Welsh Open Coverage - Complaint To The BBC

[snookerpoolman]

I've just e-mailed the following complaint to the BBC...

'This year, as last year, I am am once again disappointed that I cannot watch live coverage of The Welsh Open Snooker. To explain.. I am a UK resident license payer living in England. Every year the BBC covers the Welsh Open Snooker Championship and this is available live and interactive via the red button on BBC2 Wales only. I have been able to watch some matches after they were broadcast, via the iPlayer. The wider point is that this is a BBC covered snooker tournament that is only universally available live if you live in Wales. Given the Red Button facility has been available via freeview for a number of years now and iPlayer also, I feel this is somewhat discriminatory. The World Championship (from England) is available for the whole of the UK. Imagine what license paying snooker fans in Wales would say if you restricted coverage of this to them just because they don't happen to reside in England? I expect some reading this will say well you can access BBC Wales via Sky and there is coverage on Eurosport? Well as I've never had Sky, neither of these options is any good to me or anyone else in my position, for that matter. My point is that if I lived in Wales I would be able to watch live snooker via the red button every afternoon and evening of the tournament - why can I not do this in England? Likewise, why can I not have an (albeit inferior) alternative and watch it live on the I-player (I watched last night Sem-final a couple of hours after it was broadcast, this meant a very late night!) Last year you did broadcast the evening session of the final on the Sunday live on the red button, so why was that available in England and not the whole tournament? Please will someone at the BBC look into the points I have raised and come up with a workable solution, ideally before the 2011 Welsh Open Snooker event - that gives you 12 months to remedy this. Please will you give me answer this anomaly'


Please feel free to use my wording as a template to send your own complaint to the BBC if you live in England, Scotland, Northern Ireland or any other part of the UK and feel the same as myself.. Complaints address is: https://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/forms/

I expect they'll reply with some weasel words and lame excuses about rights isues for sporting events, but I (gladly) pay my license fee and just feel I'm being discrimnated against because I happen to live in England, and not Wales. Thanks to the Justin TV link I am able to watch a little, if somewhat broken coverage, but why should I have to resort to this?

Discuss... Dave, Snookerpoolman :snooker:

[adrift]

you can watch live coverage from anywhere in the UK on the BBC sport snooker site:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/othe...er/default.stm

[snookerpoolman]

you can watch live coverage from anywhere in the UK on the BBC sport snooker site:

[url]http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/othe...er/default.stm

QUOTE]

Thanks for that trying to get it to work, as it did for the Masters the other week. Been trying via iplayer and thought it would have re-directed me there but it didn't. Still I raised some good points in my complaint so I'll see what they say and post the reply if I get one on here...

[snookerpoolman]

Cant seem to get it to work? And could have missed a maximum! This just underlines my point. Why should I have to resort to messing about like this when I've got freeview wired all over the house??

[RGCirencester]

Its stupid that it isn't on TV and the coverage online has been poor all week. Generally you only get to watch when it is being shown on the BBC wales channel, whereas in other tournamnents they stream both tables separately to the bbc coverage.
I think it was Monday I was watching and it turned into a Welsh current affairs program interviewing the first minister or something. Kept doing that for about half an hour, but the stream was still labelled "player a vs player b" and was on the main bbc sport page

[andy carson]

try
http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/emp/pop.stm

[snookerpoolman]

Its stupid that it isn't on TV and the coverage online has been poor all week. Generally you only get to watch when it is being shown on the BBC wales channel, whereas in other tournamnents they stream both tables separately to the bbc coverage.
I think it was Monday I was watching and it turned into a Welsh current affairs program interviewing the first minister or something. Kept doing that for about half an hour, but the stream was still labelled "player a vs player b" and was on the main bbc sport page

Yeah I've had a beef about this issue and this particular tournament for a number of years now. Do they want all us snooker fans to move to Wales or somet. I will be interested in what they have to say, and I'll quote your 'current affairs' comment to them if it becomes a protacted discussion. Can't quite remember, and want to get my facts right, but was it the same years ago when the had the old Regal Scottish and Regal Welsh tournaments? Only covered in respective countries? Think it was, and that was before freeview, red button, live streaming et al.

