If that were the criteria Wiggins should have won - truly immense performance especially when it really hurts and on his own up the climbs

There is some unfounded assumption that I somehow favour ITV/Channel 4 over the BBC. The fact is that I rarely watch terrestrial TV at all (unless there is something of particular interest) and I am far from a habitual or compulsive viewer, in fact I could class my viewing habits as relatively fickle. I prefer the output from such channels as Discovery, MTV, DMAX, History and Sky movies.

Radio can be excluded from this argument as, although funded by the Licence Fee, I am not forced to pay to listen to it. In this aspect I have consumer choice.

When I mention the Beebs RL output it is a very poor imitation of the coverage on Sky (excluding the two muppets Sky insists on employing in the commentary box). The amount of annual coverage and quality is pale by comparison.

Now I know the counter argument here is that Sky owns the rights to broadcast Super League but why is it the BBC didn’t dig deep with my cash to offer a counter bid? Because it is a minority sport that doesn’t deserve THAT amount of dosh spending on it. Agreed?

It all boils down to value for money – I may pay ‘x’ amount for Sky but in return I get several hundred channels – with the BBC I am forced to pay £160 (?) p/a for 5 TV channels, two of which are not even worth mentioning.

Now if it’s a case of quality over quantity do you honestly believe that there isn’t a program of equal quality being broadcast simultaneously to every BBC output?

The output from BBC Radio is worthy of inclusion in the debate, its funded by the licence fee so you can't exclude it from your argument merely on the grounds that it doesn't suit your argument - truth is that BBC Radio is funded from your licence and as such it offers a huge wodge of RL coverage, probably more than Sky do on their specialised TV sport channels.

TV coverage on RL is absolutely governed by the fact that Sky hold all of the cards for all SL coverage, the BBC can only show what Sky tell them to show, we all know that, so to complain that the BBC hardly show any at all is a bit pedantic - if you want to blame anyone then blame the RFL, they negotiated the contract.

As for your hundreds of satellite channels, its personal choice, I'm sure there are probably some people out there who really did watch every episode of Lost and sat on the edge of their seats when they did so, and in the case of Damo probably thought it was a factual documentary - those people will think that Sky One is probably the best channel in the world.

Personally I thought Sky One lost it when they stopped producing Sky Search For A Star.

I've never seen SPOTY, just the endings, I turn it on to see who wins it. Is it a public vote? How do you vote? Online? Or is it just aload of people we never see that decide?

As I understand it the 10 shortlisted canidates are selected by various publications.
The winner is decided by a popular phone vote, like X Factor et al.
So all the Man U fans (from south of Watford) must have voted for Giggs plus all those who think that soccer is the only sport.

Same old Rhinos always moaning.

Had a feeling it was a public vote when Giggles won it. F-cking joke. Honestly.

Oh and Head High - LOLZ!

But that is the problem, it doesn't get the exposure in relation to the overall average crowd numbers on national TV. It is still the UK's third biggest weekly spectator sport after Football and RU and it is only just after RU and until about 3/4 years ago RL was number 2!

Despite this the Beeb treat it as a regional sport and while providing excellent coverage at a regional level, the national BBC sports news teams on all national TV and radio stations give it poor national coverage despite having a team in London and Wales. Interestingly, I think this is born out of ignorance on the part of the sport reporters not a deliberate BBC agenda. I spoke to one of the Radio 2 sports reporters early this year after, on the morning of the Leeds v Saints game that was likely to decide who was going to win the league leaders shield, he gave a very long sports report and mentioned the start of the RU season and some games in detail along with lots of less supported sports than RL and did not even mention the game at all! When I challenged him about this on the phone he said he did not realise that RL was quite as big as it was and said he was now a little embarrassed that he had not even realised how possibly season defining the game was!

As for the England Men's Cricket team that was a bloody joke, it should have been the England's women cricket team. Clearly the panel of Beeb sports 'experts' are also male chauvinist pigs... because I bet they were all men.

As for Giggs, well it is a public vote and nobody sets the rules and says to the public it must be about this year etc, etc. They voted for him because he is a football great and has had yet another great season. If it was about real history making sporting achievement it would have been Cav who clearly should have won. He is already the UK's most successful professional cyclist and has won more stages of the tour in one tour than anyone... ever! Given the nature of tour routes it will be a record that he himself might struggle to beat.

The decision to show re-runs of 'Allo 'Allo or Keeping up Appearances in the rest of the country when the SL show is on in the North of England is a perfect example of a slight bias against RL in my opinion. Other than that there isn't much the BBC could do in terms of its scheduling. It shows a Super League highlights show, the Challenge Cup live, at the very least international highlights at a decent time slot (and of course this year showed the England v Australia game live) and I think it shows highlights of the WCC, so its not too bad.

The biggest problem for me though is as Mr Armadillo describes, in that the reporting of RL on the news/sports news segments of radio and TV is way below what it should be.

Is it that time of year again already?

Perhaps if more people outside the heartlands of the game could be persuaded to get off their bums and go support it through the turnstiles then fans of rugby league may have a better case for it being anything other than a regional sport. As it is probably more people went to watch Ice Hockey over the course of the last 12 months than watched SL in London and Bridgend, yet I don't see a clamour for it to be treated in a similar fashion.

Rugby league is - primarily - a regional sport, and it gets treated appropriately by the media. It's not "bias". It's not "old school tie". It's reporting what you think your audience is going to be most interested in given the time you have available. Looking at the crowds Leeds United and Bradford City pull in, it would appear that even League One and Two football is more deserving of media attention than top flight rugby league, even in the areas where it is supposed to be strongest.

But surely if we just go on crowds alone then all that would ever be reported/covered by the media is football. Going by crowds nothing else comes close to it, but I think you'd agree that wouldn't be fair. The Guinness Premiership is primarily a regional sport too, yet does get better coverage than Super League despite the crowds being relatively similar.
County Cricket gets a lot of coverage when compared to the very small crowds they get.
There does appear to be a slight imbalance. I dont necessarily think its a bias against RL per se, I think its a London thing. Anything thats not that important in London isnt picked up and covered by the media that is based in London (just ask the people whos homes were flooded a while ago in Hull and not reported for days because someones garden in Kent was a bit wet). Which is why Harlequins are so important to SL.

BOO YAR!

On the subject of the Beeb, while I don't personally like all, or even a mjority of its programming, the way it's funded makes it slightly less a commercial organisation than its rivals. It's because of the way it's funded that it is able to continue to lead the world in natural history broadcasting, which so happen to be my favourite type of programming, making me a bit biased I'll admit. When you see the quality of stuff like Life, Planet Earth, Blue Planet etc (and even the "Walking With.... " series at the time) and compare them to what anybody else does (Discovery Channel sometimes get their stuff up to the lower end of the Beebs offerings) you quickly see that nobody else is anywhere near.

That, together with its news coverage etc, is rather closer to its reason for existing than covering Rugby League is. IMO, of course. It isn't there to please everyone all the time, it's there to produce a wide variety of programmes and entartainment, not purely those which will make the quickest profit.

GOOOOOOOAAAAAL!