Radio Sport still aren’t getting it
1The petition to Keep Domestic Cricket Commentaries on Radio Sport was delivered to Dallas Gurney (General Manager, Talk Programming) this morning. To his credit he replied swiftly as follows.
Thank you for your email, we are aware of your petition and have followed it with interest.
We are committed to our new presentation of Plunket Shield coverage for the 2011-2012 season.
I appreciate how passionate you are about the Plunket Shield, but ask you give our new style a go. We will undertake a full review at the conclusion of the competition with a view to planning for the following season. Your petition will be taken into consideration of course.
In the meantime, the summer of cricket is underway with our Plunket Shield updates from Bryan Waddle starting today. Ball-by-ball commentary of domestic cricket will return to Radio Sport in a couple of weeks with the start of the Ford Trophy.
Across the summer we will carry more than 30 days of domestic ball-by-ball cricket commentary.
Thank you for your email and for taking the time to put together your petition.
Dear Mr Gurney,
So after the first day’s play we know the scores, noting we were quite capable of checking the NZC website anyway, but none of the detail behind that.
In fact we’ve got quite a lot of questions.
- Tim Southee’s return to full fitness is vital for this summer’s success. He hasn’t bowled many overs; is that merely cautionary or is he struggling?
- Peter Ingram had a good knock; is he actually using his feet this year?
- Young Kuggeleign has returned impressive figures on debut. But how did he bowl?
- What’s Neil Wagner’s pace like this season?
- That’s a good knock from Rob Nicol. Shame we have no idea in what kind of conditions it was scored.
Questions like this will come up every single day of the first class season, and every single day your solid core of traditional listeners will get increasingly frustrated and inclined to look elsewhere.
And for all the talk about a “new style” of coverage, where there is no style at all only aggravates the situation.
For the record, TV3 sent someone to Whangarei to cover the Southee comeback, and Margot Butcher is providing background on Twitter so we’re reasonably up to date on that one. The places you can go to get information. See; even listeners can change their habits too.
And here’s another score. Over 140 new signatures in the last 8 hours.
P.S. Enjoyed listening to the ball by ball Sheffield Shield coverage on your station on Sunday evening. Although it did feel like you were rubbing our noses in it a bit with that coverage