BBC's World Chess Championship coverage ... not

I've just sent a question to the BBC asking why there's no coverage of the WCC on the BBC web site today (none that I can find at least). 

Maybe a few more comments would help to encourage them to devote a bit of licence payer's cash to chess ...

This is a good idea.  I haven't seen any coverage outside of chess-dedicated websites.  It's bullcrap and more than a little annoying that chess is ignored.

2 days since I sent my message to the BBC & no reply yet.  Maybe some other UK members of chess.com could get in touch with them too.

There hasn't been chess coverage on UK TV for a long time, probably the last was the Kasparov v Short match.

They'll probably put a (very small) article on it when its all done. As there's other articles online which are much better than anything the bbc would likely produce I'm not too bothered about it not being on the website. It would be great to see chess on tv though, but this I fear is terribly unlikely, which is odd considering some of the ridiculous nonsense they put on the bbc channels at times.

Edit: Actually after running a search on chess on the main bbc site they do have quite a few articles and things on chess subjects, just nothing on the wcc

I tell a lie...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/43432.stm

It IS 1997 though :P

I think it s revolting that some guys with evident lack of intelligence and even troubles of coordinating sentences such as some footballers earn millions and get all media coverage.I speak as football fan but nowadays i enjoy much more watching a chess match and being able to debate the moves on such a nice website as this rather than seeing foot.

crish,

     Possibly the reason you aren't seeing it on TV in UK is because advertisers won't pay for the privilege of posting ads on a chess match - I mean, what are they going to advertise that most chessplayers would watch the commercial on ?? 

     you have all the chess sets, boards, chess engines, databases and chessbooks that you want (or know where to get them at discount rates from websearches), and what else would be of sufficient interest that any self-respecting chess players would buy it anyway? 

       I mean, really......   besides, real chess players do not waste precious time watching commercials anyway - during commercial breaks, they would mute the volume, and instantly huddle with their miniature pocket magnetic sets and analyze positions or just analyze in their heads without a board, and won't watch the commercials anyway.   Advertisers may have figured this out, and if so, that could be a partial explanation on why chess matches aren't televised.

    Actually, watching two people think 'chess' is not far different or more entertaining than watching grass grow - to those who do not play chess already.  (don't throw things at me for saying that....  Non-chess players are just not interested in watching a chess match very much.)

    another factor could be that in a chess game, the visible action is so little, compared to football - with it's constant and quite visible ACTION.

some facet of this post might have the real reason embedded.

In my opinion, this is the REAL reason we don't see more chess coverage on American TV. Let's be honest, it could never be televised LIVE (okay, maybe blitz matches). It's simply too slow.

The other very real problem is simple economics. The station has to have adequate air time to insert enough commercials to pay for the production costs and still have money left over for a profit. So let's look at that...

A high-level chess match could be filmed, edited, and then aired at a later time much like they do for the National Scrabble Championship. This is how TV producers remove the "dead-space" between word plays. But a competition-level Scrabble game is MUCH shorter than a competition-level chess match (G/25, if I remember).

A 5-hour chess match might only involve 30 moves for each player (60 total half-moves). So let's assume the producers and commentators spend 15 seconds "discussing" each half-move. That results in a whopping 15 minutes of usable footage (60x15/60=15). I don't know what on-site production costs would be, but $10,000/hour would not surprise me. That's $50,000 per game just to get the footage. Then you have to edit it. That's a lot of investment for a very small amount of air time. It becomes difficult, if not impossible, to interject enough ad space in the program to adequately pay for the production costs.

Or they could just air another football game and net a hundred Grand. An easy financial decision.

My original post was about the BBC's web site - there's no good reason why they can't at least give the result, some brief commentary & maybe the moves.

But some TV coverage should also be possible - those outside the UK may not realise but the BBC now has 4 channels (+ others for kids, & Parliament) - one of which is supposed to be fairly highbrow (BBC4).  This currently shows lots of repeats & shocking supposedly intellectual panel games - I'm sure 30 mins on each match day to go through the game & provide brief analysis would get reasonable viewing figures.

Chess has been on TV in the UK before - does anyone remember the Master Game from the 70's with William Hartson?  Twomove - you're right I think - the Kasparov/Short game was the last to get decent coverage - on BBC and Channel4 I seem to remember.  I found TV chess really gripping - with good analysis (people like Raymond Keene & Jonathan Speelman) it worked very well. 

So much for the digital age I guess ...

ch4's coverage of the 93 final was amazing, i mean they showed the whole game live each day with GM analysis and commentary (speelman and king i think). but nothing since like you say :-(

chrish:  i do indeed remember the Master Game from the 70's on BBC, it was superb imo.  To explain to others there were several series; the best involved Karpov, Miles, Larsen, Nunn, etc.   They kept the results from getting out and aired games weekly where the players played over the games afterwards for the camera speaking their thoughts as though it was live..fascinating.  I have the book of the whole several series and it had some great games too. 

Live chess is ferociously boring imo: playing is exciting, it's like squash, great to play but boring on tv

Just an update for you all - no reply from the BBC yet.  I've mailed them again asking why no coverage on the web site (half way through the championship now). 

Maybe this time they'll get back to me - or maybe not ...

Here's the reply from the BBC:

Chris,

Apologies but we simply can't reply to all the thousands of e-mails we
get. I did see yours - and many others like it - and passed the message
on to our international team. We wouldn't normally cover a long event
like this on a daily basis but do plan to report on the later stages.

I'd still encourage UK members to contact the BBC to ask for more coverage.  Shy bairns get nowt - as the locals say in Newcastle :-)