Lawry, Chappell, Taylor, Healy or Warne — who will make the move to Seven?
All good things come to an end. Australia's summer game is to have a new on-air home, and a fresh face, for the first time in over 40 years.
Generations of cricket lovers have been raised on images of the game seen through the prism of Channel Nine and their Wide World of Sports brand.
But no more. An era has ended.
The disruption in Australian cricket, still reeling from the ball-tampering scandal that cost three leading players and the coach their jobs, continues in another arena altogether.
External Link: Eddie Cowan tweet
But perhaps a chance has been presented to refresh the coverage of our national game that had in recent years drawn criticism as a product that had become, in some people's eyes, "too male, pale and stale".
A $1 billion, six-year deal has been struck between Cricket Australia and a partnership between Foxtel and the Seven Network, ending an association between Channel Nine that began when the late Kerry Packer blew up the sport's relationship with TV in the 1970s.
So woven is Nine in to the fabric of the game for armchair fans that memories of on-field triumphs and failures are accompanied in the imagination by the evocative theme tune that bookends their daily coverage.
How Seven will treat their own presentation — transferring what works for fans from Nine wholesale or attempting to mark a clear point of difference — only time will tell.
But the futures of some commentators and presenters will unquestionably be in some doubt.
Changing face of cricket
Calls from agents have already started coming in to the Seven offices.
Before last summer's Ashes, Nine posted a picture of their line-up for the series and drew sharp criticism for an all-male, all white roster of Bill Lawry, Ian Chappell, Mark Taylor, Ian Healy, Shane Warne, Michael Clarke and Mark Nicholas.
That will undoubtedly now change.
Lisa Sthalekar and Mel Jones are the obvious picks, but a raft of female talent that has gone largely ignored in the boys club of the Nine commentary box exist out there.
Cricket fans will be beneficiaries of that. Not from some form of tokenism. Just fresher voices with different views and outlooks, better representing the audience they are serving.
A number of those regular faces on Nine, however, will be expected to cross the divide.
You don't throw the baby out with the bath water.
A summer without Taylor or Warne on our screens, for example, might appeal to some, but even more fans would be disappointed without their input.
There are other avenues to peruse, also, of course. Gone too will be cricket from the Ten network, freeing up the time of Ricky Ponting, Adam Gilchrist and Damien Fleming — to name but a few.
The whirling roundabout of pundits will be as dizzying as a Warne wrong 'un over the winter.
Ten's coverage of the summer slog-fest might well present a template for Seven to loosely follow, after their unparalleled success in making the network a sporting destination throughout the Christmas period with their slick delivery of BBL fixtures.
External Link: Adam Gilchrist tweet
Foxtel will have the right to broadcast all 59 Big Bash League matches, 16 of which will be exclusively theirs.
Fox Sports had the inaugural season of the competition and the lack of exposure to those games without the necessary set top box did little to ignite interest.
Only after moving to Ten did it become the fan-friendly behemoth of a competition it is today.
The exclusive games they have will come from the extra additions to the fixture list planned for this coming summer.
The BBL will still be accessible in all homes for the most part.
But what impact some games going behind a paywall will have on its growth after TV numbers and ticket sales plateaued last time out will be interesting to observe.
Paying for limited overs
Of more concern to punters will be news that for the first time in four decades the Australian men's national team will be playing on a platform for which a subscription is required.
Anti-syphoning laws mean Test matches will remain on free to air TV, but both Twenty20 Internationals and traditional 50-over internationals will be Foxtel's exclusive preserve.
CA are thus taking a punt that the inflated rights fee they can command from Foxtel offsets a lack of exposure for some of its matches and the long-term gains free-to-air coverage offers in putting the sport at its best in front of, especially young, fans.
The English Cricket Board sold their national team rights to the highest bidder after the 2005 Ashes, at a moment when interest in the game there was at a generational high-water mark.
Some 7.4 million people watched the conclusion of the final match of the 2005 Ashes — on a Monday — when it was on a free-to-air-channel, compared with under 2 million for the same point of the series in 2009, when it was on subscription service Sky.
CA will have been aware of that, and are presumably banking on the partial move to pay TV giving them the best of both worlds, rather than falling between two stools.
Access to the archives
Of more pressing concern to fans, beyond the makeup of the commentary and presenting teams, will be what becomes of the vaults of archive footage Nine have been able to call upon as their ownership of the sport has stretched from the 20th to 21st century.
What would a rain delay in the next series against India be without nostalgic trips down memory lane in the company of the silken voice of the late, great Richie Benaud?
How likely will Nine be to release such archive gold to a rival who has just blown them out of the water in a bidding war?
Who knows, maybe some contra arrangement can be brokered so that Nine can plunder Seven's Australian Open clips of yesteryear, the trade of rights in the opposite direction for tennis as the sporting media landscape continues to suffer tectonic shifts.
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ABC .net
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