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AS WE HEAD into the spring (even if it doesn’t look or feel like it), sports fans begin to turn their attention more fully to the GAA.
For some, that means travel around the country to follow their county but many will just want to keep up with their team – or their neutral interests – through the television.
Since it was first signed in 2014, there has been much criticism of the deal done between the GAA and Sky as some matches are no longer available to fans unless they pay a subscription.
In Northern Ireland, that situation is further complicated with the BBC providing some coverage.
This week, a Sinn Féin MLA issued a statement to focus attention on the broadcaster for not doing as much as it can – within its contract – to provide for the GAA fans in the north.
Sinéad Ennis said, “There is huge frustration in regards to the amount of BBC coverage of GAA games. Currently over a quarter of a million attend GAA matches in the north over the season with countless more wanting to watch or listen to GAA coverage whether on the TV, radio or online.”
She met with representatives of the organisation, raising the fact that the latter stages of the championships and the All-Ireland finals aren’t aired.
However, the BBC’s contract with the GAA does not allow it to do so.
A spokesperson for BBC Northern Ireland confirmed the terms of the contract again for TheJournal.ie. They said:
“A new five-year agreement announced in December 2016, means that, on television, BBC Northern Ireland will broadcast live any Ulster [Football] Championship match selected for live broadcast by RTÉ, including the Ulster Final.
We don’t have the rights to televise games in the qualifiers or All-Ireland stages, including the All-Ireland Final – whether there is an Ulster team playing or not.
Commentary for those games which do include Ulster teams is available on BBC Radio Ulster and BBC Sport NI online.
Last year, seven of the eight Ulster Football Championship games were shown live on BBC NI television, with deferred coverage of the remaining game. It cannot show any game that is part of Sky’s exclusive coverage.
“All the games in the Ulster Championship, broadcast on BBC Northern Ireland TV – live or deferred – can be viewed on the BBC’s iPlayer catch-up service. We do not have the rights to show highlights on TV,” continued the spokesperson.
The games it will be covering this year in the Ulster Championship have not yet been announced.
Ennis said she made a number of suggestions of how the coverage could be widened “in terms of dedicated or deferred coverage, online streaming or highlight shows on TV and radio”.
The thousands of GAA fans are licence fee payers too. They deserve parity of coverage with other sports in the BBC – something which is currently not the case.
The current contract was signed in 2016 and continues to the end of the 2021 season.
The deals made at that time allow RTÉ to show 31 senior championship games with Sky retaining the rights to 20 matches, 14 of which are exclusive. Both Sky and RTÉ show the hurling and football All-Ireland semi-finals and finals.
TG4 holds the rights to the Allianz League, minor championship and club championship, while Eir is allowed show Saturday night Allianz League games.
Niall McCoy, an Omagh-based journalist with GAA newspaper Gaelic Life, believes Sinn Féin’s stance is “somewhat fair… and reflecting the viewpoint of fans” across Northern Ireland but adds the BBC’s “hands are tied”.
“Years ago, we would have been used to seeing the semi-finals and finals on BBC,” he explains. “RTÉ is blocked for a lot of people up here… it can be very strange and we can’t get the Player (due to geoblocking) so if it’s not on BBC, it’s bust.”
He understands that a lot of frustration comes from a lack of coverage on the sport sections of BBC news programmes, and a lack of other programming in the area.
“One of the biggest gripes is the sporting coverage on news shows… it’s talked about but only fleetingly rather than fully. They would like to see more. There could be a talk show midweek. That would go down well but it would have to be without clips as they don’t have the rights to those.”
However, the Armagh man does believe that the broadcaster “would love to do more if it could”.
McCoy tells TheJournal.ie that fans in the north often make comparison to BBC’s coverage of the SSE Airtricity League but stresses it holds rights to show highlights programmes for those games so can include midweek talk shows on its schedule.
“In 2022, though, I would like to see them fight a wee bit harder.”
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Peeyow…. Had to make that noise watchin it!
Our world rotates at 1600 km/hr,
we travel around the Sun at 107,000 km/hr.. and around our galaxy at 792,000 km/hr..
But I’ll be fcuked if I put up with this Household Charge!
Brilliant
Just remember that you’re standing on a planet that’s evolving
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour
That’s orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it’s reckoned
A sun that is the source of all our power
The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day
In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour
Of the galaxy we call the ‘milky way’
Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars
It’s a hundred thousand light years side to side
It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light years thick
But out by us, it’s just three thousand light years wide
We’re thirty thousand light years from galactic central point
We go ’round every two hundred million years
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe
The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whizz
As fast as it can go, the speed of light, you know
Twelve million miles a minute and that’s the fastest speed there is
So remember, when you’re feeling very small and insecure
How amazingly unlikely is your birth
And pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere up in space
‘Cause there’s bugger all down here on Earth
United States, Canada, Mexico, Panama, Haiti, Jamaica, Peru;
Republic Dominican, Cuba, Caribbean, Greenland, El Salvador too.
Puerto Rico, Columbia, Venezuela, Honduras, Guyana, and still;
Guatemala, Bolivia, then Argentina, and Ecuador, Chile, Brazil…
Animaniacs taught me so much.
I wonder if an asteroid was on a collision course with Earth. Would there be a plan on how to stop it. I doubt it
A well plced trampoline is the best I can think of.
It’ll probably involve AC Milan. If they can stop Barcelona ………
Be a huar if it hit westmeath
Chuck Norris’s erect penis could stop it.
We could just send out a few Anglo Irish bankers, if they can make billions disappeared into their black hole then a small thing like an astronomical disaster should be easy….
Right I’ll grab my coat.
Or everyone into Ned Flanders bunker..
We live in a precarious world.
And I am just a material girl…
Ah Dillon, how’s your wifes sister?
That was quick. Kinda glad I didn’t make the journey out to see it with binoculars, would have been boring and a waste of my time. Lol lovely snapshot though
Nice video. There’s so many satellites! Allot of it space junk.
But at 23 seconds there’s two satellites moving parallel to each other (tricky to spot), these maybe a pair of Naval Ocean Surveillance System (NOSS) satellites, a very distinctive pair of Spy satellites that orbit in formation, they intercept and locate ship communications.
Almost everything there is–just about all of it, is up *there*.
The good news is that we are a very, very tiny target, and we’re a *moving* target. So most stuff misses us. Most.
Not all.
Meteor my eye …that’s thor’s lance ! ………. l.o.l.
3.24, pm or am?
It seems to have smashed into something that disintegrated? What? Bertie’s orbiting safe vault hopefully!
have your say