All aboard the Murdoch express. On your left will be our Sydney Daily Telegraph journalists poking and prodding you. On your right will be our Melbourne Herald Sun journalists shouting jingoistic messages into your ear, urging you to stand up for yourselves. Final destination: we will all be simultaneously sitting on our couches at 5pm on Sunday evening watching the NRL Grand Final with passion flowing through our veins.
Unfortunately, some Melbournians have remained ignorant to the conductor’s plans and taken their ride a little too seriously.
Take, for example, Sean Wood of Geelong who wrote into the Herald Sun’s Letters page this week stating:
“I can only agree that the levels of vitriol and contempt bordering on outright hatred displayed by some in the NSW media is staggering.”
What Wood needs to realise is the political economy of the National Rugby League. Melbournians can cry foul all they want about the NRL mistreating the Storm, or the Daily Telegraph running “vitriolic” campaigns against the Storm, only to be countered by the Herald Sun. The fact is they are all bedfellows. News Ltd owns them all. If it weren’t for the “vitriolic media” and Murdoch’s Moolah there wouldn’t be a Melbourne Storm. Storm skipper Cameron Smith acknowledged this fact in his press conference this week, saying “our game’s run by the media…”
So if you’re a Victorian feeling a little hot under the collar, please put your News Ltd newspaper down on the coffee table, take a step back so you can keep a critical distance, and recognise the fact that you’re simply being taken for a ride on the Murdoch express. Sydney won’t win. Melbourne won’t lose. Rugby League will be the winner.
………………………………………………………………………………………..
Meanwhile, speaking of League, The Age’s Richard Hinds wrote an article on Tuesday describing Melbourne Storm players as “anonymous”, and backed it up on Thursday by dubbing them the “great unwatched.” Returning to the political economy aspect, is this simply a case of a Fairfax journalist unwilling to recognise the game’s inroads in Victoria?
Sure, the Storm may not be mainstream, but in Wallerstein’s World Systems terms they have moved from the periphery to the semi-periphery within just eleven years of existence. The club has a strong media presence, and not just in Murdoch’s Herald Sun. They have lead all television news bulletins this week, while during the season they have had Monday night games broadcast live on Triple M along with a weekly hour on SEN. A 2008 Roy Morgan Research poll found that Storm has 769,000 supporters, second only to the Broncos. Hinds himself mentioned that last years Grand Final peaked at over 800,000 viewers in Melbourne, and since Brian “flip” Waldron took charge their jersey has become worth as much as any other NRL club’s. Their most recent Olympic Park crowds have been in the range of 14,000 – on par with the Melbourne Victory’s final game at the same venue. Few would dare call the Victory “anonymous.”
As a basketball fan who has to wait until Round 6 for any TV coverage and has to read interstate newspapers to get a decent grasp on what’s happening in the league, Hinds’ comment that the Storm are “anonymous” would be laughable if it didn’t feel like such a slap in the face.
1 Comment
Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI
Scibz' Spiel 
Rugby League won’t be the winner. News Ltd will be. All this pretend Melbourne-Sydney rivalry is rubbish, I agree, but Rugby League won’t be the winner. More people will watch the game, more people will buy the papers, more people may even go to the game – something that seems fanciful considering the game is being held in Sydney. How much of this money is being reinvested in the game? How can we take anything that NL journos say seriously about this game? How can I, as a News Ltd hater, consider handing my money over to those pricks? I find the ownership situation with the Storm most troubling.
In relation to your second argument, I have a few issues there too. I feel that they have moved into somewhat of a more central position in the hearts of Melbournians. But let’s think about it, they have provided three years of complete dominance, in a monopoly market. If you want to watch professional League in Victoria, go down to Olympic and front up the biscuits to Rupert’s mob. If they can’t win every week and gain status (even with a metro paper in their pocket), then they should pack up. I want them to win tomorrow, but I think the emotion is massively superficial, in fact it’s just I find it so amusing that Sydney and Brisbane can’t win at their own game, I suppose Sydney won the AFL flag a couple years ago, with more than a little AFL assistance.
Storm and Broncos have the most supporters – it doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to figure out why this is. Melbourne and Brisbane are monopoly markets – and damn big ones as well. The Storm numbers are probably a little soft as well, in political parlance. I follow the Storm, in that I make sure I catch the result on the news the night after. I daresay there’s a few of these fans in that figure. Not all, but a few.
On anonymity, Storm players are anonymous. But I don’t agree with your argument with regards to Victory. Today, against bottom team Perth, Victory drew 18k+. It was the first Friday arvo game in Victory history, and the internet was abuzz with fans who could not make it. They were confused and upset. Average Victory crowds would be 20% higher than average Storm crowds, across the life of both clubs. I will bet a tenner on that with you if you’ll take it, I must find the figures. Comparing Victory crowds at Olympic is a little bit dishonest – they don’t play there now because, well – we have too many fans! We play all games now at the Dome because Olympic was too small.
With the exception of Archie Thompson who would recognise Allsopp or Muscat? They are both key members of the Victory team from season one? Danny Allsopp could walk up to most Western Bulldogs fans, punch them in the face, scream out ‘don’t you know who I am?’ Belinda Neal style, and most Melbournians wouldn’t know.
There is one final lesson to be learned here , and it’s TV. The AFL, A-League and NRL both offer insights into TV right in Australia. FFa must regret now selling their rights to Socceroos and A-League games to Foxtel, but they were offered $120m for seven years, the best offer on the table at the time, according to them. As a FTA kid only, it annoys me, but I can understand guaranteed live coverage of domestic games is as important, if not more important than the money. Soccer is a code with latent support, with a new narrative for fans to involve themselves in that they can watch on TV (albeit pay) they can build momentum, support, brand recognition, sponsorship worth, everything. Next time the rights come up, free to air might be interested. I’d like to think it will be, but the last thing that FFA would want to happen would be a Seven-NSL style fiasco. Better it be on pay consistently than never on FTA.
The NRL-Nine situation in Melbourne is laughable. The didn’t show the Broncos game because it wouldn’t generate viewing apparently. But how do you generate future audiences if you don’t show big games to key development markets. It wasn’r even on PAY!!! Murdoch’s team in a semi final in Murdoch’s league, and you couldn’t even watch it on MurdochTel? Madness! The AFL want to expand in new markets because they need to offer bigger viewing audiences to stations in order to continue to demand bigger revenues. It can’t go backwards for the AFL, I tend to think the networks this time may have overpaid for the last package, the next offer might not be so lucrative if they can’t offer a new bunch of viewing eyeballs. At least the AFL demands the networks show Brisbane and Sydney games live into their markets – they just strongarm them. The NRL must be as weak as piss and excruciatingly short sighted not to try this strategy. I agree with Roy Masters on this stuff. Storm fans had to watch their team on Impaja! I just just imagine it now, purple and yellow enthusiasts needed an aerial the size of a mobile phone tower to see the game. Pretty hilarious really.
just finally, I have this sneaking suspicion that the NRL-News Ltd people are taking the piss out of us. I like the name ‘Storm’, I like the colours, but don’t you feel like it’s a massive in joke at Melbourne’s expense? All these NSW NRL execs going, ‘haha, call them Storm, Melbourne’s always raining, thunderstorms, crap weather town.’ Should be hilarious.’ Well I have to say is we are in excruciating drought and climate change is drying up our state, so I suppose the joke is on them.