everyone on the airwaves.
Cricket Australia announced a new broadcast rights deal for radio, with the ABC, Crocmedia, and Macquarie Media Limited set to transmit radio coverage of the cricket for the next six summers.
The deal essentially just brings Crocmedia into the fold, allowing Cricket Australia to access the media group’s extensive regional commercial radio network.
The ABC will remain able to broadcast all men’s and women’s international cricket, and will also broadcast the Prime Minister’s XI games, the Governor General’s XI matches, and for the first time, every match of the Women’s BBL. This will come via a AM, FM, and digital channels.
Crocmedia, via chief station SEN, is set to broadcast all men’s tests and men’s BBL games. MML’s newly-launched metropolitan sports stations will cover men’s and women’s internationals and every game of the BBL as well.
In a statement to media, CA boss James Sutherland lashed previous reports concerning the ABC’s coverage.
We were very disappointed by inaccurate reporting this week suggesting that the ABC would no longer broadcast cricket. It undermined our commitment to the ABC and the ABC’s longstanding commitment to cricket.
Never for a minute had it crossed our minds that the ABC was not a staple in the Australian cricketing summer.
Radio has long been an important part of how people enjoy cricket in Australia over the summer, and the breadth and depth of these agreements ensures that people will be able to tune in to the cricket action regardless of where they are.
So there you go, mates. Your summers of lazily downing a froth in a scorching backyard with Jim Maxwell nattering away in the background are safe.
As they bloody well should be.
