Dyke Hits Back At TalkSPORT
Speaking at the Radio Academy’s festival in Manchester this morning BBC director general, Greg Dyke, hit back at TalkSPORT boss, Kelvin MacKenzie, accusing him of “whinging” and branding his repeated attacks on the BBC’s domination of radio sport “pathetic”. Dyke also reinforced the BBC’s commitment to digital radio, whilst admitting that outside of the media he had yet to meet a single listener with a digital receiver.
Defending the BBC’s dominance of radio sport, Dyke said: “We were in the sports radio market first and still dominate it – listeners prefer Five Live to TalkSPORT. We were there when Kelvin decided to turn his radio station away from the talk franchise it was originally awarded and into the area of sports. When he took that decision Kelvin knew the market he was coming into. To hear him whinging about competition now is a bit pathetic.”
He added: “Our aim is not to put TalkSPORT out of business – we’re only interested in providing licence fee payers with the level of sports coverage they have come to expect from the BBC. It appears that Kelvin wants us to withdraw from the market now he’s there, but there’s no way we are going to step aside from something we know our listeners value, enjoy and rely on just so that Kelvin or anyone else can make lots of money.”
His comments will undoubtedly provoke MacKenzie who has been an outspoken critic of the BBC for years.
Dyke also emphasised the BBC’s continued commitment to digital radio, saying that: “Digital Radio is the only technology on offer that allows radio to grow, to add some multimedia capability but retain radio’s portable and free reception.”
He acknowledged that there was still a long way to go before Digital Radio ceased to be a technology and became a consumer product and admitted that an investment of £30m of licence fee payers money had seen very little in return.He also highlighted the need to make digital receivers affordable to listeners but said that the BBC would be unable to use public money to directly subsidise them. Instead he pledged to invest an extra £15m a year into making digital radio a reality. BBC: 020 8743 8000 www.bbc.co.uk
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