Peter Williams: Televised sport produces whole new ball game

This past Tuesday was the 30th anniversary of my first day at TV One.

I remember the date because it was seven days after France beat the All Blacks at Eden Park in the famous Bastille Day victory of 1979.

My first day was broadcasting another New Zealand loss. The Kiwis, coached for the first time by the late Ces Mountford, lost 16-8 to Great Britain at Carlaw Park.

As you pass a milestone, you reflect on how things have changed - or stayed the same - during three decades.

It was sad to hear of Ces Mountford's death only last week. That means he must have been 60 when he finally got control of the Kiwis. Yet he'd been regarded as a master coach in Britain with Wigan and Warrington in the 1940s and '50s.

Politics kept him out of the top job in New Zealand Rugby League until he was probably past his best. How many times have we heard that story in New Zealand sport?

The most extraordinary change in the past 30 years is in how we watch our sport. In the 1970s, the relationship between sport and television was raw and many national bodies, especially the New Zealand Rugby Union, treated TV with immense suspicion. The paying spectator was the thing and getting as many as possible through the gate was the key source of income.

It seems laughable now but for years, TV wasn't allowed to promote that it was showing a test match live, lest potential spectators not buy tickets. That policy didn't change until well into the 1980s.

Funnily enough, the deal suited TV because the rights fee for a season of rugby was ridiculously small, from memory less than $1 million.

But in the 1980s came a gradual awakening to sport's money-making potential through TV. Events could put up sponsors' signs at venues and charge plenty for the exposure. Some companies built their profile mainly through sports sponsorship. The Countrywide Building Society is a classic case.

Televised sport remained mostly a daytime activity though because TVNZ programmers, in those days BC (Before Competition), were firmly of the opinion prime time was no place for sport because, they reckoned, about half the population had no interest in it.

Nail-biting netball tests between New Zealand and Australia helped change that.

The landscape for sport on TV changed dramatically once there was more than one broadcasting game in town. TVNZ played serious hardball through the early '90s to keep rugby, cricket, netball and Olympic rights but could only watch in dismay as competitive bidding saw the price skyrocket.

The inevitable happened and what we used to see free, we now have to pay for. The upside is that we have more choice. Events we only used to read about or see delayed highlights of three decades ago, such as the Tour de France, the Ashes and the British Open, we now watch live.

So we appreciate the great events but the downside is too much sport means too much is devalued. Sport on TV is now like a music radio station. Mostly it's just wallpaper in the background of life.

The greatest irony of all this choice and huge volume of TV sporting content means we now spend more time watching than playing. Not that long ago, it was the other way round.

I can't see things changing.