oliverfennell wrote:Syntax Error wrote:oliverfennell wrote:
But without Audley, there may not have been ANY boxing on terrestrial TV now. There hadn't been any since Eubank signed his lucrative Sky deal and the rest of Warren's big-name stable joined him on satellite in the mid-90s. Between Eubank and Audley, we'd had a handful of She Neary fights and a once-in-a-blue-moon obscure Grandstand fight, and nothing else. As badly as it all turned out for Audley on the BBC, he was the catalyst for bringing boxing back to terrestrial TV. They showed a LOT of boxing for a few years, from around the world, and they basically broke the ice for the ITV deal which followed. None of this would have happened without Audley's Olympic success.
That's a fair point.
It's a double edged sword.
We get big time boxing back on terrestrial TV because of Harrison & we have all but lost it because of him too.
Come off it - he is the target for the failure of BBC Boxing, but the channel had much to answer for themselves. Low budget studio productions, showing fights after midnight and sometimes a day late, for starters. They would put something from America on at 1am on a Sunday night, meaning people already know the result or are in bed, and then wonder why they didn't get the massive viewing figures they expected.
Anyway, even if you solely blame Audley for what happened with the Beeb, we haven't "all but lost" boxing on terrestrial TV because of him. He left the BBC in 2004, boxing overall left the channel in 2005, after which ITV stepped in with a regular schedule for the best part of two years.
ITV Boxing (aside from Khan) was pulled earlier this year - a full THREE YEARS since Audley's last BBC fight. You can't blame him for that.
Don't get me wrong, I am not blaming Harrison solely for the demise of boxing on the BBC & the scaling back of coverage on ITV, but I firmly believe that he was the catalyst.
His poor 10 fight deal on the BBC started the rot.
As the deal went on, his fights were screened later & later, until eventually, they weren't even live.
That was as a direct result of him taking the urine.
The BBC drop him (quite rightly), then he turns up on ITV & we all know what happened in the 1st Williams fight.
Add in the fact that F rank Warren was also taking us for mugs, it effectively KO'd big time boxing on ITV too.
)had just retired and everyone was looking for a replacement.