TV stations bad sports over Games coverage

What is so outrageous about the row over broadcasting rights for the London Olympic Games among three local TV stations is that nobody, least of all the government, seems to understand that this is, first and foremost, a public interest issue.

For the TV stations, especially iCable, which has bought the rights to televise the Games, live broadcasting of the Olympics may be a weapon of mass destruction in the ratings war and a sure-fire marketing ploy to sign up new subscribers.

But the Games, like the Fifa World Cup, are also a major international event that turns the entire world into a global village by providing its inhabitants with a common, transfixing experience, albeit only for a few weeks. By one estimate four billion people will watch the opening ceremony on July 27.

Excluding a significant portion of the local populace from watching the Games, therefore, amounts to a sort of social ostracism. This was exactly what happened two years ago when similar wrangling among TV stations resulted in up to 50 per cent of Hong Kong people being prevented from watching free-to-air live coverage of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.

Many of these disappointed, deprived soccer fans are still seething with anger. 'You'd know how I felt if you had been jilted, shunned, blackballed or stood up for dinner. Only it's 10 times worse,' one of them told me recently.

But the government just doesn't get it. That the TV stations are not run in the service of public interest we know well enough. But is it too much to expect the government to show a certain concern for the welfare or well-being of the public and a basic grasp of the relevance of the Games to the people?