BBC Radio 5 has lost a third of its Premier League radio commentaries after its commercial rival TalkSport won the rights to late Saturday afternoon games and early Sunday kick-offs. Radio 5 live controller Adrian Van Klaveren admitted that there would be ‘significantly less’ Premiership football on the network next season. ‘We will need to work hard to compensate for this, including thinking about what this means for parts of our programme schedule,’ he told BBC News.
BBC Radio 5 has lost a third of its Premier League radio commentaries after its commercial rival TalkSport won the rights to late Saturday afternoon games and early Sunday kick-offs. Radio 5 live controller Adrian Van Klaveren admitted that there would be ‘significantly less’ Premiership football on the network next season. ‘We will need to work hard to compensate for this, including thinking about what this means for parts of our programme schedule,’ he told BBC News.
TalkSport secured two of the seven radio rights packages on offer from the Premier League, doubling the number of live games it broadcasts to 64. The new three-year deal runs from the beginning of next season, August 2010. The BBC secured four rights packages, a total of 128 games, down from its current offering of 192. The seventh package of rights went to another commercial station, Absolute Radio, which was awarded second choice Saturday games at the expense of TalkSport.
The BBC has lost the rights to the late Saturday evening game at 5.30 p.m. and the early Sunday kick-off at 1.30 p.m., both of which will be broadcast by Talk Sport. Saturday evening games did interefere with the start of the popular phone in show, 606, which lost some of its immediacy with a later start. The BBC has held on to the key first choice games on Saturday afternoon, as well as the Saturday lunchtime and Sunday late afternoon fixtures, which are often key matches between top sides. It will also broadcast Monday evening fixtures.