There was a bitter backlash on Social Media last week over the removal of Championship highlights from the BBC Scotland Sunday night Sportscene programme which aired in it's new earlier slot on BBC 2 last weekend.
The low definition broadcast was bad enough for the seemingly constantly under fire programme, but the lack of 2nd tier football after the promotion of Rangers last season was enough to tip many over the edge.
The backlash was discussed at length on Off The Ball yesterday with Stuart Cosgrove reading a prepared statement from the bigwigs at BBC Scotland HQ.
Here's what it said if you missed it;
The Sportscene highlights programme has historically concentrated solely on the top tier of Scottish Football. In this respect it mirrors the remit of Match of the Day.
From the start of season 2012-2013 the SPL and the SFL at the behest of live subscription broadcasters offered a temporary extension of existing television rights deals to allow for coverage of a number of games in the lower leagues. These matches were selected by SKY or BT not by BBC Scotland and BBC Scotland was able to access the footage for our highlights programme.
This extension of the rights deal ended last season and the BBC Scotland contract has now reverted to one that allows only broadcast television highlights of games played in the Scottish Premiership and are either provided to the BBC by the SPFL or taken from BT or SKY live games.
BBC Alba will carry a number of Championship games this season.
It seems odd to me, and I'm sure most Scottish Football fans, that the corporation and the SPFL were easily able to negotiate an extension to this "contract" after Rangers failure to gain promotion from the Championship in season 2014-2015 after the play off final defeat to Motherwell and yet unable to find a way of continuing to do so this season.
It will also come as a surprise to learn that Sky have actually filmed both of Hibernian's first two games of the season, showing goal highlights from the Hibees wins away at Falkirk and yesterday at home to Dunfermline. If these highlights ARE available from the live broadcasters, the question is why Auntie Beeb is either not allowed or unwilling to show them.
It's a poor show either way. The Championship should be a superb competition this season with healthy viewing potential given the size of some of the clubs that find themselves in the secont tier this season. A case in point being that yesterday's match between Hibernian and Dunfermline was actually the highest attendance on the day across the whole of the SPFL.
Tam Cowan made a good point on the show yesterday during the debate that perhaps BBC Alba should consider dropping their extended highlights from two Premiership games that are already covered on Sportscene and instead show some Championship highlights to a decent sized market which is going without service.
The license payers deserve better from our national broadcaster and frankly better from the SPFL who continue to sell our national game short.
As an aside to this we will be creating a page each week containing all the Championship highlights that we can find online, look out for this weekends page which will be online shortly.