The future came suddenly to Hong Kong, so suddenly you might have missed it. It began earlier this year with the Cricket World Cup, dribbled its way through college basketball's Final Four and hip-checked itself into our living rooms with the Stanley Cup playoffs. Welcome to the vanguard, the new frontier and LWE (life without ESPN).
Welcome to a steady diet of pay-per-view sporting events - and all this because ESPN and Star Sports have vested their future in reality TV. Kids on skateboards and snowmobiles occupy the bulk of their programming and it's not because the ageing network brass down in Singapore are X-gamers themselves. It's because of money. Ask yourself two questions. How much does it cost to put a kid on a skateboard? How much does it cost to put Barry Bonds in a baseball uniform?
Bonds makes about US$18 million per year. The punk on the skateboard, unless his name is Tony Hawk, makes lunch money. Naturally, the broadcast rights for the game Bonds plays are going to be far more expensive than the games kids play. So, it is not all the fault of the programming executives, it is also the fault of the major sporting leagues who seek exorbitant broadcast fees.
ESPN/Star has decided to sink the majority of its budget into English soccer and Formula One. According to sources at the network, negotiations are ongoing with Major League Baseball. And the baseball season is ongoing as well but, as I mentioned a few weeks earlier, I don't care about these networks anymore. I don't care that they decided to run promos for baseball even though they did not have a deal signed with MLB at the time, and I don't care that broadcast schedules in newspapers still list upcoming games that never appear. The reason I don't care is that I have a friend in Hong Kong Cable.
Before you assume I am a paid shill for Hong Kong Cable, think again, because I am an unpaid shill for Hong Kong Cable. I don't think anybody has taken more shots at them over the years than this space has. But instead of taking it personally, they took it professionally.
What they have done is accommodate the so-called niche sports fans and, invariably, raised the quality of life in Hong Kong. By putting things like cricket and hockey in a pay-per-view package they have issued a challenge to habitual whiners like myself. You want the big events? OK, here they are. But you aren't back in Mumbai or Montreal; these events are going to cost.
'The big difference for us now has been upgrading from analog transmission to digital,' says Garmen Chan, vice president for external affairs at Hong Kong Cable. 'With the more advanced technology we can transmit more channels so we can accommodate a broader viewing range. We are gradually building our programme platform.'