I accept the fact that tournaments like the China Open, I have never, and probably will never see, and that I'll see the Premier League only in the pub, if I'm in, it's on, the landlord doesn't put football on instead etc. And that's partially my choice to not line the pockets of Murdoch and co by paying for several hundred channels I'll never watch just so as I can watch the odd snooker game., but I dont get it why a BBC covered ranking event is so poorly treated, whereas you can barely move for football on most channels these days?

[RGCirencester]

Yeah I've had a beef about this issue and this particular tournament for a number of years now. Do they want all us snooker fans to move to Wales or somet. I will be interested in what they have to say, and I'll quote your 'current affairs' comment to them if it becomes a protacted discussion. Can't quite remember, and want to get my facts right, but was it the same years ago when the had the old Regal Scottish and Regal Welsh tournaments? Only covered in respective countries? Think it was, and that was before freeview, red button, live streaming et al.

I accept the fact that tournaments like the China Open, I have never, and probably will never see, and that I'll see the Premier League only in the pub, if I'm in, it's on, the landlord doesn't put football on instead etc. And that's partially my choice to not line the pockets of Murdoch and co by paying for several hundred channels I'll never watch just so as I can watch the odd snooker game., but I dont get it why a BBC covered ranking event is so poorly treated, whereas you can barely move for football on most channels these days?

Even if they are not going to have it on TV I don't understand why they can't show both tables online and on the red button like with every other BBC snooker tournament! Even if they did so without commentary it would be better than showing nothing! Single camera angle even, anything!

[snookerpoolman]

Even if they are not going to have it on TV I don't understand why they can't show both tables online and on the red button like with every other BBC snooker tournament! Even if they did so without commentary it would be better than showing nothing! Single camera angle even, anything!

Yeah in my hope that common sense would at last prevail, I've been checking channel 301 since 1.30 today, and what have they had... 6music looped videos of 80's bands, followed by Ski Sunday, that was on BBC2 anyway, Eastenders, which is shown on BBC one and BBC3, yesterday they had some loop about the arts that kept repeating and some kids programmes - haven't they got there own channel, Cbeebies? that we're paying for! Can we have a cue-sports channel funded by the license fee? I can't see that happening, can you?

[cally]

The coverage was just as bad in wales.. we never had the red button option.

We had to put up with the same coverage as as you.

Very poor it was...

[snookerpoolman]

The coverage was just as bad in wales.. we never had the red button option.

We had to put up with the same coverage as as you.

Very poor it was...

Really? My impression was you had BBC2 terestrial coverage as per Masters/UK/Grand Prix e.g. lunchtime til 5.15pm, evening show 7 -8pm, and highlights show afer Newsnight? Plus interactive live freeview on 301 for all matches? Was that not the case then?

Gonna keep checking the iplayer for repeat of this afternoon..Higgins on fire is so good to watch...annoyed I missed it...

[andy carson]

BBCsnooker coverage is going downhill on most torunaments anyhow...

why can eurosport manage to cover all the games in full on the telly table, and the bbc even when a match is being played live at the time, they decide to put bloody highlights or a repeat of the afternoon session on instead, then leave you to have to watch the red button for the rest of the game and then its disjointed, or you ignore the main channel coverage and end up watching red button (when its working!!) or sack BBC off and just watch eurosport instead!!!

[adrift]

BBC snooker can at times,like the Welsh coverage,be a mess. I hope you get a decent reply snookerpoolman because although it is sometimes very good at other times the BBC doesn't treat the snooker audience with enough respect.

[mushka]

why can eurosport manage to cover all the games in full on the telly table, and the bbc even when a match is being played live at the time, they decide to put bloody highlights or a repeat of the afternoon session on instead, then leave you to have to watch the red button for the rest of the game and then its disjointed, or you ignore the main channel coverage and end up watching red button (when its working!!) or sack BBC off and just watch eurosport instead!!!

I hope you're talking about Eurosport player and with that in mind willing to pay for it in exchange for your BBC coverage. Otherwise all you would see of the Welsh final on TV would be 2 frames.

[stuartfanning]

Anyone with Sky or Freesat could watch the coverage of BBC2 Wales on channels 991 and 971 respectively. The Semi-finals and final were available on the red button on BBC2 throughout the UK