effnic said:
What time do they show friday night footy in other states?
In Tassie (which is probably the same as Vic), they used to show the games really late (start midnight, 1am or sometimes later). Sundays were worse when they had the F1 rights, as they would play this first. When thre were international sporting events on (golf, tennis etc), they would often bump the game altogether.
Last season however, they showed Friday night games at about 11 or 11:30 (which still means a >1am finish), pretty much straight after the gay-FL. On a few occassions when they had other sports on, they would play the game at 5 or 6am.
I think it is probably for the best if 7 and 10 do get the rights (the AFL hasn't made any announcement to this effect yet, just channels 7 and 10 crowing as yet!). However, Channel 9 has traditionally been ratings driven, and will not be willing to take a severe ratings hit by playing Friday night footy in prime time in AFL territory. Although I would love it if they did, I don't think it would work anyway, as the sports fans in these states would mostly be tuned to the AFL anyway.
One thing that I haven't heard mentioned in the debate about AFL vs NRL tv rights, is that AFL coverage is about 26 hours per week (8 x 3.5 hours), whereas an expanded 16 team NRL from 2007 will be about 20 hours per week (8 x 2.5 hours) ... these figures obviously including pre-game and post-game sumamaries etc. This is 30% more programming from AFL than NRL.
A bit of an aside (probably irrelevant to the point at hand) is that AFL would be a more expensive sport to operate at elite level (18 players on the field per team and about 6 refs, and more strappers, trainers etc travelling with the team).
