MacKenzie Counters Dyke Attack

Greg Dyke’s unflattering description of Kelvin MacKenzie at the Radio Festival yesterday (see Dyke Hits Back At TalkSPORT) has provoked an inevitable counter-attack from the talkSPORT chief executive.

Defending his opinions of the BBC’s going “cheque-book crazy on rights” to sporting events as “legitimate”, MacKenzie said in a statement issued today, that Dyke had one aim in mind: “to force legitimate competition out of business.”

MacKenzie’s dislike of the way the BBC is funded also came to the fore: “The BBC paid more tax money than talkSPORT has revenue for radio rights to a single sport, Premiership football. This month they have rights to every major sporting event in the country, and they can’t even broadcast it all. They bought it purely to keep it off commercial radio.”

Having claimed that Dyke’s “Niagra of cash” had enabled the BBC to pay television rates for radio rights, MacKenzie finished by saying he “looked forward to hearing the OFT’s take on this.”

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